Issuu

Design’s modern master

PETER MARINO

461 Park Avenue at 57th Street, New York, NY 10022 461 Park Avenue at 57th Street, New York, NY 10022 Harrods, Brompton Road, London SW1X 7XL Harrods, Brompton Road, London SW1X 7XL www.richard-james.com www.richard-james.com

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CONTENTS MAY–JUNE 2021 VOL.44 NO.3 FEATURES 42

DADDY’S HOME

Famed residential and luxury retail architect Peter Marino talks to Horacio Silva about his upcoming art foundation in Southampton. 48

THE DESIGNER A-LIST

Rima Suqi rounds up a short list of New York’s most decorated interior designers. 56

THE ERA OF HIS WAYS

On the eve of his new collection of paper goods, Heather Hodson talks to retailer, designer, and decoupage revivalist John Derian. 62

RESTORATION DRAMADIES

George Rush chronicles the all-time ugliest renovation ﬁghts between New York neighbors.

SÉBASTIEN AGNETTI (13 PHOTO)/REDUX

THE UNCOMMITTED Taylor Harris shares this year’s list of New York’s must-follow singletons.

ALL THE SINGLE LADIES

Some of the nation’s richest women may be single, but alas, writes Ambrose McGaffney, that doesn’t mean they’re looking.

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MODERN MASTER Starchitect Peter Marino.

4/27/21 12:08 PM

VERNISSAGE Avenue’s insider preview of all that’s new and noteworthy. BY HORACIO SILVA

BUY CURIOUS

Highlights from Manhattan’s Decoration & Design Building, statement chairs and tables, and womens wear to get you from spring into summer. BY HORACIO SILVA

INTERIOR LIFE A couple’s dream living space created out of a historic downtown building by “A-List” designer Steven Gambrel.

CULTURE A BOOKISH GIRL GROWS UP

New Yorker Imbolo Mbue discusses power, politics, and her latest dazzling novel.

IMMERSION THERAPY

A couple’s 30-year journey restoring one of America’s most beautiful gardens.

BY CONSTANCE C.R. WHITE

LIVING LANDSCAPE ARTISTS

“Trophy trees,” $30,000 bocce courts, an entire private village: Wendy Moonan reports on how quarantine sparked a boom in luxury garden design.

BY CATHERINE TALESE

HOT TYPE

36 Summer reads from Jhumpa Lahiri, Cynthia d’Aprix Sweeney, Salman Rushdie, and Reggie Nadelson.

ONE-OFFS FOR THE WELL OFF Bespoke is back, declares the design critic and curator Glenn Adamson. BY ANGELA M.H. SCHUSTER

No longer a place of pastel hues and a rocking chair, children’s rooms are becoming as stylish as those of their parents, writes Susanna Salk.

After a year so weird, even the surrealists couldn’t have imagined it, New York’s galleries are once more open for business.

WRITING HOME Novelist Imbolo Mbue.

COVER: Illustration by Petra Eriksson 10

THE LIGHT STUFF

THE TALENTED MR. GERVAIS

NOTORIOUS NEW YORKERS

The crimes and murder of starchitect Stanford White, shot in cold blood by an avenging husband. BY ANGELA M.H. SCHUSTER

YOU’RE THE TOTS

ART IN BLOOM

BY ANGELA M.H. SCHUSTER

ON THE AVE.

Parties are back! Avenue readers enjoy an opening at the Brooklyn Museum and events around Palm Beach. 96

SOCIAL SKILLS

Now that Mario Buatta, the “Prince of Chintz,” has gone to his heavenly reward, who should take his place? BY POSEY WILT

At M. Alexander, the future’s so bright, they gotta wear shades, says Aria Darcella.

The accomplished painter and novelist Paul Gervais also owned one of Italy’s most beautiful gardens for decades. BY ARIA DARCELLA

Visit our website at avenuemagazine.com

INTERIOR PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC PIASECKI COURTESY OF STEVEN GAMBREL; IMBOLO MBUE PHOTOGRAPHY BY KIRIKO SANO

AVENUE MAGAZINE | MAY—JUNE 2021

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Real estate agents affiliated with The Corcoran Group are independent contractors and are not employees of The Corcoran Group. Equal Housing Opportunity. The Corcoran Group is a licensed real estate broker located at 400 Royal Palm Way, Ste 110, Palm Beach, FL 33480. All information furnished regarding property for sale or rent or regarding financing is from sources deemed reliable, but Corcoran makes no warranty or representation as to the accuracy thereof. All property information is presented subject to errors, omissions, price changes, changed property conditions, and withdrawal of the property from the market, without notice. All dimensions provided are approximate. To obtain exact dimensions, Corcoran advises you to hire a qualified architect or engineer.

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“Y Design

ou cannot understand good design if you do not understand people,” the great German industrial designer Dieter Rams said in 1976. “Design is made for people.” This insight perfectly sums up the new issue of Avenue, which is dedicated not only to the joy of good design for its own sake, but also celebrates its great creators. With all due respect to Herr Rams and his functionalist aesthetic, however, our taste runs a little more to the sumptuous. In these pages you will find a survey of the very best currently available in architecture, interior design, and landscaping. Leading our features is an exclusive interview with modern master architect Peter Marino, whose eponymous arts foundation, housing his personal collection—“everything from ancient Egyptian art to Delacroix next to all my de Koonings, Twomblys, and everything in between,” as he tells us—will open in Southampton in June. We also visit with John Derian, a favorite of many Avenue readers, who believes that design peaked in 1789. Rima Suqi rounds up 25 leading practitioners in our first ever designer “A-List,” and Wendy Moonan takes us on a tour of contemporary gardens so gorgeous you may never want to leave. You’ll also enjoy Constance C.R. White’s interview with novelist Imbolo Mbue and George Rush on epic New York neighbor renovation feuds, as well as checking in with design critic and curator Glenn Adamson; Bill Sofield; Aric Chen; and the so-called “fake heiress grifter,” Anna Delvey. Finally, if it’s spring, it must be time for our annual list of Avenueappropriate singles, “the Uncommitted.” Just in case you’re looking for someone to have designs on. Warmly, BEN WIDDICOMBE

Editor-in-Chief 12

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AVENUE MAGAZINE | MAY—JUNE 2021

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O N

V I E W A L S O

Y O R K

A V A I L A B L E

O N L I N E

John Ferren (1905 - 1970) | Untitled I | oil on canvas | 45 x 50 in.

E X H I B I T I O N S

N E W

LY R I C A L A B S T R A C T I O N

JOHN FERREN

A GROUP EXHIBITION

F I N D L AY GA L L E R I E S

32 E A S T 57 T H S T R E E T , 2 N D F L O O R , N E W Y O R K , N E W Y O R K 10022 · (212) 421 5390 165 W O RT H AV E N U E , PA L M B E A C H , F L O R I D A 33480 · (561) 655 2090 VIEW OUR GALLERY ONLINE | WWW. FINDLAYGALLERIES. COM Copyright © 2021, Findlay Galleries, All rights reserved.

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Ben Widdicombe CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Courtney Gooch

WENDY MOONAN (Landscape Artists, page 74) has written about art, antiques, architecture, and design for House & Garden, Town & Country, Architectural Digest, and the New York Times. After the pandemic struck she planted a perennial garden from scratch, with a special focus on pollinators, at her house in Sag Harbor. “I even kept a Covid gardener’s diary during the lockdown, to record what plants worked—or failed—in my hot, sunny garden,” she recalls. “Only when I started reporting this story for Avenue and saw so many magnificent gardens did I realize what an amateur act I was. Landscape gardeners can produce pure magic.” Moonan is the author of the best-selling New York Splendor: The City’s Most Memorable Rooms (Rizzoli).

DEPUTY & MANAGING EDITOR

Angela M.H. Schuster FEATURES DIRECTOR

Heather Hodson PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR

Catherine G. Talese PRODUCTION DIRECTOR

Jessica Lee STYLE EDITOR

Horacio Silva

SAMMY IAN (The Light Stuff, page 88) describes himself as “bred in Brooklyn but raised all throughout the streets of downtown Manhattan.” He found his niche, he says, through photography and skateboarding, and has a collection of images he describes as being of “everyone and everything, from the late Harold and Justin [of Larry Clark’s movie Kids], to incredible skate flicks, to random snaps of good times that would otherwise have been forgotten without proof.” For this issue, he turned his lens on lighting. “I had an amazing time shooting at the M. Alexander showroom—there were so many eye-catching pieces, I didn’t know where to look first.”

LAURA JUNGER (Vernissage, page 16) is a Parisian illustrator and artist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and Die Zeit, among other publications. “I get lots of inspiration from places,” she says, “but this past year has been pretty static, and I didn’t paint so much—days were a bit too similar.” Junger, who divides her time between Paris and Berlin, can’t wait for normality to return. “I’m looking forward to traveling again, hugging friends, and sitting at a bar counter. I hope to see a general happy madness all over town.” 14

DIGITAL FASHION EDITOR

Aria Darcella ART ASSISTANT

Daniela G. Maldonado LONDON EDITOR

Catherine St Germans CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Liesl Schillinger, Katrina Brooker, Gigi Mortimer, Tracy Bross CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Anders Overgaard, Mitchell Feinberg, Richard Kern, Landon Nordeman, Rainer Hosch, Johnny Miller, Martin Vallin, Nick Mele © 2021 by Cohen Media Publications LLC AVENUE MAGAZINE 750 LEXINGTON AVENUE 16TH FLOOR NEW YORK, NY 10022 EDITORIAL@AVENUEMAGAZINE.COM

MEMBER OF ALLIANCE FOR AUDITED MEDIA

PUBLISHER

Spencer Sharp COHEN MEDIA PUBLICATIONS LLC CHAIRMAN

Charles S. Cohen

WENDY MOONAN BY MICHEL ARNAUD; CONSTANCE C.R. WHITE BY ITAYSHA JORDAN; SAMMY IAN BY AVIVA KLEIN; LAURA JUNGER BY ROK TRŽAN

CONSTANCE C.R. WHITE (A Bookish Girl Grows Up, page 30) profiled the author Imbolo Mbue for this issue’s Culture pages. “I loved interviewing Imbolo,” she says. “You could hear how she would have been a great teacher; she’s charming and illuminating in her conversation.” White is the former editor-in-chief of Essence, the erstwhile style director and brand consultant for eBay, and author of How to Slay: Inspiration from the Queens and Kings of Black Style (Rizzoli).

AVENUE MAGAZINE | MAY—JUNE 2021

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Mondo Condo

Illustrations by Laura Junger

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few years ago, the award-winning architect Bill Sofield met with two young real estate developers at the old Temple Bar to discuss a new luxury tower they wanted to build on the Upper East Side. “It all started very polite and civilized,” recalls Sofield, who is known as much for his sumptuous haute-monde homes and luxury skyscrapers as his sexy retail designs for Gucci and Tom Ford. “But what’s the Dorothy Parker line? ‘I like to have a martini, two at the very most. After three I’m under the table, after four I’m under my host.’ Well, the evening kind of took that trajectory.” Thanks to his hardy liver and powers of persuasion, Sofield came away with not one but two ground-up commissions: Beckford House and Tower, sister residential buildings at 301 East 81st and East 80th Streets respectively. “The folks,” he says, referring to the clients, “also own the brownstones in between, which were very derelict, so I ended up with the street.” The magnificent results, which are being completed with the opening of the tower this spring, bring to mind Berenice Abbott’s photographs of

Manhattan between the wars—all classic masonry and intricate ironwork. The prewar-inspired streetscape that Sofield has created suggests a Germantown of the imagination, the days when the local elite would meet at joints like Elaine’s, but the interiors are anything but neighborhood modest. At Beckford Tower, the larger of the two buildings at 31 stories tall, residents enter through a double-height vestibule, and amenities include a grand reception room and a 65-foot indoor swimming pool with not a tile in sight. “It’s limestone all around,” Sofield says. “It has draperies and it’s wood paneled. It’s really an interior ballroom that happens to be a swimming pool.” As befits one of the city’s hottest new addresses, in addition to the surfeit of classical detailing for which Sofield is known, the 104 apartments and six penthouses in the two buildings feature enough bells and whistles (such as a four-pipe HVAC system and zoned climate control) to keep the mondo condo set more than happy. Squint and you might even catch a bit of odd designer imperfection. “Not everything has to be symmetrical,” Sofield admits. “I love a bit of ugly.” —HORACIO SILVA MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

4/28/21 9:46 AM

VERNISSAGE

The Grift that Keeps on Giving

oogle Anna Delvey’s last address, a luxury apartment building in Hudson Yards, and the top result is an advertisement offering three months’ free rent. Given her brief stay, it turned out to be an excellent deal. Not that the woman who was christened by the tabloids as “the fake heiress,” after grifting various individuals and intuitions during a yearslong high-living spree that ended with her arrest in 2017, was short of money. But it was still a nice bonus for the convicted felon, as well as a neat metaphor for the hubris of capitalism, which brieﬂy raised Delvey and the Hudson Yards alike, before both came crashing back down. 18

Delvey, 30, welcomed Avenue to her new home just a couple weeks after leaving the upstate penitentiary in Albion. Shortly after that meeting, she found herself back in custody, picked up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and bundled into New Jersey’s Bergen County Jail, facing deportation, after barely two months of freedom. But on the chilly day we met, Delvey was in high spirits. She was wearing a black hoodie emblazoned with her website, DelveyMail.com (from her own streetwear range, cheekily called “the Correction Collection”), as well as black leggings, expensive Alexander McQueen sneakers, and Celine sunglasses. A Balenciaga garment bag is strewn over an arm of a couch, one of the few personal items in the furnished one bedroom she has occupied for only a week. “I had a great advantage of being arrested at the age that I was, 26 or 27, because I feel like if I had been 45 no one would have cared,” she said brightly. “And that would have been pretty sad.” Delvey, 30, was born Anna Sorokin just outside Moscow, and grew up in a small town in western Germany. She became famous for her financial crimes, being convicted on four out of six charges, and serving just under four years in prison. Delvey told Avenue she believed the fact she was appealing her convictions would shield her from deportation — a point on which ICE apparently differed. In the meantime, however, the publicity around her case elevated her profile to such an extent that her release from jail in February was covered by German television.

