Women Designers We Love
Among other things, 2016 saw the resurgence in popularity of the phrase "The future is female," which originated in the 1970s. Though the sentiment didn't extend, as intended, to the White House , in the world of interior design, creative women are pushing boundaries, redefining style, and inspiring boundless creativity—and have been for years. From the traditional aesthetics of Bunny Williams and Suzanne Kasler to the edgy designs of Kelly Wearstler, the unrestrained color of Muriel Brandolini to the ethereal moodiness of Robin Standefer, many of the most jaw-dropping spaces we've seen of late were created by inspired and inspiring women. While their styles are each sublimely unique, the one thing these women have in common is that their influence on the design world will be felt for years to come. That's what we call girl power.
Muriel Brandolini
“There are no rules in decorating,” says the designer, renowned for adventurous yet poetic interiors that, as she puts it, are “recognizable for their mix of eras and styles and their juxtaposition of materials and textures.” Inspirations include everything from Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings to the romantic interiors that Renzo Mongiardino conjured for her mother-in-law, Countess Cristiana Brandolini d’Adda.
Muriel Brandolini
Punchy hues accent Brandolini’s Hamptons home, which was featured in the August 2014 issue of *Architectural Digest.*An outdoor seating area is furnished with a custom-made teak sofa and concrete tables by CB2; the brightly colored accent pillows are made of fabrics from the designer’s line for Holland & Sherry, and the lanterns are by Pols Potten.
Bunny Williams
A decorating-world doyenne with a bohemian streak, Williams conceives richly detailed rooms where antiques are presented with a distinctly contemporary attitude. The New York–based tastemaker, who refined her synthesizing talents while working for more than two decades alongside Albert Hadley, once devised a sleek glass spiral staircase for a neoclassically styled penthouse, and she splashed a Georgian Revival mansion with graphic carpeting and select modern pieces.
Bunny Williams
The decorator worked closely with architectural firm 3north to design a Richmond, Virginia, house that references the Georgian period. A bed by Oly, upholstered in a Larsen silk, is the centerpiece of a guest room; the bench is by Amy Howard Collection, and the dhurrie is from Todd Alexander Romano.
Linda Pinto
Pinto managed her brother’s eponymous Paris atelier before his death in 2012 and is now the torchbearer-in-chief for its magisterial style, which ranges from contemporary opulence to regal grandeur to richly patterned Orientalism. “Nothing’s changed, except, sadly, Alberto is not here,” says Pinto, who supervises a staff of 85.
Linda Pinto
The library/dining room of the designer’s Paris apartment features oak boiserie and cornices from the 1940s and is lined with mirror-backed shelving; the bronze bench is by Lalanne, and chairs by Patrick Gaguech for Nimrod surround the LxRossi dining table, which is topped with marble sculptures by Agustín Cárdenas.
Elissa Cullman
At first glance, Cullman’s elegant interiors seem to evoke an earlier era. The impeccably sourced antiques, rich colors, textured finishes, and embellished trim all speak to a sensibility steeped in tradition. But a longer look tells a different story. Cullman’s classic design schemes are often calibrated to work with edgy art—like the early-20th-century Swedish commode that pairs wonderfully with a Nan Goldin photograph—and the generous use of gilded accents, from Chippendale mirrors to ornate chandeliers to églomisé panels, adds a fresh glint.
Elissa Cullman
At Cullman’s Connecticut country home, a Ranjit Ahuja embroidered linen sheathes the master bedroom walls; the Victorian desk is from Florian Papp.
Emily Summers
Known for creating crisp, elegantly restrained contemporary rooms that still have a warm soulfulness, Summers is a master at softening modernism’s hard edges with sumptuously upholstered furniture and rich, tactile finishes. Befitting a decorator who cites influences as diverse as the streamlined artisanal products of the Wiener Werkstätte, the monolithic architecture of Louis Kahn, and the playfully sculptural furniture of John Dickinson, she eschews prescriptive approaches to modern design and delights in occasional whimsical notes.
Emily Summers
At the designer’s Indian Wells, California, retreat, a Neal Small mirror glints above a Karl Springer sideboard in the dining room; the pendant light is by Jean de Merry, and the Leucos lamp and Jens Risom chairs are all vintage.
India Mahdavi
Curves, from languorous to hairpin, define Mahdavi's creative world. Based in Paris, the Iranian-born designer takes wood, ceramic, metal, and lacquer and combines them into playful, captivating interiors. Mahdavi’s latest public spaces include the Café Français brasserie in Paris (podlike seating in red and blue; acres of bronze-tone mirror) and Le Cloître hotel in Arles (baroque mosaic floors; off-kilter palettes of peacock-blue, moss-green, and saffron).
India Mahdavi
Four years ago Mahdavi was working in her Paris office when she received a surprising call from longtime clients. The husband and wife, based in London, phoned to say that they had just purchased a house on 150 acres in Litchfield County, Connecticut. It was not to be a vacation home, as one might expect, but rather their primary residence—an epic move for the couple, considering how accustomed they and their young children were to city living.
