apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Not my style either but I've read and heard recently that traditional is still the most sought after style. I was surprised at this. I thought we were moving to a more refined, clean look but I'm wrong.

Please! This is ridiculous. Looks like Laura Ashley vomited. I have to say, I went with an inexpensive decorator and had everything done in one day but I like my apartment more. There are pictures of it on www.homerefiner.com!

Sleek and modernist is "new money"; traditional is "old money" (or new money trying to look like old money).

So the clean, refined look marks the residents as the "professional" upper-middle-class (doctors, lawyers, architects, stockbrokers) rather than as people who inherited their silver along with their admission slot at Harvard. If your davenport has been in the family since the Taft administration, it just doesn't have that sleek DWR look.

(That's not a criticism of either faction; my decor says "leaf-eating liberal from the Left Coast" so they'd all look askance at me.)

Even Laura Ashley has moved away from this godawful sh*t. The shot of that floral wallpaper with the matching floral skirted sofa just made me vomit in my mouth a little.

Let me preface this by saying that Mario is one of my greatest friends. That being said, he was chosen as one of the major and continuing influences of design in New York. Whether you like his work matters not. He was included as part of a package of people who have influenced interior design in a certain milieu in this city (from socialites to Mariah Carey) -- and that he remains, a devoté of English-style decoration made vibrantly American, with loads of craftmanship and intricacy and color. It is not my taste but it is worthy. To be utterly snarky and talk about how pictures of his work "made [you] vomit in [your] mouth a little" shows not only a lack of generosity but also a keen disinterest in interior design and its chronology (not to mention a not-too-clever use of an already tiresome blogging cliché). Read the article in New York Magazine before you judge the photographs, and you just might learn something. It probably won't change your disgust at his work but it might just help explain why it endures.

Thanks readingglasses!

OK, they didn't choose the best examples of Mario's work to show--his own apartments, in several locations & even more decors, are the purest examples of his style when he's not forced to work with an obscenely large budget--but the guy is the absolute best of his generation as Miles Redd is the best of the new guys, and if I ever inherit a bundle of money, I would gladly go to work for Mario for free. I go to NYC twice a year and I always say that this time, I'm going to call him up & beg him to do a decorating book, as hundreds of lesser talents have done. But, of course, as soon as I pick up the phone, I chicken out. Perhaps next time. Magnaverde.

ElizabethR, of course you like your apartment more - it's done to YOUR taste. I am sure that someone who lives in a home they hired Mr. Buatta to decorate likes their space just as much as you like yours. People are, god forbid, different. While this is not my style, there are still elements that can inspire me, like that beautiful cranberry color on the wall in the first photo after the jump.

The cranberry-colored walls of Mario's designer-showhouse room were a huge hit, as I remember. People couldn't stop touching them; the surface was like satin, and the color had amazing depth, thanks to multiple layers of glazes. It was the sort of element that made you grateful that some areas of traditional craftsmanship survive. It's one thing to paint a wall and call it a day; it's another entirely for an artisan to spend countless days layering glazes and fine-sanding between each.

I also meant to add (forgive for droning on) that what is most appealing about Mario's rooms is their livability, something that is often forgotten in an era where sometimes styling triumphs over decoration. In one of Mario's rooms (or for that matter a room by any great traditionalist decorating establishment, from Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler on down), every chair has its table, every table has its lamp, every lamp is positioned for its ultimate function (atmosphere, reading, et cetera). It is completely thought out for daily comfort. Which is why it is often instructive to look past the folderol and examine the elements and why they are where they are. Those are the kind of old-fashioned by eternal lessons that can be utilized in any decorative scheme, whether minimalist or maximalist.

When I first started out in my design career I was trained in the Mario Buatta style of traditional opulence. Not being my style does not take away from the valuable lessons I learned from it. Of course, I went off to work for Vicente Wolf right after that so my style is more in that vein. But to say things like "This is ridiculous. Looks like Laura Ashley vomited." and "this godawful sh*t." shows amazing disrespect for a man who has been an inspiration to millions and been, for decades, a highly respected designer. Just because it's not your style doesn't mean he should be trashed.

That's my 2cents

Funnily enough, the detractors link MB with Laura Ashley for some reason ... when MB has plainly stated, since the early 1960s, when he opened his own firm, that his look is inspired most by two of his longtime friends, the late British decorator John Fowler and America's Sister Parish. Laura Ashley? That's far too populist a rock to throw in his direction and shows a shortsighted knowledge of design history.

>So the clean, refined look marks the residents as the "professional" upper-middle-class (doctors, lawyers, architects, stockbrokers) rather than as people who inherited their silver along with their admission slot at Harvard. If your davenport has been in the family since the Taft administration, it just doesn't have that sleek DWR look.

I confess that whenever I see a place that is perfectly DWR or very C&B, I ask myself, "But didn't your great-grandparents leave you anything? Or did you really tick off grandma and she left all the good furniture to Cousin Ruth, instead?" *g* I mean, I have TOOLS that are 80 years old!

Of course, this means that I have to find a way for the portrait of my great-great-great-great-great grandmother, my great grandfather's first wife's rocking chair, and my grandmother's mid-century modern dining chairs to live in peace.... That doesn't work with Buatta's style, either. *g* It's working, though. I just can't go too "out there" in any one direction!

OK, so I guess I lack a good sense of how to judge interior design except for liking what I like because I think it looks good. No, I am not very refined and apologize for the vomit comment. I just don't see how anyone could feel comfortable in such a "busy" room.

That first room does look very dated, and the third room is grandiose in the extreme, but the middle room is delightful. The proportions and colours are beautiful, and it looks really livable. It is the total antithesis to my own style, but that doesn't matter I can respect and admire beautiful and well-considered interiors no matter their particular aesthetic.

Sparkhorse, interesting comments: The first room was recently completed (and is only a corner of the entire room, so hard to really make a criticial judgement), the middle room was a showhouse interior done about five years ago, and the third room is only grandiose because of its architecture; it's a chateau-style house that built around 1900 near San Francisco, so there's not much one can do with it other than try to decorate it in a way that holds its own against the architect.

Elizabeth ... find a room like that and sit in it for a while, probably at dusk, with the lights on and a drink in hand and a couple of good friends and then you'll see that it can be comfortable ... also, remember that, depending on your situation, you don't live in one room all the time, only for specific periods of time or for specific reasons ... and the room shown is a showhouse room anyway, so it was an artificial construct, though obviously people do live like that ... and believe me, rooms like that can be seriously comfortable. I think some aspects of the design industry just dismiss everything that reeks of old-world glamour just because it seems not au courant. The wonderful thing about design is that it can accomodate so many viewpoints that that rooms are meant to be personal. Your space isn't my space, and that's the beauty of it. The thing to be is openminded; lessons can be learned from any interior design style and applied to any other. Comfort is always key, whatever your aesthetic. (FYI: That showroom room honestly wasn't as crowded as it looks; the only vantage point from which to shoot it was from the open door to the room, as I remember, so the perspective is a bit skewed from reality. It really was the most comfortable room in the showhouse that year, and everybody kept going in and sitting down and making themselves at home -- which is pretty much defines a successful room in my book.)

I wonder if some of this has to do with what you do for a living. For example, I am INUNDATED with noise all day long. People are always shouting across the office, I am glaring at a computer screen that is always changing. When I get home I want quiet and nothing busy. If people pretty much socialize all day long, then maybe they need the room to be more...lively?