And they weren’t the only ones to come knocking. Netflix alone paid her a reported $320,000 ahead of a scripted series, made by Shonda Rhimes, about her story, although she will have no say over how she is portrayed. “If they choose to say I’m psychopath riding around New York, I have to run along with it,” she said, adding that more than 80 percent of that money has gone to repay financial institutions she scammed. Notably absent from the list of beneficiaries is Rachel Deloache Williams, the young Vanity Fair photo editor who got stuck with a $62,000 bill for a luxury trip to Morocco the pair took with two others. Delvey couldn’t be convicted of that alleged grift, since it happened outside US jurisdiction, and she is also legally prevented from contacting her victims. So if Williams wants compensation, Delvey observed dryly, she will have to “get in touch.” Not that Delvey was exactly wallowing in remorse. “I'm just trying to move on. I'm not going to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, I'm just so sorry,’” she said, sipping a glass of white wine and looking out at a majestic view over the Hudson River and lower Manhattan. “I can’t go to Citibank saying, ‘You know what, I took the $100,000 from you and I'm so sorry.’ They’re not going to say, ‘Don't worry about it, as long as you're sorry!’” She giggled at the absurd thought, and took another sip of wine. “Regret is a useless feeling.” —BEN WIDDICOMBE

AVENUE MAGAZINE | MAY—JUNE 2021

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Hammer Time

f you believe the old adage, the three D's of auction houses are death, debt, and divorce. And while there has been tremendous interest from buyers in design and other collecting categories in the last year of forced cocooning, auction houses have had to go the extra yard to find blue-chip material. “It may have been a bit more daunting for owners to want to take a plunge and sell their property during an uncertain time,” says Beth Vilinsky, senior vice president and senior international design specialist at the auction house Phillips. “But it’s been a little trickier than usual.” Since beginning her new job in February, after 20 years in a similar position at Christie’s, where she was instrumental in record-setting sales for Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne, among others, Vilinsky has been preparing for the Philips design auction on June 30. Her days are dedicated in no small part to cementing existing client relationships and prospecting for new ones. “It’s a long process,” she explains, “but you have to be prepared to keep the dialogues going because much of an auction tends to come in at the eleventh hour.” Part of the reason, Vilinsky maintains, that Phillips often gets the last-minute call is that the auction house is particularly adept at crafting narratives around the works that are consigned for sale. “It helps that every object genuinely has a story,” she says. “Part of the fun of what I do is meeting with these people and listening to and teasing out their amazing stories.” Some are more interesting than others. Vilinsky, whose area of expertise is the work of American designer and decorative artist Louis Comfort Tiffany, recalls a Tiffany lamp, discovered in a henhouse, that she helped to sell a few years back for more than $100,000. “The lampshade was turned upside down and was being used to hold eggs,” she shrieks. “The owner clearly had no idea what they owned or at least they thought it made for a very good holder of eggs.”—HS

Design Braces for NFTs

s the curatorial director of the influential Design Miami/ fairs held in Basel, Switzerland, in September and in Miami in December, Aric Chen sets the collectible-design agenda. Despite being preoccupied with the very real demands of the job (on this day the fate of a fledgling mini fair slated for Shanghai in November hangs in the balance), he is still game for reading the tea leaves. “Let’s see,” Chen says, speaking on the phone from Shanghai, where the former New Yorker is based. “In terms of where the market might be going, we live in a time of extremes, and I think you will continue to see the high and the low end do well, and a hollowing out of the middle and center.”

Which, note to decorator, in practical terms means unimpeachable signifiers of good taste— “the old standbys of Prouvé and Perriand, and mid-century Scandinavian,” Chen sniffs—sprinkled with enough experimental contemporary works to keep things interesting and your friends confused. Chen, who is leaving Design Miami/ in September to become the new General and Artistic Director of Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, also sees the design community continuing in its activist support of social issues that have been brought into stark relief, whether it's Black Lives Matter, social inequality, or now hate crimes against Asian Americans. “I expect more works that bring a contemporary narrative and speak to the kind of uncertainties that we see in the world,” Chen predicts. Though he expects fairs to be unrecognizable digital hybrid experiences in the near future, he is less sold on the “digital homes” and nonexistent furniture that have been commanding six figures on the non-fungible-token [NFT] market. “It’s impossible to avoid the NFT thing,” he says, “but with design, we are still talking about an area that is by nature inherently physical and three-dimensional. I don’t quite yet see how that kind of thing fits in with what we do. But, you know, things can change very quickly. Be braced.” —HS

AVENUE MAGAZINE | MAY—JUNE 2021

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AVENUE MAGAZINE | MAY—JUNE 2021

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Artisan Crafts Highlights from Manhattan’s Decoration & Design Building BY HORACIO SILVA

Lladró hanging ceiling lamp with 20 lights and handmade metallic chandelier in white. Price on request; suite 1805; lladro.com

Kravet “Sybilla Hurricane” handblown glass hurricane. Price on request; suite 1202; kravet.com

Armani Casa club bar cabinet in ocean lacquer. Limited edition of 50, price on request; suite 1424; armani.com Warp & Weft “Midday 2” hand-knotted wool rug. Price on request (made to custom sizes); suite 1203; warpandweft.com Name TKTKTKTK website

COURTESY OF HOLLY HUNT

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Studio Van Den Akker “Gemini” cocktail/coffee tables by Christian Heckscher. Price on request; suite 1510; studiovandenakker.com

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Ciocio hand-blown glass side table in amethyst with walnut. $1,860; 1stdibs.com 24

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BUY CURIOUS

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A Seat at the Table Sit down and make a statement

Crump & Kwash “June” lounge chair. $3,650; crumpandkwash.com

Missoni “Miss Chair.” $2,565; missoni.com COURTESY OF OCRUM

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Karl Zahm for Radnor “Parallax” antiquated bronze coffee table. $15,500, radnor.co

Ben Tetro “Reﬂected” inlay glass mirror. Price on request; bentetro.com

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BUY CURIOUS Lindsey Adelman brushed brass and amber glass sconce. Price on request; lindseyadelman.com

Reﬂections Copenhagen “South Beach” crystal vase. $684; matchesfashion.com

Johanna Grawunder “XX” console table. $6,135; luminaire.com

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Bari Ziperstein column side table. $7,260; thefutureperfect.com

“PEARL SCREW SHELF” BOOKCASE COURTESY OF 1STDIBS

Soft Baroque “Pearl Screw Shelf” bookcase. $7,928; ﬁrstdibs.com

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Campagna “I Seat – Set” chair. From $6,750. campagna.cc MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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BUY CURIOUS

Tiffany HardWear chain wrap bracelet in 18k yellow gold. $8,500; tiffany.com

Kika Vargas scalloped puff-sleeve cotton-blend dress. $891; matches.com

Wrap Party Artful throws and chic accents are cause for celebration

Valentino Garavani petal effect leather shoulder bag. $4,460; matches.com

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Tom Ford graphic swirls embroidery mini dress. $25,000; tomford.com

COURTESY OF PROENZA SCHOULER

JW Anderson black chain slippers. $1,175; ssense.com

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Proenza Schouler cashmere double-face blanket, $2,995, knit bodysuit, $650, eco cashmere oversized sweater, $1,090, crepe wide-legged pants, $990, and large quilted “Tobo” tote, price on request. proenzaschouler.com MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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“You don’t stand up and fight a multinational and not pay a price, go up against a corrupt government and not pay the price.”

W A Bookish Girl Grows Up

JASON BELL/CAMERA PRESS/REDUX

Imbolo Mbue’s follow-up novel to her celebrated debut took 17 years to come to fruition. Upon its publication, she talks to Constance C.R. White about power, politics, and finding inspiration in New York City

RADIANT TALENT Imbolo Mbue drew on her own childhood for her dazzling second novel.

hen Imbolo Mbue writes, she thinks about power. Political power, economic power, female power, male power, media power, power of government, Black power, White power. Power as a living, breathing, heart-thumping act of brutality, or even in fact of love. With Mbue, you discover power where you thought none existed, as in her new novel, How Beautiful We Were. It weaves a heart-wrenching tale of environmental destruction and death at the hands of an American oil company and a callous, corrupt government. It could not be more timely. Power and its resultant inequities stare at us with bared teeth as we confront a raging pandemic and recent environmental disasters like those in Texas and Ecuador. “That people simply asking to live in a healthy environment could be so horribly treated,” Mbue told Avenue. “I find it very disturbing.” Speaking from upstate New York, where she and her family have decamped during the pandemic, the stylish writer with envy-inducing cheekbones wears a rose-colored top, her usually prominent hair wrapped casually in a shiny, colorful printed scarf. Judging from her numerous public appearances, she clearly favors bright colors and a coiffure—in public anyway—of a prim bun or a dramatic, asymmetric cloud. Mbue first grabbed our attention with her debut novel, Behold the Dreamers, which won her the 2017 PEN/Faulkner Award, a spot on The New York Times bestseller list, an Oprah’s Book Club pick, and a seven-figure advance. Naturally, readers waited and wondered what she would do for her next work. Sophomore efforts of all kinds are notoriously jinxed and full of paralyzing pressure to live up to expectations: Would Rihanna repeat the success of “Pon de Replay,” or be a one-hit-wonder? Could Raf Simons’s second Prada collection be as tantalizing as his first? But indeed, book number two from this remarkable writer is a worthy follow-up to its predecessor.

Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, the story unfolds from multiple vantage points as each narrator recounts how villagers fought to save themselves and their once-lush land bequeathed to them by their ancestors. In contrast, Behold the Dreamers focused on two families in New York City—one American, the other from Cameroon— during the 2008 recession. While they differ, the books share some important DNA. “Both are very much about power,” said Mbue. “You may think the African villagers are very powerless, but they have power.” The element of dreams is another important common thread in both novels. “It’s not crazy dreams,” said Mbue. “They just want to live a normal life with normal dreams, like a safe place to live. Enough to eat.” Astonishingly, Mbue has had How Beautiful We Were in the hopper for 17 years. “It was the first thing I started, when I started writing in 2002,” she said. She put it aside to create Behold the Dreamers but “it was very personal to me, it kept haunting me” and she returned to it after she completed what became her debut novel. For the main protagonist, named Thula, she drew upon her own childhood. “A lot of it came from this African girl who I was, growing up— I was a bookish kid, underweight as a child,” she said. “I didn’t grow up in a place that has environmental degradation, but I did grow up in a dictatorship.” MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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Mbue lived in two villages and the Cameroon port town of Limbe, the site of an oil refinery, before moving to America in 1998 at age 17 to attend Rutgers University, graduating with a BA before taking a master’s degree at Columbia. “There was always oil in the story, but the environmental angle was not so strong in 2002,” she continued. Then came 2016. “There were all these things that were happening around 2016—the Flint, Michigan [water crisis], the “Me Too” movement, Trump’s election and Black Lives Matter,” she said. And back in the news was one of the largest man-made environmental disasters in history, the BP oil spill. The Brookings Institute released a damning report that year, and several movies hit the screen, including Deepwater Horizon, starring Mark Wahlberg. Together they galvanized Mbue’s thoughts about the story she wanted to write. “When I was growing up, I was very affected by the murder of an environmentalist in Nigeria, Ken Saro-Wiwa,” she said. “They imprisoned him and eventually hung him.” “As a child I was fascinated by revolutionaries… [but] to be clear, I’m not a revolutionary,” she added, laughing. Now that that’s cleared up, it’s nonetheless very cool that she made the book’s main character—a heroic, revolutionary figure—female. “At first it was hard to envision Thula. I couldn’t just go by what I think.” She had to dig deeper, knocking herself out to study several powerful leaders and revolutionaries: George Washington, Steve Jobs, Angela Davis, Patrice Lumumba. “Malcom, Martin Luther King, Mandela—I noticed everybody who had been celebrated were all men,” she said. Yet, she insisted, “everything that is in Mandela, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, everything that makes them leaders, can be in a woman too. Thula’s mother, Thula’s grandmother, they represent a lot of African women who push back against injustice in their life,” she said. “I grew up around these women.” Despite the heroics, as in Behold the Dreamers there is no kumbaya, gift-box-with-bow ending for How Beautiful We Were. “That’s not me!” exclaimed Mbue, who often cried while writing it. “You’ll not get that from me. You don’t stand up and fight a multinational and not pay a price, go up against a corrupt government and not pay the price,” she declared, her passion palpable through the Zoom connection. 32

“I’ve lived in New York City more than anywhere else now…I walked down the street and got inspiration for my book.”

Despite being in demand for interviews and events, Mbue maintains a boundary between her private and public life. She never mentions a spouse, but she’s wearing what looks like a wedding ring. “I’ll only say I’m married and I have children,” she said, in a delightful sing-song voice accented by her native country’s cadences. “I am a novelist and I give away so much of myself through my writing, I need that private space for myself and my loved ones,” she explained with good humor. “What my husband looks like, how many children I have is not important. What I like to talk about is my journey as a writer. I like to inspire people who look like me. To let them know, it’s not a pretty journey. But they can do it.” Like many of us, the pandemic has upended her life. “It was a difficult spring,” she recalled. Her tour for Behold the Dreamers was interrupted and the release date for How Beautiful We Were was pushed back a year. She was also in the midst of trying to

move apartments when Covid descended and she was forced to find a plan B. She took refuge in the country with her family, a compromise reached when they expressed little enthusiasm for her suggestion that they try Mexico. “I’m fascinated by Mexico,” she said. And she speaks Spanish, but nonetheless added that “New York City is my adopted home…I’m coming back next year.” Forced as it is, she appreciates the time to recharge. There are no more half-finished manuscripts waiting. “The next one will be from scratch,” she said with a laugh. “I’ve lived in New York City more than anywhere else now—a total of sixteen years. I walked down the street and got inspiration for my book,” she said, referring to the black-car chauffeur who is a central character in Behold the Dreamers. “I love that. When I walk out of my apartment building I say, ‘Wow! I live in New York City!’” How Beautiful We Were is published by Random House.

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Books Hot type: early summer reads include a long-awaited novel, personal meditations, and a joyful celebration of New York’s watering holes GOOD COMPANY by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney (Ecco)

WHEREABOUTS by Jhumpa Lahiri (Knopf)

In an Italian city whose name we never learn, a nameless woman, living alone, unmarried and without children, drifts through her daily routines like a piece of flotsam, buffeted on waves of loneliness and ennui. Emotional sustenance is found in fleeting encounters with a friend’s husband, attachments with university colleagues who invite her to their dinner parties, the solidarity of her neighbors, and her deep connection to the elegant city itself, with its parks and piazzas, bridges, municipal swimming pools, and coffee bars. Constructed in brief chapters, Whereabouts is Jhumpa Lahiri’s first novel in nearly a decade, and was written in Italian after living in Rome for several years, in a spare, light prose that gives the sentences a mesmerizing quality. Like Interpreter of Maladies, her Pulitzer Prize–winning debut collection of short stories about the lives of the Indian diaspora, themes of attachment and displacement hover around the protagonist, threatening to overwhelm her. But through the arc of a year, as her life provides flashes of exuberance and joy, the promise grows of transformation and escape from solitude and inertia. An achingly beautiful novel. heather hodson 34

When you marry an actor, it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s a performance. That’s the knot that the characters must untangle in Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s addictive new novel, Good Company. The story begins when Flora, a once-promising Broadway actress who never quite got her break, discovers her husband Julian’s long-lost wedding ring hiding in the back of a filing cabinet in their garage in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, her best friend Margot, who plays “Dr. Cat” on a television medical drama, dodges an interviewer’s personal questions about her husband David’s real-life surgical career, which long ago went up in flames. The questions and the ring resurrect memories of a former life, back when Flora, Julian, Margot, and David all lived in Manhattan, and Good Company, Julian’s theater group, helped them survive a city meant to spit you out. What follows is a compulsively readable tale about the sacrifices and compromises we make so that the show—of our marriages, of our friendships, of our lives—might go on. Much like her much-lauded debut, The Nest, Sweeney’s Good Company is rife with insight, humor, and heart. From Margot’s impeccably designed Hollywood mansion (“ﬁfty shades of café au lait,” Flora quips with a roll of the eyes), to the rustic acreage of Stoneham, where Good Company puts on an annual outdoor play, the places and performances offer a dreamy backdrop to the more intense dramas of their lives offstage. Sweeney’s ending shines, as her characters must decide if they can pull off the most challenging act of all: forgiveness. claire gibson

LANGUAGES OF TRUTH: ESSAYS 2003–2020 by Salman Rushdie (Random House)

“We are born wanting food, shelter, love, song, and story,” writes Salman Rushdie, setting the mood for Languages of Truth: Essays 2003–2020. These meditations on sociopolitical upheaval address rapid change for both the world and personally for the author, whose writings over the years have earned him a knighthood, global cultural recognition, and a literal death sentence from at least one enraged theocracy. In these essays, this master of magical realism approaches giants of storytelling from the world’s classical cultural hegemons—a Heraclitus analysis here; a Shakespeare passage there; a glance at the fabled Mount Mandara of Hindu myth—as they relate to his own early memories of discovering the written word, first as a boy in private schools in old Bombay and England, and then as a young writer. Readers who remember the public attempts at his life in the wake of such controversial works as The Satanic Verses will be interested in the behind-the-scenes reflections of that time included in this collection. With commentary on censorship, bravery, betrayal, politics, transnationalism, language, and more, Rushdie takes the reader on a journey equal parts coolly cerebral, heavily contemplative, and appropriately fantastical. mark libatique

MARVELOUS MANHATTAN by Reggie Nadelson (Artisan Books)

“A while back, it appeared that Three Lives & Company, the muchloved bookshop in Greenwich Village, had shut. Its customers wept. For nearly fifty years, the little corner shop at Waverly Place and West 10th had remained exactly as it was in the beginning: sweetly bookish, with a literate staff who really like to read. And now it had seemingly gone, and the news traveled down the hotline of despair where there are regular reports that nothing at all is left of the Village to remind you of its bohemian glory days.” So writes the seasoned journalist and diehard New Yorker Reggie Nadelson in her delightful and timely ode to the iconic restaurants, bars, clubs, and beloved bookstores that make up the beating heart and soul of Manhattan. In her series of 30 essays alive with the comedy, history, grit and romance of the city, Nadelson has served up a small cultural treasure—part Baedeker, part memoir, part literary read, and a timely reminder of everything we love about Manhattan and lost for a year. And while Three Lives & Company has temporarily relocated, it remains very much open for business. heather hodson

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THE RAKE’S PROGRESS Above: The Water Terrace, a 2,800-square-foot water garden with five pools and a fountain, was completely rebuilt, with the Olmsteddesigned pools replicated exactly. Along the West Terrace (below) sickly plants were torn out, borders dug, and numerous shrubs and perennials planted including ‘Félicité et Perpétue’ roses and Clematis viticella ‘Betty Corning.’

