The Errant Æsthete

I recently came upon a site that as the author herself notes in the following piece, “deserves respectful genuflection. If not outright emulation.” EA

Gloria Vanderbilt Cooper in her New York City bedroom, 1970 (detail). Photograph by Horst P. Horst from “Horst: Interiors” by Barbara Plumb (Bulfinch, 1993).

Somewhere between marrying her fourth husband in 1963 and becoming the undisputed designer-jean queen of the 1970s, Gloria Vanderbilt jumped feet-first into interior design and made what can only be called a splash. It was a moment in time that almost nobody remembers now, and more’s the pity.

A railroad heiress with a major artistic streak—now better known as the mother of newsman Anderson Cooper—Vanderbilt, in her youth, possessed truly outrageous do-it-yourself creativity. Her magpie style likely had no impact on popular decorating taste, which is why, to my mind, it deserves respectful genuflection. If not outright emulation.

The woman knew what the hell she was doing.

Master bedroom in the New York City apartment of Gloria Vanderbilt and Wyatt Cooper, 1970. Above the bed is a collage by Vanderbilt made of aluminum foil, fabric, and construction paper. Photograph by Horst P. Horst from “Horst: Interiors.”

Over the years, Vanderbilt’s homes have run the gamut from tentative good taste to baroque extravagance to Art Nouveau bohemianism to piquant girlishness to old-fashioned grandeur. But to my mind, the finest rooms she concocted were those of the five-story New York City townhouse she shared with her last husband, the screen and television writer Wyatt E. Cooper, from 1964 to 1973. The high-ceilinged interiors of 45 East 67th Street, a 20-room structure built in 1913, were the dictionary definition of personal taste: blithe, disregarding, idiosyncratic, outrageous.

The master bedroom, shown here, was an exuberant farrago of mismatched patchwork-quilt patterns—applied to walls, doors, curtains, floor, and ceiling. Bits of fabric were pasted to the wood floor and coated with layers of polyurethane; ditto the ceiling, only without the protective finish. (Vanderbilt later created similar floors, using lace-pattern and violet-flowered wallpaper, for her family’s weekend house in Southampton, New York.) Cut or left whole, a couple of dozen American quilts wrap the walls in a vast encasing mosaic, some of them mounted as decorative panels and framed with gloss-white moldings. Quilt remnants panel the door to the bath, and the sweeping curtains resembled Victorian crazy quilts, their jagged scraps of velvets, cottons, and God-knows-what-else all bound by aggressive whip stitches.

Vanderbilt/Cooper bedroom (detail), 1970. Photograph by Horst P. Horst.

Once your eyes adjust to the kaleidescopic intensity, you will see the genius. And if you are not inspired, then something is seriously wrong—this is what real style is all about. Certainly Bloomcraft, a bedding firm, recognized that right away; its owner, bedazzled by the rooms of the townhouse, quickly hired Vanderbilt to create a signature line of fabrics, pillows, and bedspreads. And the rest is history. [thnx to the aesthete's lament]