Celebrating Women's History Month: Interior Decorator Elsie de Wolfe

Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl by Cecil Beaton, 1930s

Photographer Cecil Beaton captured Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl (1865-1950), wearing her "Apollo of Versailles" velvet cape in her Paris apartment during the late 1930s. Elsa Schiaparelli designed the one-of-a-kind couture piece for de Wolfe to reference her taste for eighteenth-century fashion and the spectacular. It also celebrates the Apollo Fountain and its proximity to the interior decorator and socialite's home, Villa Trianon, in the Parc de Versailles.  

The New York-born de Wolfe considered herself a "rebel in an ugly world" and hated Victorian aesthetics, throwing a temper tantrum as a child when her parents chose William Morris wallpaper for the drawing room. Considered the "mother of interior decoration," she transformed her wealthy clients' estates from heavily draped, darkly paneled, and ornately furnished spaces into light, airy rooms with muslin curtains, mirrors, pale painted French furniture, and a mix of chintz and leopard-print textiles.  

Villa Trianon, Elsie de Wolfe's French residence

Before her career as a decorator, de Wolfe acted in amateur and later professional theater, where she met Bessie Marbury. From a prominent New York family, Marbury became a pioneering theatrical and literary agent, with Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and Sarah Bernhardt among her clients. She and de Wolfe lived together as a couple until she died in 1933, first at Irving House in Manhattan, where the decorator showcased her innovative design ideas and whimsical style. The pair hosted Sunday salons and invited an intoxicating array of celebrities from the arts, society, and industry.  

One of their guests, the Gilded Age architect Sanford White was working on the Colony Club in 1905. White secured de Wolfe the commission for its interior design. It would become the premier women's social club on its opening two years later with light-colored walls, sheer fabric window treatments, tiled floors, wicker furniture, and the illusion of an outdoor garden pavilion. The Colony Club launched de Wolfe's career as the most sought-after interior decorator of the time. She would go on to design for the Fricks, Morgans, Vanderbilts, the Duchess of Windsor, and Hollywood royalty.

 The Villa Trianon, Music Pavillon. Painting by William Bruce Ellis Ranken