Immersion Therapy A couple’s 30-year journey restoring one of America’s most beautiful gardens

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS ©CLINT CLEMENS 2021, COURTESY OF DAMIANI

IMMERSION: LIVING AND LEARNING IN AN OLMSTED GARDEN by Nola Anderson, with photographs by Clint Clemens (Damiani)

In 1991 Nola Anderson and Jim Mullen took a leap of faith and purchased The Chimneys, a Georgian Colonial Revival estate on 28 acres of North Shore seaside property in Manchester, Massachusetts, landscaped by the Olmsted Brothers (sons of the legendary Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., creator of Central Park) between 1902 and 1914. In their courting days, the couple marveled at this grand house as they fantasized about their future together and restoring the estate’s historic Italianate gardens, neglected for 40 years. “We would make it beautiful,” Anderson writes in this account of her journey from naive plant lover to expert horticulturalist. Immersion: Living and Learning in an Olmsted Garden is the richly told story of her successes and failures, and the community of gardeners who fostered her growth. —catherine talese MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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“The home has become the next frontier.”

One-Oﬀs for the Well Oﬀ

efore the Industrial Revolution, practically every object in the home was handmade or bespoke. Sure, the table might wobble, but it came from a tree you cut down yourself. The advent of mass production, however, made superior design affordable, and certain 20th-century arbiters (like that screen printer from Pittsburgh, what was his name?) even made it chic. In more recent years, even top-of-the-line covetables have tended to roll off the factory floor, albeit in limited editions. That trend may now be coming full circle, says Glenn Adamson, host of the Design in Dialogue interview series and the author of acclaimed books, including the recent Craft: An American Histor y. Today, more designers are bringing their craft back home into their own ateliers, not just making unique pieces, but in many cases even reinventing the means of production to fit their individual visions. In a world where the most desirable objects are artisan-made and increasingly one of a kind, two of anything is a crowd. 36

“We are living in an exciting moment,” Adamson tells Avenue. “When I published Fewer, Better Things several years ago, I was calling for people to have a more intense relationship with their material environment, the objects that surround them in their daily lives. Suddenly, the pandemic has forced the issue, whether people like it or not. If there is a silver lining to this utter calamity and tragedy, it is that people are looking at how they live very differently now.” Adamson is speaking via Zoom from his upstate refuge in Highland, New York—a three-story work of art in itself, having been crafted in the 1980s by two noted potters, Phillip Maberry and Scott Walker. He and his artist wife, Nicola, acquired it in 2018 as a weekend escape from Brooklyn. For a design curator and critic, of course, a house is never just a house, but a charged and highly symbolic environment that continues to evolve. “The home has become the next frontier,” he continues. “As a colleague of mine, New York designer Stephen Burks, has pointed out, [it’s] ‘a new sphere of action and heightened awareness,’ with far greater attention being paid to how we relate to space and the objects in it.”

THE SHAPE OF THINGS From top: An installation of monochromatic home furnishings by Max Lamb; curator and critic Glenn Adamson.

MAX LAMB INSTALLATION, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND SALON 94 DESIGN/PHOTO BY JUSTIN BORBELY; COURTESY OF GLENN ADAMSON

Bespoke is back, the design critic and curator Glenn Adamson tells Angela M.H. Schuster

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ARCHIBONG, COURTESY FRIEDMAN BENDA AND INI ARCHIBONG/PHOTO BY ANDREAS ZIMMERMANN; JAY SAE JUNG OH, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND SALON 94 DESIGN; KAHN, COURTESY OF FRIEDMAN BENDA AND MISHA KAHN

CULTURE

ARCHIBONG, COURTESY FRIEDMAN BENDA AND INI ARCHIBONG/PHOTO BY ANDREAS ZIMMERMANN; JAY SAE JUNG OH, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND SALON 94 DESIGN; KAHN, COURTESY OF FRIEDMAN BENDA AND MISHA KAHN

RADICAL DEPARTURE Clockwise from top: Ini Archibong's Shade Table (2019), Jay Sae Jung Oh's Savage Wall Organizer (2020), and Misha Kahn's Al Dente chair (2019).

One of the most notable shifts he has observed is the way in which these artists and designers work, with many having their own production fully under their control. This return to artisanship, Adamson contends, has also made it easier for them to continue to create even in these surreal times. “It is craftsmanship in its purest form, with artists producing work that is often speculative in character and intensely made.” This is particularly true of artists in the Friedman Benda stable, he says, name-ticking such designers as Detroit-based Chris Schanck and Brooklyn-based Misha Kahn, as well as Faye Toogood in the UK, along with Gaetano Pesce, who really pioneered that way of working experimentally back in the early ’70s. “He’s come back into the frame as a very significant figure through Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn and her gallery Salon 94. “Another welcome trend is the increasing number of fresh, diverse voices in the field, people like Switzerland-based furniture designer Ini Archibong, whose family hails from Nigeria, and Mexican textile designer Tanya Aguiñiga. The diversity story is, of course, related to the craft story because so many craft processes that are taking center stage today are themselves rooted in specific cultural traditions.” If there is a commonality among all of these artists, says Adamson, it is their individual expression, achieved through self-invented means. “Unlike previous generations of designers, so many of these people develop their own materially inventive practices. To me this suggests a refusal of prevailing production systems—literally ‘making space’ for the personality of the designer to shine.” Adamson’s curatorial projects this year include “Crafting America,” which runs through the end of May at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas. “Futures,” an ambitious survey at the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building, in celebration of the institution’s 175th anniversary, is set to open in November. He promises it will provide glimpses into “humanity’s next chapter,” on the far side of the pandemic. MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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Art in Bloom After a year so weird, even the surrealists couldn’t have imagined it, New York’s galleries are open for business with shows of new work by notable artists

FRANK BOWLING–LONDON/NEW YORK

Frank Bowling’s inaugural exhibition at Hauser & Wirth—which will be presented in both the London and New York galleries— spans a 40-year period of the Guyana-born British artist’s career. Among the 16 warmly hued and highly textured works on view in the new Annabelle Selldorf–designed Chelsea space is Enter the Dragon, a mixed-media on canvas executed in 1984. “Sir Frank’s work,” says gallerist Iwan Wirth, “reflects a longterm experimentation with the materiality of painting through a body of work that has constantly pushed the boundaries of abstraction, and, for us, his work has never been more relevant.”

LYNDA BENGLIS Pace, 510 West 25th Street May 5–June 26 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS Abstract paintings by British artist Frank Bowling, pictured above, and monumental bronzes by Lynda Benglis, including Power Tower (2019), right, are among the works on view in the New York's newly reopened galleries. 38

For her second show at Pace since joining the gallery in 2019, Greek-American sculptor Lynda Benglis has created six large-scale works in bronze that are, in the words of gallerist Marc Glimcher, “simultaneously playful and visceral, organic, and abstract.” Her free, ecstatic forms, he says, continue to push the boundaries of sculpture. The show coincides with a solo exhibition of the artist’s oeuvre at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which runs through December.

PORTRAIT OF FRANK BOWLING BY SACHA BOWLING, COURTESY THE ARTIST AND HAUSER & WIRTH; © LYNDA BENGLIS, COURTESY PACE GALLERY

Hauser & Wirth New York, 542 West 22nd Street May 5–July 30

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ARCMANORO NILES: “HEY TOMORROW, DO YOU HAVE SOME ROOM FOR ME (FAILURE IS A PART OF BEING ALIVE)” Lehmann Maupin, 501 West 24th Street June 3–August 28

ARCMANORO NILES, COURTESY THE ARTIST AND LEHMANN MAUPIN; THE LUSS HOUSE/PHOTO BY MICHAEL BIONDO; ALMA ALLEN, COURTESY THE ARTIST AND BLUM & POE/PHOTO BY GENEVIEVE LUTKIN

For his first show at Lehmann Maupin, Arcmanoro Niles offers a series of brightly hued autobiographical pieces— portraits, still lifes, and a landscape—that continue his critical investigation of seemingly mundane aspects of daily life. “His subjects, which are drawn from photographs of friends and relatives and from deep memories of his past,” says David Maupin, “offer a highly personal record of contemporary life.”

MASTERS OF THE MEDIA Clockwise from far right: Sunday Morning I’m Too Tired To Go To Church (Night Shift), a 2020 mixed media work canvas by Arcmanoro Niles; a cantilevered room in the Gerald Luss house, the mid-century Ossining residence serving as the backdrop for a group show that includes Alma Allen's site-specific marble Not Yet Titled (2019). AT THE LUSS HOUSE Blum & Poe and Mendes Wood DM, with Object & Thing Gerald Luss House, Ossining, New York May 7–July 24

For those looking to venture north of the city, art galleries Blum & Poe and Mendes Wood DM have teamed up with art and design fair platform Object & Thing for a takeover of the Gerald Luss House in Ossining, New York. Built in 1955 by the architect responsible for the interiors of the Time-Life building, the midcentury landmark will serve as a backdrop for a group show of recent works by 18 international artists, including Lucas Arruda, Cecily Brown, Eddie Martinez, Ritsue Mishima, Paulo Monteiro, Johnny Ortiz, and Marina Perez Simão. Standout pieces include Alma Allen’s site-specific marble sculpture Not Yet Titled (2019). —AMHS MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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aul Gervais isn’t always kind to himself when painting a self-portrait. “I tend to be more generous with the portraits I do with other people,” he says. “But the truth is I like myself a lot for that very reason. I’m not trying to flatter people, and I hope these are deeper, artistically, than a mere flattering image.” His solo show at the Boca Raton Museum of Art, “Paul Gervais: Faces and Forms,” on view until May 30, juxtaposes portraiture with his paintings of imagined objects. “A still life is usually a painting of real objects that are arranged by the artist in a pleasant way. These are not that,” he explains. “These objects don’t exist. I make them

FACE TIME Paul Gervais’s oil-on-linen Portrait of Mumbi O’Brien, one of the works showing at the Boca Raton Museum of Art.

up, and the basis of them is drawn from timeless forms that have existed in all cultures across the globe.” If that wasn’t enough talent, Gervais has earned a whole other constituency of fans through his celebrated, 20-year writing career— his 1991 novel, Extraordinary People, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. “I’ve found that I can’t do both at the same time,” he says. “I either concentrate on writing or I concentrate on visual art.” Gervais likely won’t complete another book—“it’s a young person’s activity” — but he does still write, mostly about his artwork, as well as some poetry. There were also a few decades where his most prominent gig was maintaining the garden of the

PORTRAIT OF MUMBI O’BRIEN, COURTESY PAUL GERVAIS AND BOCA RATON MUSEUM OF ART

A true Renaissance man, this accomplished painter and celebrated novelist also owned one of Italy’s most beautiful and important gardens for decades. Aria Darcella tries not to go green with envy.

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VILLA MASSEI/PHOTO BY PAUL GERVAIS; PORTRAIT OF RICHARD WILSON, COURTESY PAUL GERVAIS AND BOCA RATON MUSEUM OF ART

The Talented Mr. Gervais

“It wasn’t open to the public, but people visited,” he explains of his guests, who included Prince Charles, Hubert de Givenchy, and Norway’s Queen Sonja.

VILLA MASSEI/PHOTO BY PAUL GERVAIS; PORTRAIT OF RICHARD WILSON, COURTESY PAUL GERVAIS AND BOCA RATON MUSEUM OF ART

HEDGE FUND Above: A view of the spectacular garden at Villa Massei, which Gervais owned until 2014. Left: The artist’s oil-on-linen Portrait of Richard Wilson.

Villa Massei, an estate in Italy he bought with his now husband, Gil Cohen. The pair owned the estate for 32 years, beginning in the early ’80s. “It was a lot of work, and I’m quite relieved now not having to think about that all the time,” he says. “It was a bit of a ball and chain. From March until late October you couldn’t really move, because you had to make sure it was looking good and being taken care of.” Running a famous garden did have its perks, however, like attracting some of the world’s most important garden enthusiasts. “It wasn’t open to the public, but people visited,” he explains of his guests, who included Prince Charles, Hubert de Givenchy, and Norway’s Queen Sonja. “It’s interesting, the garden world. It has a lot of people who travel in it. They know all the great gardens and where to find them… It gave us an interesting life.” It also inspired his book, A Garden in Lucca, about his time there. The economic crash of 2008 was among the reasons that prompted Gervais and Cohen to move on. These days, they split their time between London and West Palm Beach—but can Florida live up to Italy? “I had all of those misconceptions before I came here. That every town is the same, all the people that are the same: snowbirds, retirees, boring. That it’s the end of the earth, it’s tacky, it’s aesthetically a disaster,” he says. “[But] I would have to say that that’s not true across the board. People say, ‘you’re going to live in Palm Beach? How can you do that? You’re gonna go brain dead!’ My response typically has been, ‘How often do you go to a dinner party where the person sitting next to you has walked on the moon?’” Paul Gervais: Faces and Forms will be on display at the Boca Raton Museum of Art through May 30. MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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DADDY’S HOME

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PETER MARINO, THE FAMED RESIDENTIAL AND LUXURY RETAIL ARCHITECT, IS AT THE PINNACLE OF HIS PROFESSION. HE TALKS TO HORACIO SILVA ABOUT THE SOUTHAMPTON ARTS FOUNDATION THAT WILL OPEN THIS JUNE AS HIS LEGACY

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JASON SCHMIDT/TRUNK ARCHIVE

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LEATHER LOUNGER Peter Marino relaxes in style. MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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THIS SPREAD, PHOTOGRAPHY BY MANOLO YLLERA COURTESY OF PETER MARINO ARCHITECT

"NOBODY WOULD EVER DREAM OF PAINTING OVER THE MONA LISA. BUT ARCHITECTURE IS CONSTANTLY BEING KNOCKED DOWN AND REBUILT. THERE IS A REAL LACK OF REVERENCE TOWARD ARCHITECTURE, AND THAT’S ALWAYS DISTURBED ME." AVENUE MAGAZINE | MAY—JUNE 2021

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CHEEK TO CHIC Left: The architect with Wim Delvoye’s sculpture Daphnis & Chloë Counterclockwise, 2009. Right: His store for Chanel in Istanbul opened in 2019.

