A Shopkeeper’s Stellar Style

Shop windows rarely tell tales. But R. Louis Bofferding, a well-known antiques shop in New York City, always has a window with a story behind it.

An antiques expert, design scholar, and longtime friend of ELLE DECOR, Bofferding has been a columnist for us and is a star on the decorative-arts lecture circuit, especially on a subject near and dear to my heart: 20th-century style. Which explains why we meet at least twice a month at Zarela to drink too many margaritas and talk about the who’s who of high style until the restaurant closes. The window of his small but entrancing shop reflects that passion in three dimensions. His storefront presentations also change with the wind, so you have to catch their pleasures while you can.

A week or so ago, Bofferding set up a salute to best-dressed socialite Babe Paley (1915-1978), the second wife of CBS chairman William S. Paley and a woman who occupies a top rung on the ladder of everlasting chic. The few objects displayed offered passerby a kind of visual haiku, as you can see in the photographs shown here.

The centerpiece is a marbleized rococo-style cocktail table that was in the Paleys’ Billy Baldwin-designed suite in the St. Regis hotel in the late 1950s.

Alongside this is a prie-dieu (prayer stool) upholstered in silver-gray silk. Made by 18th-century French cabinetmaker Claude Chevigny, it belonged to George Stacey, the first decorator Babe Paley reportedly ever hired, and therefore a man who was instrumental in developing her taste as a young woman.

And at the center of it all is a circa-1945 George Platt Lynes photograph of a pensive Babe—then working as a fashion editor and sometime model—seated against a shaggy carpet that has been arranged like a rippling sand dune.

A great distillation of Paley’s style, the window is inspiring too. All afternoon I could think only about decorating a pearly room with satin upholstery and touches of gilt-wood and mirror. And everything’s for sale. For prices, call R. Louis Bofferding, 970 Lexington Avenue, New York City; 212-744-6725.

Mitchell Owens
Editor at Large, ELLE DECOR