Jennifer Post
Long a proponent of crisp white rooms of exceptional purity, Post has loosened up a bit in recent years. Her sparely furnished modernist interiors—including homes for Jennifer Lopez and Simon Cowell—are still marked by spectacular expanses of white, but dashes of brilliant color and dark contrasts increasingly infiltrate the pristine palette that has been the New York designer’s calling card for more than two decades. “I’m done doing that,” she says, adding that trips to Jaipur, India, have opened her eyes, chromatically speaking.
Jennifer Post
Post designed this Manhattan apartment, where a vintage Stilnovo light fixture from John Salibello Antiques hangs in the living room. A cocktail table and console, both by Post, mingle with a Minotti sofa and armchair, the latter clad in a Pierre Frey faux suede.
Celerie Kemble
Raised in Palm Beach, Florida, Kemble looks to her hometown for the inspiration behind her exuberant, colorful interiors, which give traditional resort style a jolt of New York chic. The designer runs Kemble Interiors alongside her mother, Mimi McMakin, and also boasts product lines for Henredon, Maitland-Smith, and Schumacher .
Celerie Kemble
A living room in the Kemble-designed Playa Grande Beach Club in the Dominican Republic features whitewashed walls, handcrafted details, and furniture in tropical colors (the slipper chairs are Kemble's own design for Henredon). "I wanted the whole place to feel saturated with sun and salty air," Kemble says.
Alexa Hampton
As the owner and principal designer of the celebrated New York firm her late father founded in 1976, Hampton has established her own sterling reputation for fashioning traditional yet unstuffy interiors marked by classic proportions, judicious bursts of color, well-placed antique objects, and an assortment of luxuriant textures.
Alexa Hampton
Classical meets contemporary in the family room of Hampton’s recently renovated Manhattan apartment, which she shares with her husband, banker Pavlos Papageorgiou, and their three children.
Penny Drue Baird
An impassioned Francophile, Manhattan-based designer Baird maintains an office for her firm, Dessins, in Paris, a city that is an eternal source of inspiration for her. Though not overtly French, Baird’s style typically incorporates bold architectural gestures, sumptuous upholstery, and graceful European antiques—all infused with a Gallic sense of romance.
Penny Drue Baird
The living room of Nina Bauer and Andrew Shapiro’s New York apartment, which was renovated by architect David Ruff of Design Laboratories and decorated by Baird. The space serves as a gallery for works by, from left, Damien Hirst, William Klein, and Hiroshi Sugimoto. The angular armchairs are 1930s French, the barrel-back bergères are from Lee Calicchio, and the cowhide rug is by Stark Carpet.
Annabelle Selldorf
Known for her sophisticated, inviting takes on minimalism, New York–based Selldorf has long established herself as one of the art world’s go-to architects, having designed homes for top collectors and gallerists—as well as countless exhibition spaces worldwide. Last year she unveiled a new Manhattan outpost (built to LEED Gold standards) for art dealer David Zwirner, its exterior, lobby, and central stairwell clad in rugged board-formed concrete, smartly accented with teak.
Annabelle Selldorf
Selldorf masterminded a gut renovation of Anne-Gaëlle and Christophe Van de Weghe’s townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side; the home was decorated with the help of Francis D’Haene of D’Apostrophe Design.
Toshiko Mori
Modernist forms are poetically recast by Mori, whose Manhattan-based practice encompasses both institutional structures and an array of conceptually driven houses. “We observe carefully, paying close attention to site, environment, and program,” says Mori. The architect is noted for her use of innovative materials, mindful sequencing of rooms, and clever manipulation of natural light.
Toshiko Mori
For the Hudson Valley, New York, getaway of Mary and Sean Kelly, Mori stacked an upper story clad in aluminum-foam panels atop a glass-walled ground floor. The cast-iron figure is Antony Gormley’s sculpture You.
Victoria Hagan
Crisply elegant and cheerfully modern, Hagan’s interiors are characterized by a strong sense of proportion and adroit combinations of materials and textures set against a warm neutral palette. Since founding her Manhattan firm in 1991, Hagan (pictured here with her family) has attracted a loyal following of business leaders such as Revlon’s Ronald Perelman and Walt Disney chairman Bob Iger, for whom she has done several projects in New York and Los Angeles.
Victoria Hagan
The interior designer worked with Botticelli & Pohl Architects to create a Nantucket summer home. The family room’s sofa, wing chair, and pillows, all by Victoria Hagan Home Collection, are grouped with woven-rope lounge chairs by Ralph Lauren Home, a low table by Circa Antiques, and a carpet by Victoria Hagan for Holland & Sherry; the walls are painted in a Benjamin Moore gray.
Kelly Wearstler
The New Yorker dubbed her “the presiding grande dame of West Coast interior design,” but Wearstler is more rock star than matronly personage. Author, blogger, outré fashion plate, branding virtuoso (from sheets to jewelry), and decorator and muse of the Viceroy and Tides hotels—Wearstler cuts a profile as colorful as those of her clients (Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale, among others). Over the past decade her take on the Hollywood Regency style has spawned legions of imitators, who continue to gravitate to her inspired mix of graphic patterns, luxe textures, and eye-popping hues.