n a recent Saturday morning, the architect and art collector Peter Marino was driving to the airport from his estate in Southampton, en route to Los Angeles, and reflecting on the changes of the past year. “I used to brag that I’d go to the grave never having turned on a computer, but now I’m on Zoom eight hours a day,” he lamented. “I really thought I’d be able to grow my hair out and take the air in the Hamptons for a while, but if anything, [my schedule] has gotten worse.” He wasn’t kidding. While he has managed to grow out his hair somewhat (“I look like a Russian intellectual”) and play tennis with his new Peruvian trainer, the stock market has been performing so well the residential side of his business had doubled. There’s a giant condominium in Miami that needs completing, as well as a sprawling private property and resort for Dmitry Rybolovlev on the Greek island of Skorpios, which the Russian oligarch bought in 2013 from Aristotle Onassis’s granddaughter, Athina. (Originally owned by Ari, the 205-acre island was the setting for his 1968 wedding to Jackie.) “It’s the biggest project of my life,” Marino said, not for the last time during our conversation. “It’s a dream.” Because of his stranglehold on big-ticket store designs for the likes of Chanel, Dior, and Louis Vuitton, Marino is sometimes known as the “King of Retail.” To his surprise, given the pandemic, his commercial work has also ballooned. “I thought all the brands would go into hibernation,” he said. “But for companies that are well financed—and let’s face it, a lot of these brands are really just real estate holding companies that own these buildings and will be fine—they look at this as a moment of opportunity. They’ve all said, ‘Business is slow anyway, so let’s renovate all our stores.’ ” As a result, Marino is currently redoing the Christian Dior Paris flagship, on Avenue Montaigne, that he first designed in 1995, doubling the size, and adding two glassed-in gardens to the courtyard. There is also a new Bulgari store on the Place Vendôme in Paris; a new Louis Vuitton store in the Namiki district of Tokyo; and two new Chanel stores, in Miami’s Design District and Beverly Hills. “The reason Peter has so many luxury clients,” says the design critic Pilar Viladas,

“is that he understands the DNA of each one, and designs accordingly, expressing what makes each brand unique. Louis Vuitton stores do not look like Chanel stores, which do not look like Bulgari stores.” Marino is also applying his considerable customer focus and taste to ongoing large-scale projects such as an ambitious new Cheval Blanc hotel spanning two city blocks in downtown Los Angeles, and the much-anticipated new La Samaritaine Paris hotel, on the site of the historic former department store of the same name. Located on the Right Bank, a beret’s toss from the Louvre, the La Samaritaine building was acquired by LVMH in 2001 and, after an extended gestation period, has been reimagined as a mixeduse development slated to open this summer. The five-star, multiuse 72-room hotel overlooks the Seine and boasts a view of the Eiffel Tower from every room. It will also, Marino added, his voice becoming increasingly animated, be “the biggest project of my life” and the only five-star hotel in Paris that is wholly owned by the French. “Everything else is either Gulf or Chinese money,” he noted. “We

made a big effort to have everything inside done by French artisans and artists, such as Ingrid Donat, who made the bronze bar and grills for the lobby. I think it’ll have a very special flavor.” Though his tentacles extend to all corners of the globe, and he has spent a large part of his adult life flying, his trips have become increasingly rare and strictly domestic. “I miss the social interaction of travel because I learn so much from my clients—they all have such interesting international lives,” he said. “But it’s a great, great, blessing to have a break from it all, and I’m convinced it’ll add 10 years to my life.” The time in the Hamptons, an enclave he has visited his entire life (don’t get him started on how kids today don’t know that the Hamptons used to be famed for its potatoes), has allowed him to focus on his latest labor of love, a namesake art foundation in Southampton Village opening in June. An 8,000-square-foot “mini-Frick” as he referred to it, the Peter Marino Art Foundation will house his not inconsiderable collection of paintings, sculptures, decorations, and collectibles. “It’ll be artwork that I own, from 5,000 BC to the present,” he explained. “Everything from MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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ancient Egyptian art to Delacroix next to all of my de Koonings, Twomblys, and everything in between. Not too shabby. It’s important for the town of Southampton, and I’m anxious to see people’s reactions.” The foundation is in the former Rogers Memorial Library Building, next door to the Southampton Arts Center, built by the venerated local architect R. H. Robertson. Marino decided to buy the building after driving by it with his wife, the costume designer Jane Trapnell. “There was this group of people whitewashing it and turning it into a Bed Bath & Beyond,” he recalls. “There’s not a lot of great architecture in Long Island, and I was so disgusted at the lack of reverence and relevance that I went through great efforts to buy it and restore it.”

ERWIN WURM: PHOTOGRAPHY BY MANOLO YLLERA COURTESY OF PETER MARINO ARCHITECT; INSTALLATION VIEW OF ONE WAY: PETER MARINO AT THE BASS, MIAMI BEACH, PHOTOGRAPHY BY LUC CASTEL COURTESY OF THE BASS.

THE PETER MARINO ART FOUNDATION WILL HOUSE HIS NOT INCONSIDERABLE COLLECTION OF PAINTINGS, SCULPTURES, DECORATIONS, AND COLLECTIBLES.

Marino has scrapped plans for a documentary about himself, he says, because he wasn’t happy with the footage after two years of being tailed by a film crew. (Unmentioned are two mid-2010s lawsuits alleging workplace and sexual harassment, filed by male and female former employees, that would be equally awkward to either address or ignore.) But the foundation—not to mention his efforts as the chairman of Venetian Heritage and its herculean attempt to restore the Palazzo Grimani and its original artworks—suggests that Marino is preoccupied with the idea of leaving a mark in an often-transient profession. “It’s absolutely on my mind,” he acknowledged, “a little bit of permanence is an architect’s dream. Nobody would ever dream of painting over the Mona Lisa. But architecture is constantly being knocked down and rebuilt. There is a real lack of reverence for architecture, and that’s always disturbed me.” It’s the same quest for longevity that informs the sculpted bronze boxes and hulking doors (each weighing several hundred pounds) that he creates and exhibits, most notably at the Gagosian Gallery in London in 2017. “These things are built to last,” he said, “and will be part of my legacy.” It’s an impulse that is also palpable in The Architecture of Chanel (Phaidon), a new book out in October that celebrates the 12 buildings that Marino has created for the brand in the last 15 years. “I’m very proud of the book,” Marino said. “I can’t imagine any brand other than Chanel giving me the carte blanche and the freedom to create retail experiences that are like art. But retail architecture doesn’t always last long—the building we did in Osaka has already been destroyed—so I wanted a record of it all.” One thing he doesn’t have to worry about is having a chronicle of the signature leather outfits that have become as much of a part of his mythology as his gleaming steel and glass towers. His stubbornly personal aesthetic (even places with strict dress codes, such as the University Club, eventually yield to him) is much photographed despite his wearing only barely discernible variations on a theme. Most of his leather togs are custom made, including molded pieces by Joan Bergin, the costume designer known for her work on The Tudors. And while he is not above experimentation— he recently had some peasant shirts he liked replicated in black leather and has been collecting enormous black pearls to make into a choker to wear to the opening of his foundation—don’t expect him to toe the company line and step out in one-of-akind Chanel anytime soon. “Karl [Lagerfeld] made me the odd leather piece,” he admitted. “But remember, Chanel is the only brand left standing that does not do menswear, and a tight little tweed skirt is not my look.” Besides, he explained, he always remembers what the late Chanel designer told him at dinner one night. “Karl said to me, ‘Peter, do you realize that apart from Mao Zedong, you and I are probably the most recognizable people in the world?’ It was funny at the time, but it really struck me as an important lesson if you want people to remember you.”

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GOOD BONES Opposite: Artist Erwin Wurm’s interpretation of Marino, from an exhibition of the architect’s collection at the Bass Museum of Art in 2014. Right: A French lyre, circa 1810, is juxtaposed with a Claude Lalanne aluminum bench in the same show.

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STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN A Jeff Zimmerman custom light fixture hangs above a staircase in this Pembrooke & Ives designed West Village triplex with cerused white-oak floors and custom leather wall panes.

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PEMBROOKE & IVES: GENEVIEVE GARRUPPO

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The Designer A-list

WHO ARE THE MOST DECORATED INTERIOR DESIGNERS CURRENTLY WORKING IN NEW YORK, AND BEYOND? RIMA SUQI ROUNDS UP A SHORT LIST OF OUR FAVORITES

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Glam Squad Achille Salvagni ↑ While perhaps better known stateside for his furniture designs priced in the five figures, Italian architect and designer Achille Salvagni has been quietly cultivating a clientele of predominantly real estate and finance types in New York City. Current projects for the Romebased designer include landmark townhomes on opposite sides of the island, where he’s designing everything from the architecture to interiors and furniture; Salvagni has also been tapped for several residential developments, and is currently working as the interior designer of record for a new NYC building by Robert A.M. Stern. achillesalvagni.com

Drake/Anderson ↑ Jamie Drake, who has created vibrant interiors for Michael Bloomberg and Madonna, among others, made Caleb Anderson a partner in his then eponymous firm six years ago. Since then, the duo has continued create glamorous living 50

spaces for an uber-discreet client list—royals, Bobby Axelrod types, and the like—who favor penthouses on Billionaires’ Row. Mere mortals can approximate the lifestyle via Drake’s line of furniture for Theodore Alexander. drakeanderson.com Ingrao ↓ Anthony Ingrao founded his firm in 1982 and, with partner Randy Kemper, became the interior designer of choice for captains of industry around the world. His firm has designed four apartments in billionaire-favorite condo aerie 432 Park Avenue; publicly acknowledged clients include Donny Deutsch, Related Companies founder Stephen Ross, hedge-funder Richard Perry (his wife is the fashion designer Lisa Perry), and Goldie Hawn. ingraoinc.com

Julie Hillman ↓ The Chicago native spent decades in fashion design before taking on her first interior design commission just over twenty years ago. Today Hillman, whose father (the photographer Don Bronstein) shot Barbra Streisand for her People album cover, is renowned for her quietly opulent interiors for a select group of very discreet clients who are passionate about collecting works of art and demand significant design. juliehillman.com

ACHILLE SALVAGNI: PAOLO PETRIGNANI, DRAKE/ANDERSON: TREVOR TONDRO, INGRAO: ERIC PIASECKI/OTTO, NICOLE FULLER: ROBERT RUFFINO, JULIE HILLMAN: MANOLO YLLERA

Nicole Fuller ↓ A former fashion model who serendipitously sashayed into interior design and, later, art consulting, Fuller creates full-glam interiors for boldfaced names on both coasts, and around the world. Current projects include homes for Questlove, photographer (and BFF) Steven Klein, financier Gregg Rechler, and Beyond Yoga cofounder Jodi Guber Brufsky (daughter of Peter Guber). A collection of performance fabrics is in the works with Perennials; a hand-painted silk wallpaper collection with Fromental recently debuted, as did her latest designs for the Rug Company. nicolefullerinteriors.com

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GACHOT STUDIOS: JASON SCHMIDT, MONIQUE GIBSON: WILLIAM ABRANOWICS, MIKEL WELCH: JOHN BESSLER, COURTESY OF CHARLES & CO

Warm Modern

Charles & Co. ↓ Founded five years ago by Vicky Charles (former global head of design at Soho house) and Julia Corden (wife of The Late Show host, James Corden), Charles & Co. enjoys an A-list clientele at odds with their relatively low profile. Charles is based in New York City, while Corden holds down the West Coast fort in Los Angeles, but their very private project roster is decidedly global. Their high-profile clients include Amal and George Clooney, Victoria and David Beckham, Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, and (rumor has it) Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. charlesandco.com

Gachot Studios ↑ In just under a decade Christine and John Gachot have become the go-to designers for successful millennial financial, real estate, and tech entrepreneurs on both coasts. While they’ve been celebrated for their work on commercial spaces, most notably the Shinola Hotel in Detroit, the duo’s residential client list includes Marc Jacobs, Charlotte Ronson, and Kith owner Sam Fieg. gachotstudios.com

Monique Gibson ↑ It all started with Elton John, one of Gibson’s first clients as a then fledgling designer based in Atlanta. But the hitmakers kept on coming: now totaling five houses for John Mellencamp and six for Jon Bon Jovi (along with other notable people she works with, including Meg Ryan and Jon Stewart). Not all her clients are household names, however; she admits there are “a lot of philanthropists” as well as artists, filmmakers, tech types, and even a politician or two. moniquegibson.com

Mikel Welch ↑ This Michigan native started his career as a set designer on Steve Harvey's daytime TV talk show and has since developed a roster of high-profile clients, becoming a bit of a celebrity himself. Welch is a contributor and on-camera talent for Drew Barrymore’s new talk show as well as Access Daily, and was tapped to design the family room in the Kip’s Bay Decorator Show House in Palm Beach this spring. His furniture line debuted last year and his now available on Houzz.com. mikelwelch.com MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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Traditionalists Alexa Hampton ↓ Since the daughter of the legendary decorator (and best-dressed list regular) Mark Hampton took over her father’s firm more than 20 years ago, she has expanded its global reach, published several books, secured a host of licensing agreements, and even earned two honorary doctorate degrees. The self-described “secret formal person” in terms of decorating style, Hampton will introduce new bedding and outdoor furniture this year, while continuing to produce 52 Weeks of Design, a weekly interview series. alexahampton.com

Charlotte Moss ↑ Undeniably one of the reigning doyennes New York interior design, Moss has 35 years of experience under her stylish belt, and is a go-to decorator for many Upper East Siders who might also have homes in Bel-Air, Aspen, or Palm Springs. She is the author of 11 books (the most recent, Charlotte Moss Flowers, came out in April) and creator of countless product lines: her newest is a collection of vases made in collaboration with her stepson, the glass artist James Friedberg. charlottemoss.com

Bunny Williams ↓ Twenty-two years as an “apprentice” at Parish-Hadley, followed by more than 30 years helming her own firm, have more than secured Bunny Williams’s status as a living legend. She’s known for classic, restrained interiors, her love of gardening, and ahead-of-the-curve entrepreneurial pursuits, including the muchloved store Treillage, which she opened with her husband, the antiques dealer John Rosselli, in 1991 (and which closed in 2015). Today, the Bunny Williams Home collection includes furniture and accessories; a new documentary, Bunny Williams: Not a House but a Home, debuted on PBS in April. bunnywilliamsinc.com

ALEXA HAMPTON: STEVE FREIHON, CHARLOTTE MOSS: PIETER ESTERSOHN, CULLMAN KRAVIS: ERIC PIASECKI, BUNNY WILLIAMS: REID ROLLS

Cullman Kravis ↑ Ellie Cullman founded Cullman & Kravis 35 years ago with her late partner, Heidi Kravis. Cullman, a Brooklyn native, was already New York royalty of sorts, as her family owns the Peter Luger steak house (est. 1887). Her interiors tend toward the colorfully elegant and often over-the-top opulent, designed for captains of industry and, now, their children as well. Current projects include a more than 40,000-square-foot estate in New Jersey, waterfront homes in the Hamptons, Greenwich, and Palm Beach, and a New York City townhouse. The firm’s fourth book, due out in 2023, will feature these projects and more. cullmankravis.com

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Modern Classicists

BRIAN MCCARTHY: FRITZ VON DER SCHULENBERG, STEVEN GAMBREL: ERIC PIASECKI, CELERIE KEMBLE: STEPHEN KARLISCH, KEN FULK: BRENDAN MAININI, VICTORIA HAGAN: PERNILLE LOOF

Brian J. McCarthy ↓ A former partner in the legendary design firm Parish-Hadley, McCarthy crafts textural, richly layered interiors rooted in European design traditions for the likes of former ambassador (and Getty Museum patron) Robert Tuttle, as well as a host of private equity and real estate clients, in addition to a Hollywood star and an oligarch or two. BJMinc.com

Steven Gambrel ↓ This interior designer, who trained as an architect, continues to attract (as one friend put it) a “torrentially wealthy” finance clientele for projects like the much buzzed-about 22,000-square-foot public-building-turnedprivate-home (complete with subterranean swimming pool) he completed last year in the West Village. Among his current jobs are homes in Westchester, the Hamptons, and Greenwich, Connecticut; he is also making additions to his custom lighting collection for Urban Electric. srgambrel.com

