Kips Bay: My Favorite Rooms

One of the best things about decorator showhouses is the wealth of stories they generate, from color trends to up-and-coming artists to ideas on displaying art and objects. They also set lifestyle dreams in motion.

I, for one, would be happy to live in the living-dining room Bunny Williams created on the first floor of the 2009 Kips Bay Decorator Show House (above).

Its turquoise walls are cheerful, its works of art are fascinatingly eclectic, and its mix of styles and finishes give the space richness and animation. (FYI: I want the velvet-upholstered Nailhead sofas, which are from the decorator’s dashing new BeeLine Home collection.) The end result is fresh but a little funky, bohemian but well-bred.

And I want to copy the sisal carpet, which Williams had painted with a boldly graphic border of white squares enclosing a field of dark brown stars.

When it comes to turning in at the end of a long, hard day, however, I’d want to head upstairs to the bedroom designed by Charlotte Moss. Cozy but coolly sophisticated, with an alluring interplay between darkness and light, it is handsome without being masculine and elegant without being feminine. The room’s blue, cream, and brown palette comes from the antique Tabriz rug from Stark Carpet. Squares of midnight-blue tea paper by de Gournay line the walls, and the bed, an antique iron lit à la polonaise once owned by hostess and writer Evangeline Bruce, had its layers of flowery chintz replaced with dead-plain hangings of Cream Glazed linen by Ralph Lauren Home. The only art in the room is a set of early-18th-century botanicals by artist Maria Sybilla Merian—framed, surprisingly, between sheets of Plexiglas fastened with clear screws. It is an old-new, high-low juxtaposition that takes the traditional images out of the ordinary. And if the botanicals catch your fancy as much as they do mine, reproductions are available from Audubon House.

Mitchell Owens
Editor at Large, ELLE DECOR