("a country chateau where he maintains vineyards"). Another Watergate couple who rides the shuttle circuit between Washington and New York is the Groueffs, Stephane and Lillian. Not long ago, ~rs. Groueff found herself suddenly ?lsplaced from a thriving five-year-old mterior design practice in New York when her husband, the former Paris Match bureau chief in that city, came ~o Washington to work as director of Information for the Embassy of Oman. She hasn't let that stop her, though. She commutes at least twice every two weeks between her Watergate apart~ent and her Southampton home, carmg for the decorative needs of her older clients there and her newer ones here. ''As soon as we arrived in Washington," she said, "people started asking me_ to do things here. Now I'm spread a httle wide because I'm working in Southampton (where she also has her showcase house on Pine Street), in New York City and in Washington. Fortunately, the things in Washington ar~ small. Otherwise, I just couldn't swmg it." The Watergate apartment is a retreat, and she has decorated it with familiar objects and furnishings garnered from her Long Island home and showcase house. . "I love coming here," she con~mued. "After getting off the plane ro~ the hectic pace of New York and gettmg into the cab as soon as I tell th e dnver . ' West please ' 'Watergate th • ' ' IS cloak of tension starts falling off me. Then I walk into the apartment and everything is bright, cheerful, hapPY. I can really relax." The Groueff apartment is a comfy, ~~z~ place: decorated with blue wicker airs, gmgerbread-trimmed lamp tables, traditional sofas and many, ~any ~hrows and pillows . But it is, as me Pomted out, a mite crowded. "In d Y own houses, which I would never t 0 for a client, I tend to fill them up t 00 much. I'm a collector, and I hate ko PUt anything in storage. So I just places for things . It is sort 0 ~~~:Ikefindi?g domg a jigsaw puzzle," the intenor decorator said. In the living/dining space of the apa:tment, for example, there are 14 c~alrs, not including couches and ben~ es. At least, there is plenty of seating or guests. GAs to putting them to party use, roueff said, "I like extemporaneous entert ammg, ¡ ¡ putting things together
Atop Frankie Welch's 18th century walnut drop leaf table are lmari China reproductions and purple and peach goblets sold in her boutiques. Reflected in the 1880 gilded mirror is the living room's pillow-filled sofa. Orchids and spring flowers complete the dinner party ambiance. Welch often plans her entertainment long distance by choosing one of pre-selected menus her Chinese housekeeper prepares.
and just having fun." Although she loves "very formal affairs," she said people move around so much today, they have to be so much more flexible . The Groueffs do their share of moving around. They have a home in Switzerland ("very ruggedly decorated with lots of furs") and one in Mexico ("The only place that looks sparse" because you have to be a Mexican resident to bring furniture into the country and she is not there enough to "keep after people to get things made"). Her New York apartment is the most formal of all. Frankie Welch, who divides her time in Washington between her 18th century Alexandria townhouse and her Watergate apartment, also moved recently. Hers was a much shorter trip, however. She merely changed apartments in the same building. Now the Charles Wicks rent her old home. And as she transferred, she did something that might, at first, appear unusual: she took the walls with her. But for the creative textile and graphic designer, such a transaction was not so extraordinary; especially since they were not the permanent walls, but her own invention : portable floor-toceiling panels, padded and covered
with her uniquely designed fabric . Traveling with her to a new living room was a wall ection disp laying an Elizabethan design she created for an exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 1978. Another Elizabethan design resulted in rows of umptuou pillows along her twin couches. In facte, Welch de ign dot the whole land cape of well-chosen and cherished antiques mixed with finely crafted modern furniture and accessories. The meticulous detail of the fabric patterns complement the careful arrangement of the interior layout. "What I have to work hard at," said Welch, "is keeping the room from looking too feminine. I want to achieve a balance so that men also feel comfortable. I think I've been able to do that with the antiques and all the purples." Her colors, like her designs, are distinctively artistic, reflecting her extensive background in graphic design as a student and a teacher before she opened her first dress shop in Alexandria and went on to be America's foremost industrial textile designer. True Christmas red and green enliven a graphic tree that has appeared on scarves, shopping bags and cocktail napkins of Washington for a decade. The bicentennial celebration design evoked an authentic patriotism with its red, white and blue. The colors that decorate her own apartment - apricot, pale turquoise, purples, grays and mauve - replicate the changing colors of the sky and its reflections in the Potomac that flows past her window. "Many of the colors in these fabrics are the same as the colors of the evening sky when I come home from Alexandria. I've spent many hours trying to match the cloud magenta and the deep apricot of the sunset,'' said the artist. "They make me feel close to the outdoors." Although several of her textile designs for museums and major corporations can be seen in her home, the total of her works numbers over 2,000. The whole collection is now in Athens, Georgia, where a museum exhibition of her work will open in May. She plans to follow them there as a university lecturer at the University of Georgia and will also teach at Clemson in South Carolina. "I'll probably have a part-time home in one of those places," she said. This will be in addition to her two Washington homes and her Wintergreen condominium in Charlottesville, Virginia. D Dossier/February 1982/ 15