Celerie Kemble ↑ Specializing in breezy, spirited-yet-sophisticated spaces with strategic splashes of color, this Palm Beach native’s residential client list is a who’swho of the young and fabulous. Kemble has designed collections of fabrics, wall coverings, rugs, tiles, and outdoor furniture, and her third book, Island Whimsy (Rizzoli), documenting the design of Playa Grande Beach Club, a resort on the North Coast of the Dominican Republic, debuted in April. kembleinteriors.com Ken Fulk → A darling of the San Francisco social set, Fulk opened a TriBeCa studio six years ago to better serve his growing East Coast clientele, and as a location for the dapper designer and event planner’s legendary parties. This year will bring a lighting line for Urban Electric, fabrics and wall coverings with Pierre Frey, and, in 2022, a collection for the Rug Company. kenfulk.com Victoria Hagan ↓ Victoria Hagan is a lot like her interiors: quietly elegant, and never seeking the spotlight. Like many others on this list, she has recently seen an uptick in Palm Beach clients and is opening an office there this year, as well as finishing up her third book with Rizzoli and a new building on Madison Avenue. victoriahagan.com

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Minimalists Lee Mindel → The architect Lee Mindel’s so-called “extravagantly minimal” style is evident in his own history of homes—lofty spaces with important pieces of furniture and, increasingly, art. A Fellow of American Institute of Architects, a member of the Design Miami/ vetting committee, and a recipient of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, Mindel describes his interiors clients—who have included Sting and Trudie Styler and various members of the Soros and Lauder families—as “social, scientific, and artistic contributors to the world.” He has also designed collection of furniture for Design Within Reach and Knoll, fixtures for Waterworks, and rugs for V’Soske. sheltonmindel.com

of the Michael Werner gallery). She continues to oversee and design for Vica, a collection of furniture, lighting and hardware originally founded by her grandmother. selldorf.com

Shape Shifters Joy Moyler ↓ Moyler studied architecture but discovered a love for interiors while working at Skidmore Owings & Merrill; positions at John Saladino and Thierry Despont followed. Prior to founding her eponymous firm in 2011, she led the domestic interior design group at Giorgio Armani/Armani Casa. Yet even with a client list that includes David Geffen, Leonardo DiCaprio, Pia Getty, and Thomas Keller, Moyler has managed to keep a discreet profile. That will undoubtedly change with a new column for Veranda, her Instagram live show “High Tea with Joy: Brew it. Pour it. Spill it,” and a tabletop collection launching this year. joymoylerinteriors.com

LEE MINDEL: MICHAEL MORAN/OTTO, ANNABELLE SELLDORF: NICHOLAS VENEZIA, JOY MOYLER: COURTESY OF RAEVO

Annabelle Selldorf ↓ The architect of choice for the art crowd (she’s designed buildings for heavy hitters Hauser & Wirth, David Zwirner, and the Rubells, and is working on an expansion of the Frick) is often tapped by gallerists, collectors, and artists for interior design as well. Clients include David Maupin (of the Lehmann Maupin gallery) and his husband, the stylist and editor Stefano Tonchi, as well as Gordon VeneKlasen (co-owner

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ERIC HUGHES: WILLIAM WALDRON/OTTO, PEMBROOKE & IVES: STEPHEN KENT JOHNSON, FOX NAHEM: PETER MURDOCK, TINO ZERVUDACHI: ANDREAS VON EINSIEDEL/ALAMY

Eric Hughes ↑ A onetime vice president of production for Universal Studios, Hughes seems to have seamlessly segued into designing interiors for pals including Andy Cohen and Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, whose new West Village abode he is currently finishing. Hughes, who lives in Malibu with partner and Million Dollar Decorator star Nathan Turner, has offices in Los Angeles and New York City, where current projects include an apartment in Little Italy’s landmark Police Building. erichughesdesign.com Pembrooke & Ives ↓ Founded more than 30 years ago by Britishborn Andrew Sheinman, Pembrooke & Ives is now just as likely to convert buildings for developers (most notably 212 Fifth Avenue) as it is to create interiors for their predominantly real estate and finance, often multigenerational clientele. Current projects include a double-wide Upper East Side townhome (former location of a Kip’s Bay showhouse) and a 30,000-squarefoot oceanfront home in Palm Beach. pembrookeandives.com

Fox Nahem ↓ Founded by Joe Nahem and the late Tom Fox 30 years ago, Fox Nahem has, over the decades, built a clientele ranging from Hollywood royalty (Robert Downey Jr.), to gallerists (Per Skarstedt), to finance and Silicon Valley tech types with big budgets and art collections to match. The firm, which has offices in New York City and the Hamptons, is currently working on several projects in Miami, including one in the Continuum building, as well as the interiors of an Amagansett waterfront home (designed by Blaze Makoid) owned by prominent art collectors. foxnahem.com

Tino Zervudachi ↑ Despite a global clientele that includes the likes of art dealer Thaddaeus Ropac and financier Nathaniel Rothschild, Zervudachi remains one of the most prominent designers whom many have never heard of. He was discovered at the precocious age of 19 by the acclaimed British interior designer David Mlinaric (whose clients included Mick Jagger), became a partner in the firm in 1987, and bought it outright in 2005. While residential interiors (other than his own homes) are rarely published, he has designed British embassies in Washington and Paris, and done projects for London’s National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, and Royal Opera House. Today, the firm has offices in London, Paris, and New York. mhzlondon.com

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THE ERA OF HIS WAYS

JOHN DERIAN IMPARTS UPON HIS WORK THE BEAUTY OF A BYGONE AGE. HEATHER HODSON TALKS TO THE DESIGNER AND RETAILER ON THE EVE OF HIS NEW CAPSULE COLLECTION

PHOTOGRAPHS BY STEPHEN KENT JOHNSON

ohn Derian has what people in the design world call “an inspired eye.” His revered shop at 6 East Second Street is nicknamed “the grocery store” by New York’s fashion elite, who regularly make pilgrimages to browse the Dutch floral paintings; eighteenth-century glassware; melamine plates and paperweights of delicate flora and fauna; antique ephemera and vintage textiles foraged at fairs in the South of France; and charming bespoke sofas and chairs. Among the most popular items in his East Village Aladdin’s cave is the signature decoupage—a traditional art using found images to decorate household objects—that he creates in his New York studio and seems to have single-handedly revived. “I like handmade things that are quirky and funny and have a naive quality about them, things pre-photography, when the images were more special,” he explains one recent morning from Provincetown, where he has a home. “I compare it to a chef finding fresh food.” Enter one of his eclectic stores (he has three in downtown Manhattan and another operating out of the ground floor of his house in Provincetown) and you are transported to a period sometime between the Regency and the nineteenth century: a bygone era of seafarers and botanists, Pre-Raphaelite artists, and Victorian explorers. Take his new collection of whimsical notebooks and puzzles, inspired by the 19th-century prints and Victorian manuals he has amassed over the years, containing instructive drawings of vegetables, flowers, and color wheels. Like everything Derian touches, they have a Proustian quality, enshrouded with fragments of memory and subtle, sensory associations. A kind of emotional decoupage, if you will. “I do think people relate to the imagery,” he says. “Everybody has a connection to the natural world, from childhood memories and so forth.” Derian’s own childhood was spent in Watertown, Massachusetts, the youngest of six children born to a Scottish mother and an Armenian father whose family came from Turkey. “I was left alone, and I think I created these imagined worlds,” he says. “I was pretty content being by myself creating forts and environments anywhere I could: under our porch, in the attic, in the bushes, in abandoned buildings. I was fascinated by nature and collected a little.” His facility for conjuring up an atmosphere was already apparent. “I was forever moving furniture around. My nephew and niece, who were five and eight years younger than me, would hide in an attic closet while I rearranged the room and changed the lighting, and then I would have them come out, and they believed they were transported to somewhere else, another planet or time.” Inspiration also came from his aunt Louise. “She had a flair,” he recalls of his father’s sister. “She traveled with her husband all over the world and her house reflected that in her choices of décor—drapes, hanging fixtures, objects and statuary. I was fascinated by things she brought back from her trips.”

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CURIOS AND CURIOUSER In his East Village kitchen, John Derian stands by a 19th-century painted glass cabinet from France. The rug-covered slipper chair and French mirror are 19th century, while the gilt ornament is 18th-century Austrian. Atop the cabinet is a papier-mâché mix by Antoinette Poisson. “I like comfort, function, pretty and natural and organic elements,” he says. MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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An autodidact who admits he “never quite understood school,” he spent his time painting, drawing, playacting, singing, and making things, and after briefly attending the Massachusetts College of Art and Design he moved to New York in 1992. When a friend asked to buy a dry wreath he had made, he was encouraged to continue designing beautiful objects, and in 1995 opened his first shop. Now he employs a staff of artisans and “magically” owns four stores. “I feel like my life happened organically,” he says, sounding a little incredulous. This past year, Derian says, he has “never worked so hard in my life. I wear a lot of hats: designer, wholesaler, manufacturer, retailer, buyer, visual department, and social media ‘expert.’ I have had to manage the shops and my production studio and wrap my brick-and-mortar brain 58

around the web. I am so low-tech, but we made it through.” He pauses. “I hope I don’t sound too complain-y. I do appreciate all I have.” With his partner, the interiors photographer Stephen Kent Johnson, Derian has enjoyed shuttling between his turn-of-the-century apartment in the East Village and his 18th-century house in Provincetown. “The house was built in 1789 for a sea captain named Small, then the Hall family took over in the 1930s, then me in 2007,” he explains. Like his stores, both homes evoke a bygone place and time achieved through the union of color, timeworn antiques, and unexpected yet beautiful objects. In New York, 19th-century antiques and textiles are offset by pressed-tin ceilings, while an antique Swedish wall he kept in storage for 18 years separates the kitchen from the living room.

ROOM WITH A VIEW “I like having different perspectives to the apartment,” Derian says of his East Village loft dating back to the 1850s. “There was a good amount of space to create multiple seating areas; normally we entertain so it’s fun having lots of places to sit.” The upholstered furniture is a mixture of Derian’s own adaptations of 18th- and 19th-century pieces. Right: A corner nook of the apartment, created when Derian divided the living room and kitchen spaces with an 18th-century Swedish wall he had kept in storage for almost two decades. “The wall was pale blue, so it helped dictate the neutral paint colors I chose for the front of the apartment.”

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EVERY THING DERIAN TOUCHES HAS A PROUSTIAN QUALIT Y, ENSHROUDED WITH FR AGMENTS OF MEMORY AND SUBTLE, SENSORY ASSOCIATIONS.

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A vestibule has been created out of a painted antique cabinet, opened at the back, through which visitors enter and exit the apartment. But it is his mariner’s home he considers “even more authentic,” its décor of faded wallpaper and natural and seaside curiosities creating a miseen-scène evocative of C. S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower novels. All design innovators see the world from a different perspective, and Derian’s aesthetic vantage point is from several hundred years ago. “I do like the 18th century,” he confides happily. “My house in Provincetown is like living in 1789. I feel that’s the right period for me.” John Derian Picture Book and John Derian Paper Goods are published by Artisan and available wherever ﬁne books and stationery are sold; all decoupage and home goods at his stores and johnderian.com. 60

JOHN DERIAN PAPER GOODS COURTESY OF WORKMAN PUBLISHING COMPANY, NEW YORK.

SEA AND BE SEEN Clockwise from right: “This was the fancier sitting room and is original to the house,” Derian says of the ﬁreplace in the gray room of his home in Provincetown, a sea captain’s house built in 1789; the exterior of the house shows the columned Greek revival style porch, added when it was renovated in 1809; a corner of the dining room shows ﬂowers from the garden in an antique pickling jar set on a 19th-century French Demilune, with wallpaper left over from the 1930s behind it; notebooks from Derian’s latest collection.

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“MY HOUSE IN PROVINCETOWN IS LIKE LIVING IN 1789. THAT’S THE RIGHT ER A FOR ME.”

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Restoration Dramedies “SPITE WALLS”; ENDLESS LAWSUITS; EVEN FECES THROWING AND A STRATEGIC RETREAT TO A TIBETAN MONASTERY: GEORGE RUSH CHRONICLES THE ALL-TIME UGLIEST RENOVATION FIGHTS BETWEEN NEW YORK NEIGHBORS ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROSE WONG

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IN A CITY where brawny mansions stand shoulder to shoulder, new money, old money, and no money often clash at the property line. A buyer may plunk down millions for a beloved home and, minutes after the closing, begin ripping out every trace of its previous occupants—jackhammering word of his arrival to the neighbors like Ozymandias declaring, “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Modern “renovation dramas,” much like the Restoration comedies of 17thcentury England, have implausible plots that illustrate the vanities of their time. In our all-star revival of the form, the curtain rises at 23 Beekman Place, a fivestory townhouse dating from 1867. Visionary architect Paul Rudolph bought the building in 1974, adding a four-story cantilevered glass-and-steel penthouse to create what would later be designated a New York City landmark. But after Rudolph’s death in 1997, its future seemed in doubt. Hearing in 2000 that it might be torn down, Michael and Gabrielle Boyd, rescuers of other modernist masterpieces, bought the place for $5.5 million. Next door, at 21 Beekman Place, stood a Georgian mansion once owned by pioneering landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman. Just after the Boyds moved in with their two children, the Shipman House was purchased for $8.8 million by William R. Rupp, a retired Dow Chemical executive who had done well investing in Miami Beach condos and a Key West bar and restaurant.

Rupp was not talkative about his various arrests on disorderly conduct and battery charges, nor the time his bar partner, a fugitive drug dealer, was murdered by shotgun while sitting in Rupp’s new Cadillac Seville. But he encouraged people to believe his middle initial stood for Rockefeller and, not long after he and his longtime partner arrived at Beekman Place, he emblazoned the wrought iron gate with a four-foot-high “R.” He also asked the Boyds to move an air conditioner that was impeding construction he planned. Apparently miffed by their hesitation, Rupp had bricklayers build a three-story wall that blocked several of the Boyds’ windows. The couple called it his “spite wall.” When Gabrielle sprayed the workmen with water, Rupp called the cops; the Boyds claimed he later retaliated by throwing his German shepherd’s feces onto their property. “He is a neighbor from hell,” Michael told the New York Times, before giving up and putting the home on the market in 2001. Rupp’s lawyer, Harry Issler, told me his client could be “a very difficult guy. He was a heavy drinker. I have no doubt that he did [throw the dog poop].” Why did he build the wall? “Because he could,” Issler replied. Longtime observer of posh property lust Steven Gaines believes renovation dramas go beyond money. “It’s not just the rich,” said the author of The Sky’s the Limit and Philistines at the Hedgerow. “It’s territorial. Protecting our caves runs deep in our psychology. You guard every inch of your property.” But wealth, ego, and Manhattan’s scarcity of space can amplify Stone Age urges. “The bigger the renovation, the bigger the potential for problems,” said Brian Meier, a top broker at Christie’s International Real Estate Group. “An average person renovates for resale. Wealthy people aren’t as worried about resale. [For example, R.E.M. front man] Michael Stipe wanted to put in a wall of windows so he could see the river. We pointed out the likelihood of a new building blocking his view. He said he’d have his view in the meantime.” Energy billionaire Pierre Bastid and his jazz singer wife, Malou Beauvoir, had a more elaborate fantasy: a 10-by-60-foot garden-level pool, clad in marble and flanked by columns. The couple imagined that, after a swim, they might go downstairs to their theater and recording studio. All they needed to do was demolish everything behind the landmarked facades of two five-story brownstones at 48–50 West 69th Street, then drill almost 38 feet into Manhattan’s notoriously obstinate schist. The couple may not have anticipated the noise, vibration, and pollution their fantasy would cause. But after a 2019 Times investigation chronicled “how the whims of a plutocrat can upend the lives of an entire city block,” they sheepishly issued an apology, and promised to remedy the “disturbances.” Four years after work began, the hydraulic drilling has stopped, but tractors, trucks, and cranes disrupt even more residents kept home by Covid. Current completion forecast for the $100 million–plus project: late 2023. MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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C “If they were competitive enough to become rich, they’re certainly competitive enough to try to squash the rich person living next to them in order to build their castle.” MAGGIE BAKER, PSYCHOLOGIST

“If they love this street so much why are they doing this to us?” West 69th Street Block Association president Eileen Vazquez told Avenue. “They’ve never participated in block activities. They haven’t made one donation.” Such squabbles don’t only take place above the 59th Street parallel, however. Downtown’s creatives can also incite neighborhood blowback. Meier recalled an investment banker renting his SoHo penthouse to rapper A$AP Rocky, who “spent a quarter million dollars renovating a rental—building a display room for his sneakers, for one thing. Except he forgot to ask the owner. That became a two-year lawsuit.” Photographer Annie Leibovitz and artist-filmmaker Julian Schnabel have also both infuriated neighbors over their renovations. Leibovitz’s cursed 2002 attempt to combine two Greenwich Street townhouses so damaged another home she had to buy it as part of a settlement in a $15 million lawsuit. But, with their owner overextended, all three properties then languished for years. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation staged a protest outside the compound where one placard read, “Annie: not a pretty picture.” The group also took on Schnabel in 2008 when he turned a former horse stable on West 11th Street into a flamingo-hued condo wedding cake 66

called Palazzo Chupi. Preservation society president Andrew Berman derided the new structure as “an exploded Malibu Barbie house” and “woefully out of context and a monument to this guy’s ego.” Schnabel told the Times he erected his palazzo “because I could.” But the great man also added: “I’m sorry if I inconvenienced anybody.” Perhaps pugnacious renovationists could take a cue from the spiritual journey of Kenneth Willardt, a top fashion and celebrity photographer. After Willardt set out to refurbish two former SROs on West 19th Street, inspectors blamed his workers for a burst water main in 2016, which forced both he and his neighbors (fashion exec Elana Waksal Posner and Lloyd Nathan, executive vice chairman of Avenues World Holdings) to vacate their homes. Even though Willardt called the deluge “an act of God,” relations on the block stayed frosty for some time thereafter. Willardt sold the works-still-in-progress in January for $12 million, (having paid $4.6 million in 2012), telling me his “Kafkaesque” ordeal nonetheless “cost me millions and millions.” But it wasn’t the glares of neighbors that forced him out, he insists: in fact, he attained enlightenment in a Tibetan monastery. “I was sitting with 180 monks,” he said. “That’s when I found out: ‘I don’t need to win this. Letting go is winning.’ ”

ome summer, you can often find New Yorkers starring in regional productions of renovation dramas. In 1996, Martha Stewart began a legendary feud with her East Hampton neighbor, real estate developer Harry Macklowe, over trees he planted near their lot line. Stewart called them “inappropriate greenery” and the tit-for-tat battle that followed kept the tabloids enthralled for years. After she felled some of his shrubs, Macklowe tried to get her fined for an allegedly “unlawful” kitchen; they squabbled when he built a fence; his landscaper even accused Martha of pinning him against a gate with her Jeep Grand Cherokee, which she denied. Such estates can assume outsize importance for owners who, having found success in the city, become lords of provincial manors. And it’s not uncommon for disputes to start out small, but become almost operatic in scale when both sides stand on principal. Fred Drasner, for example, grew up in Brooklyn. But when the former copublisher of the Daily News and co-owner of the Washington NFL franchise bought a 180-acre Dutchess County farm (named Cantagree in honor of his ex-wife), he embraced his role as a country squire. Drasner was continually improving his spread—filling its main house with George III furniture, turning an 1825 barn into a racquetball court, and adopting three camels, a dozen alpacas, and a handful of Nubian goats. He also built an Adirondack-style hunting lodge on his property’s highest point, with a 12-person spa and a 28-by-16-foot fireplace. But according to his neighbor and pal, Jeffrey Gural, Drasner found the view wanting. Gural, chairman of GFP Real Estate, told me, “Fred said, ‘Hey, you want to do me a favor? Why don’t you clear the fields, build a barn, and put your horses there. It’ll be much nicer for me.’” Gural said Drasner promised to cover his costs if Drasner sold his farm. So, working with Drasner’s contractor, Gural created a fenced pasture and constructed a small barn. When Drasner eventually sold the farm, Gural told him the improvements came to $181,551, and followed up with a demand letter after getting no response. “To my surprise,” he told me, “Fred turned it over to these high-priced lawyers.” Drasner, who contended it was all Gural’s idea, won in lower court, and again on appeal—both expensive forays. “It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen,” Gural said. “I loved Fred. He had to have spent more on legal fees than he owed me.” Drasner remains unbowed. “There was no deal,” he told me. As for his legal fees, he admitted, “It may not have made a lot of sense. But I’m not about to pay somebody for a fabrication!” In the annals of rich neighbor spats, however, there may be none more bizarre or consequential than the feud between hedge fund billionaire Louis Bacon and Canadian fashion tycoon Peter Nygard. The 14-year fight started when Bacon modified a driveway the two properties shared in the Bahamian enclave of Lyford Cay. Nygard objected, claiming the work created a fetid puddle. Bacon

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“I was sitting with 180 monks. That’s when I found out: ‘I don’t need to win this. Letting go is winning.’ ” KENNETH WILLARDT, CHELSEA EXILE

countered that Nygard had illegally dredged sand to expand his property. In an asymmetrical response that he lived to regret, Nygard then preposterously accused Bacon of arson, murder, and chumminess with the Ku Klux Klan. The publicity the dispute attracted also drew attention to Nygard’s behavior with teenage girls, resulting in US federal prosecutors charging Nygard with sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. Which is one way to resolve a driveway dispute.

sychologist and financial therapist Maggie Baker suggests that wealthy people “get into private wars” out of “a kind of a materialistic tribalism.” “If they were competitive enough to become rich, they’re certainly competitive enough to try to squash the rich person living next to them in order to build their castle,” said the author of Crazy About Money. Could renovation be a subconscious attempt to rebuild one’s life and create the “happy home” one longed for as a child?

“A lot of these people have a hollow sense of self,” Baker said. “They can’t sustain their identity without all these props.” She recalled a couple whose children had grown. “The couple asked themselves, ‘Why do we need a house with 14 bathrooms?’” But after sales kept mysteriously falling through, Baker suspected the couple “didn’t want to leave the house with 14 bathrooms. It was their kingdom.” Such insight might help explain recalcitrant Beekman Place feces flinger Billy Rupp, who got a new neighbor in 2003 when Steven Campus bought the Boyds’ Paul Rudolph house for $6.3 million. You may not be astounded to learn that relations between the two quickly soured. Initially, Rupp said Campus’s workers could use his roof to refurbish the exterior of the Rudolph house—but when they showed up, Campus sicced that same German shepherd on them. Rupp then began to extend his infamous spite wall. Going to court, Campus demanded that Rupp tear down his icy echo of Cold War Berlin. A yearslong legal siege ended with a judge allowing Rupp to keep his battlement, which now reached 27 feet and effectively blocked his neighbor’s penthouse windows. And then in 2007, Rupp died at the age of 74 after falling in the townhouse he had so belligerently fortified. Financier Peter Novello bought the house for $10.6 million, promptly dismantling the wall and removing that giant “R” from the front gate. Why was Rupp so ornery? “Why did Trump say he won the election?” shrugged Campus, a onetime acquaintance of the 45th president. “People form a belief. It’s all about power.” As things turned out, Campus and his new neighbor Novello became great friends. “We’d have drinks every Tuesday,” he said. Which shows that even the most spiteful renovation drama can have a happy final act. MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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COVID MAY HAVE CRASHED THE NEW YORK SOCIAL CIRCUIT, BUT IT HASN’T STOPPED THE LOCAL BLUE BLOODS FROM SLIDING INTO EACH OTHER’S DMS. TAYLOR HARRIS ROUNDS UP THIS YEAR’S LIST OF MUST-FOLLOW SINGLES

Princess Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis

Uncomm The

Kyra Kennedy

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KYRA KENNEDY/DALE MOSS/LILAH RAMZI: BFA; PRINCESS ELISABETH VON THURN UND TAXIS/CHRISSY RUTHERFORD: GETTY IMAGES

Kyra Kennedy Dynastic diva With her family’s patrician bone structure, and a personal passion for social activism, this scion of American royalty is carrying the Kennedy torch into a new era. When she’s not summering in Martha’s Vineyard, the granddaughter of RFK can be found hanging with Cazzie David, Gaïa Matisse, and Princess Olympia of Greece. Princess Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis Teutonic temptress A German princess turned Vogue columnist (penned under her “TNT” sobriquet), Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis is a real-deal imperial. With brains, beauty, pedigree, and exquisite taste, the decidedly unsnobbish royal also has an adventurous spirit and fondness for extreme sports. Kiteboarding in the Indian Ocean anyone? Dale Moss NFL catch of the day Just look at him. The former NFL wide receiver turned male model wooed Bachelorette Clare Crawley not only with his all-American good looks, but also an abundance of gentlemanly charm. And rumor has it the newly single Moss has just invested in a bachelor pad on the East Side.

Lilah Ramzi

Chrissy Rutherford

Chrissy Rutherford Gloss boss After a decade at Harper’s Bazaar, the impeccably chic Chrissy Rutherford (more than 150,000 Instagram followers and growing) has become a permanent fixture of the NYFW front row. Her fashionable comings and goings have been long documented by street-style blogs, and last year she cofounded 2BG Consulting, guiding fashion and beauty brands on how to become more diverse and inclusive. Lilah Ramzi Party starter It is rare to spot Lilah Ramzi not in a ball gown—often of the vintage Dior or Oscar de la Renta variety. As Vogue’s features editor, Ramzi is a must-have on any high society guest list. When she’s not ﬂitting around the Frick Young Fellows Ball, the Whitney Art Party, or the American Ballet Theater’s Fall Gala, the impeccably coifed Ramzi is summering in Nantucket or skiing in Aspen.

mmitted Dale Moss

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Gillian Hearst

Maharaja Sawai Padmanabh Singh of Jaipur His Royal Hotness A handsome royal whose net worth is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions, the hereditary king of Jaipur is as eligible as it gets. When the 22-year-old isn’t traveling the world to walk the Dolce & Gabbana show or escort Reese Witherspoon’s daughter, Ava, to the Bal des Débutantes in Paris, he can claim to be the youngest member of India’s World Cup polo team. Kyle Hotchkiss Carone Downtown dish This brown-eyed restaurateur (formerly of Café Clover, currently of American Bar) knows how to create a see-and-be-seen atmosphere, where the next-table rubbernecking is just as appealing as the food. When he’s not at his own boîte, you can find Carone out and about with his clique of fashion friends—Prabal Gurung, Barbara Bush, and fellow Princeton grad Indré Rockefeller— who are all on speed-dial.

Alessandra Ford Balazs

Todd Plummer

Todd Plummer Bag man When he’s not jetting off to Mustique or Mendoza, this travel writer (and regular Vogue, WSJ, and Conde Nast Traveler contributor) spends his time hobnobbing with fashion’s in-crowd. Now, with his globe-trotting suspended, the man-about-town can be found galloping around the fields of Boston Polo Club and is rumored to be working on a book. Harry Santa-Olalla Going once If you’ve been to a society gala in the past few years, you’ve probably already met this dashingly handsome, charismatic Brit. The 33-year-old is the most in-demand auctioneer on the Manhattan charity circuit, having raised money for Pencils of Promise, amfAR, and Teach for America. Another plus? He looks spectacular in a tux. 70

Kyle Hotchkiss Carone

Harry Santa-Olalla Sloane Crosley

Maharaja Sawai Padmanabh Singh of Jaipur

GILLIAN HEARST/KYLE HOTCHKISS CARONE/TODD PLUMMER/HARRY SANTA-OLALLA: BFA; ALESSANDRA FORD BALAZS/MAHARAJA SAWAI PADMANABH SINGH OF JAIPUR/SLOANE CROSLEY: GETTY IMAGES

Gillian Hearst Real-life “Rosebud” A Town & Country contributing editor (as a great-granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst, her surname is literally on the building), Hearst has always led a glamorous life. But the publishing heiress, who recently became chair of the associates committee of the Society of Memorial Sloan Kettering, has spent quarantine focused on fundraising, adapting the charity circuit to the Zoom age.

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Fernando Garcia

Chloe Wise

Kit Keenan Lucas Zwirner

Ella Emhoff

Kit Keenan The chic shall inherit During her recent stint on ABC’s The Bachelor, Keenan stood out like the proud New Yorker she is with her mane of silver-blond hair and ultrachic feather frock. Postshow, the West Village It Girl turned wellness guru (and offspring of designer Cynthia Rowley and interior designer Bill Keenan) is back on the dating scene. When she’s not sharing plantbased recipes or workout tips with her more than 300,000 loyal Instagram followers, Keenan is hanging ten at Ditch Plains (wearing a Cynthia Rowley wet suit, of course).

Mary-Kate Olsen

ELLA EMHOFF/MARY-KATE OLSEN: GETTY IMAGES; CHLOE WISE/LUCAS ZWIRNER/KIT KEENAN/ FERNANDO GARCIA: BFA

Fernando Garcia Fashion plate The handsome Oscar de la Renta co-creative director initially studied architecture at Notre Dame, a passion born from his travels through the Dominican Republic and northern Spain. In 2015, he and creative partner Laura Kim launched Monse—a favorite among hip fashion editors and the daughters of their well-heeled Oscar de la Renta clientele. Effusively warm, Garcia is as gracious as he is talented.

Alessandra Ford Balazs In-demand ingenue The stunning progeny of hotelier André Balazs and former Ford Models CEO Katie Ford, Alessandra Ford-Balazs spends her time bouncing between her favorite luxury travel destinations—from Chile to Corsica—housed in the best accommodations (thanks, dad!). A USC grad and budding actress, Ford-Balazs has also landed roles on Showtime’s Shameless and in the 2010 dramedy Greenberg.

Ella Emhoff A heartbeat away Since signing with IMG in January, newly minted model (and stepdaughter of VP Kamala Harris), Emhoff has taken the fashion world by storm. Declared “America’s unexpected It Girl” by Vogue, the freckle-faced, curly-haired 21-year-old has appeared in the Proenza Schouler Fall 2021 collection video and landed a knitwear collaboration with ultra-hip downtown brand Batsheva.

Sloane Crosley Wit-girl We can’t think of a better first-date candidate than this prolific essayist and repeat New York Times bestselling author. Her hilarious, often self-deprecating prose have made her a darling of the literary world, with the whip-smart witticisms and observations about everyday city life that have become her signature.

Mary-Kate Olsen Designing woman This freshly divorced tiny titan is back on the dating scene after splitting from Olivier Sarkozy. And quite discerningly it seems—the blond fashion mogul (one half of The Row, with twin sister Ashley) was recently photographed dining at Estiatorio Milos with John Cooper, CEO of financial news analysis agency Brightwire.

Lucas Zwirner Pretty as a picture Overseeing the editorial arm of his father’s sprawling empire (dad is famed gallerist David Zwirner), this art world scion is 29 and Yale-educated. When he’s not working on art tomes, Zwirner can be found at the LACMA Art+Film Gala in L.A., Art Basel in Miami, Frieze in New York, or the International Arte Biennale in Venice, which he attended in 2019 with former fiancée Sienna Miller. Her loss could be your gain. Chloe Wise Frame dame Almost immediately, gallerists, collectors, and fashion designers were swooning over this Canadian multimedia artist known for examining selfhood through the lens of consumer culture and social media monomania. When she’s not exploring the generational issues of our day, the enigmatic beauty is sitting front row at Jacquemus, Chanel, and Marc Jacobs. MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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All the Single Ladies THE HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER WHO RECENTLY MARRIED BILLIONAIRE MACKENZIE SCOTT HAS INSPIRED AMBROSE MCGAFFNEY TO START SCANNING FORBES FOR POTENTIAL BRIDES. ALAS, WHILE MANY OF THE NATION’S RICHEST WOMEN ARE SINGLE, THAT DOESN’T MEAN THEY’RE LOOKING

“R

emember, it is as easy to marry a rich woman as a poor woman.” That aspirational aphorism dripped from the quill of William Makepeace Thackeray, the satirical Victorian novelist best remembered for Vanity Fair, in a later work, The History of Pendennis. But as Dan Jewett—who in March succeeded Jeff Bezos as the husband of philanthropist MacKenzie Scott—discovered, the maxim is as true today as it was 170 years ago. If a humble Seattle high school science teacher can marry the second richest woman in America (who has been very generous to good causes with her reported $57 billion nest egg), many other rumpled middle-aged bachelors across the Republic must surely be asking themselves how they, too, can marry a billionaire. Before Scott abruptly left the market, each of the five richest women in America—with a combined net worth estimated by Forbes at a hair under $210 billion—was unmarried. The remaining four, whom one might still harbor fantasies of meeting at the altar, include New Yorker Julia Koch, 59, who sits just behind Scott in third place with $45 billion. The venerable Walmart heiress, Alice Walton, 71, commands the head of the table with $62.3 billion. To put this elite group in perspective another way: The poorest among them is Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs. Although the West Coast widow (who has been romantically linked in the tabloids with New

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Yorker Daniel Humm, the celebrity chef of Eleven Madison Park), is hardly hurting for cash: her net worth is a relatively modest $16 billion. How the other girls must chortle behind her back! So how might a potential suitor meet one of these supremely eligible women? And just as important, how might these women protect themselves from the kind of man who might just be after their money? Paradoxically, the answer to both might be the same: join an elite dating service. One choice popular with the cognoscenti is Maclynn International, cofounded in 2017 by the New York–based matchmaker Gina Yannotta. Private membership fees for this introduction service range from $15,000 to $100,000, guaranteeing a certain stratum of clientele. “Open memberships,” for eligible singles whom the paying private members might like to meet, are offered free to heavily vetted candidates. Yannotta believes that so-called “women of substance”—financially secure divorcees or widows over 50—are finally getting their due in the dating market. “I think the benefit of being a

certain age is that you'll know yourself better than ever, and you know you have real experiences that you can learn from,” she says. Recent success stories for Maclynn include matching a 76-year-old New York woman client with—sorry, Palm Beach gigolos—a paramour her same age. Not that being single necessarily means the individual is looking for a partner, of course. Nobody could blame Linda Macklowe for wanting to take a break after her 57-year marriage to billionaire developer Harry Macklowe. In an act of chutzpah that became instantly legendary, even by the sky-high standards of the Empire City, he announced his new relationship with Patricia Lazar Landeau by installing 42-foot-high banner portraits of the pair on his landmark 432 Park Avenue condo skyscraper in 2019. “After that stunt, Linda doesn’t need a man, she needs a hit man,” one pal of the couple joked to me at the time. Libbie Mugrabi—who asked for $100 million and then received an undisclosed settlement in

2020 from her ex-husband, David Mugrabi, of the billionaire New York art-dealing family— understands the need to take some time before diving back into the dating pool. “A divorce is like a death,” the 41-year-old recently told Avenue from Aspen, during a stopover between her home on the Upper East Side and house hunting in Maui. “There’s a mourning period, and you have to really take some time to heal from that, because otherwise you’ll bring those problems into your next relationship.” Her recently launched “female empowerment accessories range,” Libbie Love, includes trucker hats emblazoned with words like “Gaslighting” and “Divorcee Glam,” which she says speak to her experience leaving her marriage. Because when she is ready to start dating again, Mugrabi wants to call the shots. “I remember someone telling me a long time ago, ‘Oh, when women get divorced, you know, the man, they're always great, and the women, they never make it,’ ” she recalls. “And I just remember thinking, ‘I would never let that be me.’ ”

Get Their Digits

MACKENZIE BEZOS SCOTT: ALAMY; ALICE WALTON/JACQUELINE MARS/LIBBIE MUGRABI: GETTY IMAGES; JULIA KOCH/LAURENE POWELL JOBS/LINDA MACKLOWE: BFA

The five richest women in America...

1. Alice Walton

$62.3 billion 3. Julia Koch

2. Mackenzie Bezos Scott

$45 billion

$57 billion

5. Laurene Powell Jobs

4. Jacqueline Mars

$29 billion

$16 billion

Swipe Right You might also like…

Marijke Elizabeth Mars $7.2 billion

Linda Macklowe $2 billion

Libbie Mugrabi $100 million

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OUTDOOR BIG -SCREEN TV S, $30,000 BOCCE COURTS, “TROPHY TREES,” EVEN AN ENTIRE PRIVATE VILL AGE: WENDY MOONAN DISCOVERS HOW QUAR ANTINE HAS SPARKED A BOOM FOR LUXURY GARDEN DESIGNERS

COURTESY OF HOLLANDER DESIGN

EXTERIOR DESIGN New York landscape architect Edmund Hollander’s Hamptons client wanted a Covid-friendly outdoor spa, so he created a garden salon with hot and cold plunge pools and a massage room beneath a pergola, with sheer curtains for privacy. The limited palette of white and green plantings contributes to its tranquility.

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INDOOR OUTDOOR Jon-Paul Couture of Couture Design Associates in Providence, R.I., has created a series of outdoor rooms for Newport client Ronald Lee Fleming. Below: A sunny glass conservatory links the main house with the guest house. It is used for casual lunches, meetings, and cocktail parties, while serving as a winter greenhouse for the estate’s delicate tropical plants. Facing page: A large green rose trellis set against a Samuel McIntire–inspired tea house.

Over the past year,

families spending more time at home from the Hamptons to Palm Beach have been demanding a lot of their gardens—and garden designers. Top landscape architects report requests for embellishments ranging from the baroque to the bizarre, including hobby alpaca farms; a nymphaeum with a shell-encrusted grotto and bubbling springs; private sports fields; and even sourcing weatherproof dishwashers for those outdoor kitchens that are now all the rage. The most highly sought designers won’t name their clients, of course, but what they will discuss is how private gardens have become sanctuaries. The garden is now an extended room of the house, a place to escape the anxieties of life and enjoy the healthful pleasures of living outdoors. For Edmund Hollander, a New York–based landscape architect, the emphasis has been on home and family. “We are working on new gardens to be lived in by multigenerational families, as well as retrofitting existing properties,” he says, noting that he has observed quite an adjustment. “Before, everyone had a media room inside,” he says. “Now, we are challenged to find innovative ways of installing televisions and movie screens outside, so that clients can enjoy ‘dinner and a movie’ under the stars.” The home spa, too, has moved outside. Hollander recently designed one with a hot tub, cold plunge pool, and massage terrace. Perhaps the greatest change has been that once-seasonal landscapes are being used yearround, with clients demanding distinct outdoor areas where they can party, dine, read, walk, play chess, observe beehives, meditate, and grow food and flowers. “In short,” he says, “the good life has been moved outside.”

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY WARREN JAGGER COURTESY OF COUTURE DESIGN ASSOCIATES

CLIENTS ASK FOR BESPOKE SPACES FOR OUTDOOR YOGA AND PILATES, PUTTING GREENS, CUTTING GARDENS, AND WOODLAND WALKS.

or ambitious homeowners with unlimited budgets who want to maximize their outdoor space, the open sky is the limit. For example, Tom Kligerman of Ike Kligerman Barkley Architects of New York, who is known for mega-mansions, was recently commissioned to design a large greenhouse in Canada. “It’s a conservatory with a kitchen and dining room,” he says of the project, which, even at that scale, pales in comparison to what some New Yorkers are asking for. Architect Pietro Cicognani is building a “village” on one client’s estate in Southampton, with several new structures. “One is just for reading and thinking while others include a carriage house, a guest house, a pool house, a garage apartment, and a pergola.” Also under construction is a grotto that will be lined in Roman mosaics commissioned in Italy. MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANTHONY CRISAFULLI COURTESY OF LAGUARDIA DESIGN GROUP

WATER FEATURES Above: To extend seasonal outdoor entertaining, LaGuardia Design Group installed a firepit with an ocean view on the roof of a client’s beach house in the Hamptons. He planted native beach grasses to connect with the view of the dunes in the distance. Right: During Covid, another client wanted to enjoy “dinner and a movie” under the stars, so he created an outdoor cinema lounge and dining area beneath a mahogany arbor.

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Chris LaGuardia of LaGuardia Design in Water Mill says he has experienced “an explosion” of work on the East End, since his clients now use their homes year-round. (Like everyone interviewed here, he is turning down new clients every week.) One demand, he notes, is for what he calls “destination dining.” “People commissioned outdoor dining rooms under a grove of trees, with lights in the trees, music, water fountains—all the amenities.” “Not only are clients using spaces year-round, they have also become more thoughtful about how they use their space outdoors,” says Tom Volk of Summerhill Landscapes in Sag Harbor. “They want meditative spaces to return to nature, but also sports fields, he says, citing a recently installed bocce court for a cool $30,000. His clients asked for bespoke spaces for outdoor yoga and Pilates, putting greens, cutting gardens, and woodland walks. His firm has installed several edible gardens, including a designated “cocktail garden,” with herbs like lemongrass, tarragon, and mint to garnish drinks.

New York and Palm Beach–based architects Anne Fairfax and Richard Sammons of Fairfax & Sammons are known for designing Georgian mansions. During the pandemic, however, Fairfax was asked to transform a tiny, overlooked Greenwich Village backyard into a viable garden room. “Even in cold weather, clients working from home have been finding relief from being trapped inside by turning outdoor tables into impromptu offices,” Fairfax says. Her firm also tucked a full outdoor kitchen, unobtrusively, into the interior of a neoclassical pool pavilion. Last summer, an ophthalmologist in Riverdale doing daily, highly technical eye examinations on Zoom approached Bronx-based garden designer Rebecca Allan, founder of Painterly Gardens, to create a private place in her yard to rest and escape between calls. Allan planted a thick hedge of ilex and Pieris japonica, then added perennials like columbine and eastern bluestar. “There was almost a spiritual dimension to it,” Allan explains. “That enclosure became more of a necessity than a luxury.”

“THE GOOD LIFE HAS BEEN MOVED OUTSIDE.” EDMUND HOLLANDER

Tony Piazza of Piazza Horticultural Group in Southampton adds, with understatement, “There has been major upgrading of vegetable gardens in the past year.” One client had him install 22 COR-TEN steel raised planters, which “got very expensive when the client demanded their corner radius be that of an iPhone.” Another boasted what Piazza calls a “highly evolved” private chef who came up with a list of esoteric vegetable varieties for him to plant. “Our gardens aren’t so ornamental now,” he says. “They are more functional, with outdoor kitchens becoming a standard, complete with barbecue, refrigerator, woodburning pizza oven, and dishwasher.” Like many of his colleagues, Piazza has been charged with designing innumerable outdoor firepits over the past year. One, on Shelter Island, for a couple with wilding 20-yearolds, was dug into a sandy patch with giant debarked logs all around for seating. Next to it they parked a shiny new Airstream where the owners’ children could quarantine for a fortnight after every escape to the city. Not all projects have been so grand, but important to those that commission them, nonetheless.

Perhaps the most unforeseen impact of the pandemic is a new embrace of sustainability. “We are not purposefully xeriscaping”— the practice of landscaping to minimize water consumption—“but we are using a lot more native plants,” says Mario Nievera of Nievera Williams Design of Palm Beach. East Hampton landscape gardener Edwina von Gal is equally ecologically driven. She is currently promoting “Two Thirds for the Birds,” an initiative to save wildlife by having people plant two native plants among every three added to their gardens. The Perfect Earth Project, a nonprofit she organized years ago, calls for a ban on pesticides, fertilizers, and herbicides that are “dangerous for babies and contaminate the water table.” Garden designer Debra Yates and her son, Benjamin Burle, of Yates Burle Studio in Palm Beach, use native plants exclusively, organic fertilizers, and no pesticides. They recently created a private garden on the Atlantic Ocean with a unique palette of native wind- and salt-tolerant plants, including thatch palm, pigeon plum, sea oats, dune grasses, silver buttonwood, sea grape, and bay cedar. MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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“The pandemic made people realize how important it is to live in harmony with nature,” Burle says. “Native plants may cost more at the nursery, but they are ultimately cost-saving because they require less water and maintenance. Sustainability is the wave of the future. As stewards of this land,” he continues, “we need to plant trees that add value, bring harmony, and support pollinators, spiders, and the worms that feed our birds.” It is a point underscored by Hollander, who has installed wildflower meadows to attract butterflies and bees. “People want healthy environments now. If it’s good for the honeybees, it’s good for you.”

eing in nature is lovely, of course, but some clients prefer to look at it from a distance. Charles Marder, the founder of Marders nursery in Bridgehampton, says that for the first time he is installing gardens meant to be experienced from the indoors. His typical client in the Hamptons is an investment banker who is now working fulltime at home. “When people built their homes, they did not expect to be stuck in home offices 24-7,” he says. They call Marder because they don’t like what they see. “Often, I’m being told to get rid of unsightly views, such as a neighbor’s new construction.” Sometimes, he is asked to bring more 80

daylight into the office; more often than not, he is told to design a new “viewshed” from the office window. This has involved building new ponds, planting an allée of sycamores along the driveway, installing “trophy trees” like a 40-foot copper beech, importing gigantic boulders or—a Marders specialty—adding a picturesque potting shed to the landscape. Jorge Sánchez of SMI Landscape Architecture in Palm Beach is known for the luxurious private gardens he has created for clients such as the late David Koch. For his own 750-acre ranch northwest of town, where he raises cattle and stables his horses, he has installed a 650-foot reflecting pool and a new organic vegetable garden whose planters are gabion walls made of stacked rocks covered in metal caging—their design inspired by Herzog & de Meuron’s Dominus Winery in Napa. “Creating outdoor spaces that can be enjoyed twelve months of the year is the next design frontier,” says Adam Tihany, a New York architect whose focus is hospitality. “The big challenge is how you create such spaces, be it a restaurant, spa, or cruise ship.” Eighteen months ago, Tihany was asked to design a lavish penthouse garden for the Hotel La Palma in Capri. Originally imagined for summertime use only, the roof garden now has to function from March to November, adding three months to the season, Tihany explains. Additions included glass windbreaks, built-in outdoor heaters, and large awnings. “I was happy to do it, and the results are spectacular, albeit expensive.”

LAWN ORDER Top left: For one ocean-front property in Palm Beach, the talented Jorge Sánchez, founder of SMI Landscape Architecture, disguised an intimate garden spa as a fountain, with amphitheater-like steps that can be used as seats when his client fires up the two gas firepits in the large coquina stone planters. Above: For a family-oriented client in Coral Gables, FL, Sánchez designed the loggia, kitchen, and bathhouse to the left of the pool, facing a paved terrace with intermittent water jets for children’s play. The domed house beyond the pool is an arts and crafts playroom for the children and their pals.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY CARMEL BRANTLEY COURTESY OF JORGE SÁNCHEZ

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“CREATING OUTDOOR SPACES THAT CAN BE ENJOYED TWELVE MONTHS OF THE YEAR IS THE NEXT DESIGN FRONTIER.” ADAM TIHANY

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You’re the Tots THE NURSERY USED TO BE A PLACE OF PASTEL HUES AND A ROCKING CHAIR, BUT NOT ANYMORE. SUSANNA SALK WRITES THAT WITH HAND-PAINTED WALLPAPER, BESPOKE FURNITURE, FOUR-POSTER CRIBS, AND BLUE-CHIP ART, JUNIOR’S ROOM IS BECOMING AS STYLISH AS THOSE OF THE GROWN-UPS

Hannah Cecil Gurney ← “My priority for this room was to engage the imaginations and to inspire—much as I was as a child by the wallpapers with which my father [de Gournay founder Claud Cecil Gurney] filled our homes,” says Hannah Cecil Gurney of her three-year-old’s London bedroom with its play area. “The handpainted de Gournay wallpaper depicts the sprawling grasslands of the African savannah, filled with animals rendered in a striking monochrome palette, which I love for its non-gender-specific theme, so the room can be shared or reinhabited easily.” Cecil Gurney offset this palette with very specific accents of bold primary colors, such as the vibrant yellow of the custom-built shelving. Photography by Douglas Friedman.

hildren’s rooms are not just about the present days; they are about the tomorrows. How can their rooms of today nurture them into the grown people they will become? When we moved into our current house a few years ago, my teenage son Winston, who was then living nearby at a boarding school, was determined to transform his small bedroom into a place where he could retreat in style on the weekends. From his dorm room he texted me a photo from the ’70s of a living space that can be best described as a place where James Bond might relax between assignments. A few days later, his sketch followed. A design dialogue started to flow that eventually included our carpenter and the space was soon realized, complete with blue velvet seat cushions and framed vintage movie posters. It’s not just his cocoon, it’s become his style passport. As a culture we are starting to embrace the philosophy—not to mention the aesthetics—that children’s areas deserve to be places that don’t stagnate at the stage where the children are at that very moment. Basic primary colors, and fairy-tale and superhero characters, are ceding to sophisticated patterns, unique colors, and vintage furniture with dashes of whimsy. Children are being given more of a center stage in their little worlds at home, and those worlds in turn are aesthetically on a par with the adult spaces in the rest of the house. As I compile some of my favorite spaces for children for this book, I see rooms that identify a child as a whole child, not necessarily only by gender. I see workspaces that cohabit cleverly within play spaces, thanks to open minds and open planning. I see that children have had an even greater hand in their room’s creation, and I see parents telling designers how important it is to them that their newborn’s space adapt to their baby’s eventual growth, both physically and emotionally. I see dining room furniture placed below framed children’s drawings and I see rocking chairs placed alongside bluechip modern art. There aren’t just two brands or colors for cribs, there are hundreds. I see bunk beds worthy of luxury cruise ships. But the most repeated word by both designers and parents when describing their intent at fashioning these spaces is “timeless.” Parents want spaces that can adapt and accommodate whatever the future may bring. Because when it comes to our children, we may give them time-outs, but in the end there is never enough time with them before they leave. Reprinted from © Dream Rooms for Children by Susanna Salk, Rizzoli, 2021. MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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Alex Papachristidis Interiors ↑ → “This playhouse is for my beloved grandniece, Elle, who is seven years old,” says the New York–based designer Alex Papachristidis. “It was a gift from her grandmother, my sister Ophelia. I wanted to create a small, magical world for her, which would be her very own to play in and invite her friends to.” Of the interior, he says: “All the furniture had to be miniature to match the scale of the house and so I found French antique pieces that worked perfectly.” Papachristidis had the floor stenciled in the manner of Baroness Pauline de Rothschild’s London bedroom. For the fabrics and wallpaper, he chose Manuel Canovas from Cowtan & Tout, mixing lively prints and toiles in a playful color palette. Photography by Stacey Bewkes. 84

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Dina Bandman Interiors ↑ “This room was designed with both the newborn and new parents in mind,” says interior designer Dina Bandman, who drew inspiration from her travels to Italy’s Amalfi coast with its prolific lemon trees. “I wanted to create a gender-neutral nursery, and when a green and yellow color palette came to mind, I collaborated with de Gournay to create a new sequinembellished Lemon Grove wallpaper entirely for this room.” Bandman also fashioned the exquisite four-poster Lucite crib to enhance, rather than compete with, the room’s fresh and fanciful design. “My design intention is for baby to nestle in style and for parents to feel uplifted and energized in this special nursery.” Photography by Christopher Stark. 86

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Katie Ridder, Designer ← Peter Pennoyer, Architect New York designer Katie Ridder found inspiration for her daughter’s bedroom design from a bedroom she visited in Charlottenhof Palace in Potsdam, which was tented and carried out completely in blue-and-white stripes. Ridder created her own variation in her family’s weekend home by covering the walls and ceiling of the niche in a striped linen trimmed with red grosgrain ribbon. Swedish antiques and accent fabrics in bright primary colors give this room a fresh spin. “Peter and I wanted the bedrooms in our houses to be cozy,” says Ridder. “We placed our daughter’s bed in the niche to make the most of the space.” Photography by Pieter Estersohn (Art Department) Floto+Warner ↓ A downstairs bedroom in the Brooklyn home of architects Cassandra Warner and Jeremy Floto is also a dreamy destination for their two young girls’ playtime. “It’s a quiet, open space that allows for the exuberance of life with small children to unfold in all its messy glory,” says Floto. “The color palette is muted and gray, with uncluttered furnishings. The wallpaper is Etched Arcadia Mural at Anthropologie Home. The walls are skimmed in cement mixed with pigment for warm undertones.” Photography by Cassandra Warner and Jeremy Floto of Floto + Warner.

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AT HERITAGE LIGHTING BRAND M. ALEXANDER, DISCOVERS ARIA DARCELLA, THE FUTURE OF LAMPS IS SO BRIGHT, THEY GOTTA WEAR SHADES

GUTTER CREDITS TKTKTKTKTKTKTKTK;

The L

LIVING

RETURN TO BASE An assortment of mostly 19th-century lamps and candlesticks in M. Alexander’s showroom.

Photography by Sammy Ian for Avenue

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GUTTER CREDITS TKTKTKTKTKTKTKTK;

e Light Stuff

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here’s an old joke about the Park Avenue matron who thanked her decorator for his minimalist makeover of her home. “No problem,” he replied, “it was the least I could do.” For those who require a little more of their décor than a futon and an exposed Edison bulb, however, there is some good news. “Around 2008 we started to see this shift toward mid-century design, and contemporary kept poking its head in there,” says David Reitner, president of M. Alexander, a heritage lighting brand that has been celebrated for its antique furniture and lighting, as well as reproductions, for more than 60 years. “Now we’re starting to see a return to a lot of classical. Not just lighting but design...minimalism seems to be not as prevalent as it was. I’m starting to see rooms that are now layered with decorative objects, but also peppered with contemporary or modern pieces. The mix is really lovely.” 90

HAVING A YARN David Reitner consults with lampshade seamstress Mariela Jinete in the on-site atelier.

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THREAD COUNT Above, spools of thread used in M. Alexander’s lampshades. Right, the “Tuxedo Round” chandelier, featuring a carved alabaster pendant.

Marvin Alexander—Reitner’s great-uncle— founded his namesake brand in 1958, after working for the well-regarded lighting company, Nesle Inc., for nearly a decade. Initially, he supplemented his income by doing in-home chandelier cleanings, but as word spread M. Alexander became sought-after by discerning clients looking for antique lighting and restoration. Alexander even helped Jackie Kennedy when the then first lady was restoring antiques in the executive mansion. “Marvin said she was so enthusiastic about the work being done in the White House and was so grateful for the knowledge she gained during the restoration,” Reitner says. “He also did work for her apartment in New York City.” M. Alexander’s early inventory consisted of European antiques, both oil-based fixtures that could be converted to electric as well as porcelain and decorative objects that could be turned into lamps. In his early twenties, Reitner was enchanted by his great-uncle’s vast knowledge of the trade. He recalls stopping to admire a chandelier hanging in a showroom window one night while the two of them were walking. “In three minutes, he gave me a whole rundown of what the chandelier was. There was no tag in the window with a description, nothing. I said, ‘How do you know that?’ He goes, ‘That’s my job.’ ” “I was just so bowled over by that,” Reitner continues. “I wanted to learn more. And visiting his showroom...you could become dizzy trying to hone in on one thing, because your eye just kept taking you to another location. One thing was just more spectacular than the next.”

He soon joined as an apprentice. By the ’80s, seeing a growing trend in antique lighting, Alexander introduced the L’Etoile collection, a line of high-quality reproductions—something Reitner helped expand. “It wasn’t just antique lighting. You had designers doing classical [interpretations] for people, which stayed on well into the ’90s and even early 2000s,” he says. “There was something very elegant about it. And people were still living in a more formal setting than a lot of people live today.” The problem was scale. “In the ’80s, homes were starting to become larger. Really, significantly larger. All of a sudden people didn’t need a pair of sconces for a room, people needed eight sconces for a room,” he says. “In the antique world that’s really hard to come by.” As business grew, the brand expanded into a second floor of its East 62nd Street building, allowing it to also offer custom finishes—an innovation that set the company apart from its competition.

“Other people really didn’t want to bother with them. They would say, ‘You can select from these four options,’ whereas we would say, ‘Give us a color that you’re looking to match. If it’s not dead on, it’s going to be really close.’” Since then, M. Alexander has moved once more. It now has a showroom in the D&D Building on Third Avenue, alongside the showrooms of many of the most prominent interior design companies in New York. As for what designers and his customers are looking for, it seems the answer is a bit of everything. “Back in the ’90s, and even in the early 2000s, I used to see the trends, and it was much easier to predict. Because when a style was becoming popular, something of course fell off,” he says. “What’s happened after 2008 is things haven’t fallen off. They’ve slowed down. So, you now have several different styles all going on at the same time. I don’t think there is a particular style in the future that is going to be hot and then not.” But please—no more bare bulbs. MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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NOTORIOUS NEW YORKERS

ARCHITECT OF HIS OWN DEMISE Stanford White created many of the buildings that still define New York City today.

Death of a Hedonist

The crimes and murder of starchitect Stanford White, who was shot in cold blood by an avenging husband, could be New York society’s greatest-ever scandal, writes Angela M.H. Schuster

uring New York’s Gilded Age 120 years ago, Stanford White was the most famous architect in the city. His clients and friends were among the era’s elite, and many edifices raised under the banner of his firm, McKim, Mead & White, are still recognized as masterpieces of American architecture. He was also a sexual predator who was murdered in public by the husband of one of his victims, during a musical theater performance at one of White’s own buildings, an earlier iteration of Madison Square Garden. In any ranking of New York society scandals, the White affair is quite possibly the all-time number one.

“In his oeuvre, his appearance, and in his tabloid-worthy personal life, Stanny White projected color, and lots of it,” says architectural historian Richard Guy Wilson, author of McKim, Mead & White Architects, a landmark volume on the firm. Commissions for White’s robber baron clientele included a Madison Avenue mansion for J. P. Morgan (now the Morgan Library), and the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park. “White loved to create theatrical buildings with lavish ornament and interiors where important events could cause commotion,” Wilson tells Avenue. Between 1879 and 1915, his firm designed more than 900 of these—hotels, private clubs, libraries, museums, universities, churches, and even casinos. On the evening of June 26, 1906, the architect was gunned down in the open-air rooftop theater of the Beaux Arts Madison Square Garden. (Demolished in 1925, it was the second of three Manhattan arenas to bear that name, and precursor to the current venue.) The killer was Harry Kendall Thaw, a Pittsburgh millionaire with a history of mental illness, who had never forgiven White for raping his new bride, showgirl Evelyn Nesbit, five years earlier, when she was just 16. The night of the murder, White had been supping at nearby Martin’s restaurant, where he was spotted by fellow diners Thaw and Nesbit, who were also enjoying a meal before the premiere of Mam’zelle Champagne atop the Garden. During the show’s final number, “I Could Love a Million Girls,” Thaw approached White with a pistol and fired three shots at point-blank range, hitting White twice in the face and once in the left shoulder, killing the 52-year-old architect instantly. Standing over the body, according to contemporaneous press reports, Thaw said: “I killed him because he ruined my wife.”

STANFORD WHITE: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; EVELYN NESBIT THAW: GERTRUDE KÄSEBIER/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

STAGE SIREN Evelyn Nesbit was abused by White even as he advanced her acting career.

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HARRY KENDALL THAW: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES; THE WASHINGTON TIMES/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

STANDING OVER WHITE’S BODY, THAW SAID: “I KILLED HIM BECAUSE HE RUINED MY WIFE.” White had concealed his sexual predation behind the veneer of being a “respectably” married man. In 1884 he had wed 22-year-old Elizabeth “Bessie” Springs Smith, a descendant of the founder of Smithtown on Long Island’s north shore. In neighboring St. James, he would design Box Hill, a 20-acre summer retreat that served as a showplace for his grand aesthetic, and remains in the family today. Following a lavish wedding, the Whites took a six-month honeymoon in Europe and the Near East, purchasing copious antiques and architectural fragments for their own and clients’ collections. “Once back in New York,” says Wilson, White became quite the sensation “with his loud clothes, red hair and moustache, and ebullient personality…[and he] soon found the attractions of money and flesh were irresistible.” His appetite was for young girls, grooming many in his multistory Manhattan apartment with a rear entrance on 24th Street. There, he had a room painted green and outfitted with a red velvet swing suspended from the ceiling by ivytwined ropes. According to Simon Baatz, author of the 2018 book The Girl on the Velvet Swing: Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century, the architect “was one of a group of wealthy roués, all members of the Union Club, who organized frequent orgies in secret locations scattered about the city.” White’s own great-granddaughter, Suzannah Lessard, goes further. He was a satyr who lost interest in a woman as soon as “all new sensations were exhausted,” she wrote in her 1996 tell-all, The Architect of Desire. Some victims were “barely pubescent,” and many were in “fragile social and financial situations—girls who would be unlikely to resist his power and his money and his considerable charm.” One such girl was Evelyn Nesbit. With the approval of her mother, White struck up a “caretaking relationship” with the aspiring actress in 1901, helping her get a foothold in society. Not only did Evelyn go to the dentist at White’s expense—because he found bad teeth sexually off-putting—but he also moved the girl and her mother from a boardinghouse into a hotel. He provided Evelyn with a shockingly generous weekly allowance of $25, and, according to Lessard, plied her with expensive gifts, including “a large pearl on a platinum chain, a set of white fox furs, a ruby-and-diamond ring, and two solitaire diamond rings,” which he gave her on Christmas, which also happened to be her 17th birthday. The “relationship” seems to have lasted for six months, although they later remained on polite terms socially.

MURDER, THEY WROTE When Harry Kendall Thaw killed White during a public theater performance at Madison Square Garden, it was front-page news across the country.

During Thaw’s trial, the world would learn that early in their acquaintance, White had invited the teenage Nesbit to his apartment for dinner. He poured her champagne possibly laced with a drug, then raped her after she passed out. Covering the trial, Mark Twain, a friend of the late architect, wrote that New York society had long known White was “eagerly and diligently and ravenously and remorselessly hunting young girls to their destruction.… On the witness-stand, in the hearing of a court room crowded with men, [Nesbit] told in the minutest detail the history of White’s pursuit of her, even down to the particulars of his atrocious victory—a victory whose

particulars might well be said to be unprintable.” On February 1, 1908, Thaw was acquitted by reason of insanity and committed to a mental institution. White is interred in the St. James Episcopal Church Graveyard, near his Box Hill estate. But Lessard, who grew up in a cottage on the grounds of Box Hill, writes that his debauchery runs almost like a genetic defect in the family. In addition to tales of cousin-rape, she said her uncle once kissed her in front of a group that included his own wife. As adults, she and five of her sisters recalled being fondled by their father. As a Stanford White descendant, she wrote, “sexual violation was a condition of life.” MAY—JUNE 2021 | AVENUE MAGAZINE

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