Kelly Wearstler
Working with M. Brian Tichenor of Tichenor & Thorp Architects, Wearstler created a bold new look for a family’s 1930s Bel Air, California, residence. The pool pavilion’s spiky brass light fixture was custom made; the herringbone-pattern floor is stained walnut.
Robin Standefer
One half of Roman and Williams , the firm she founded with her husband and partner, Stephen Alesch, Standefer has a deft ability to blend historic elements in inspiring ways, making the firm one of the most sought-after in the world.
Robin Standefer
At Le Coucou , New York's buzziest new restaurant (and one of the hardest to get into), Standefer and Alesch stripped the building down to its architectural bones and then added rich layers that make the space feel at once airy and moody. “We believe in the ethos of being a bit lavish," said Standefer of the restaurant's design.
Isabel López-Quesada
The Madrid-based designer endeavors to create “magical homes that are sensitive to the architecture and faithful to their place.” Working in locales as varied as Switzerland, Greece, and the Dominican Republic, López-Quesada manages to imbue every space she touches with a sense of lived-in and colorful history.
Isabel López-Quesada
The designer's own Madrid home is a warm tapestry of textures, from the carved fireplace to the built-in bookshelves and gray stone floors; even the omnipresent Eames lounge looks refreshingly relaxed in the space.
Suzanne Kasler
Long the go-to decorator for traditional interiors that don't skimp on comfort, Kasler has lent her expert eye to everything from furniture (for Hickory Chair) to textiles (Lee Jofa) to lighting (Visual Comfort), establishing a catalogue of sources that incorporate her attention to detail, texture, and history.
Suzanne Kasler
Subdued colors, custom curtains, and a crystal chandelier emphasize the magnificent windows in this Georgia home of Kasler's design.
Sara Story
Manhattan-based and Texas-raised, Story seems to blend the best elements of both worlds into her interiors, which are simultaneously elegant and playful. “It’s a luxury to live in a gorgeously built and designed home,” says the designer, who cut her teeth working for Victoria Hagan before branching out on her own in 2003.
Sara Story
Not one to shy away from a challenge, Story embarked on a full renovation of this once-crumbling Victorian home for her own family. “I knew it was going to take time, but it was a true labor of love,” she says of the project, which she managed to successfully transform into a bold but comfortable oasis.
Jan Showers
“Decorating is never successful if it’s not about the people who live in those spaces,” says Dallas-based designer Showers . Indeed, as the head of Jan Showers & Assoc., Showers has earned a loyal following for imbuing her spaces with comfort and personality, favoring modernism that never feels sparse or cold. In her furniture, textiles, and lighting (for Kravet as well as her own label), Showers skews elegant, with an emphasis on finely crafted details.
Jan Showers
In this suburban Phoenix home , Showers and architect Marwan Al-Sayed created a desert oasis with warm woods, supple leather, and no shortage of design details.
Mica Ertegun
The head of MAC II is as international as the sensual yet cerebral rooms she creates. The Romanian-born designer has lived in Canada, Turkey, and, for the past five decades, the U.S., where she launched her Manhattan-based firm with the late Chessy Rayner in 1967. Travel fuels Ertegun’s broad aesthetic, which holds dear the Ottoman glories of Istanbul’s Topkapi Palace as fervently as it does the semiaquatic charms of architect Moshe Safdie’s Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas. “Simplicity is key,” Ertegun says, adding that successful interiors possess “the appropriate mixture of old and new.”
Mica Ertegun
For the apartment of a gallerist in a Manhattan building designed by John Pawson, Ertegun opted for a neutral palette that would not upstage the art on display. In the living room, a Martin Kippenberger painting overlooks a Poliform sofa covered in an F. J. Hakimian cotton, a vintage marble-and-chrome cocktail table, and a Charlotte Perriand stool.
Madeline Stuart
In a city driven by artifice and spectacle, Los Angeles designer Stuart has the audacity to celebrate understatement, authenticity, and elegance without affectation. Which is not to say that her meticulously detailed interiors and furniture designs lack drama or impact. Indeed, in projects ranging from cultivated country homes in Wyoming and Montana to a splendid Beverly Hills abode for prominent art collectors, Stuart displays her mastery of centuries-spanning design lexicons, coupling historical inspiration with contemporary élan.
Madeline Stuart
A starburst granite-and-marble floor punctuates the entrance hall of El Sueño, entrepreneur Michael Rosenfeld’s Los Angeles house, designed by architect Kevin A. Clark and decorated by Stuart.
Rose Uniacke
“A room is not a museum of furniture," says designer Uniacke. "It should feel welcoming and human, calm and contemplative.” Indeed, if there's one thing her projects have in common, it's that they all have unmistakable soul. As the daughter of renowned antiques dealer Hilary Batstone, Uniacke has a unique understanding of both the beauty and the history an object can bring to a space, and this expertise is evident throughout her interiors.
Rose Uniacke
In the London townhouse of screenwriter Peter Morgan, Uniacke covered the light wood floors with a cowhide to add warmth and incorporated a variety of furniture styles for both visual interest and comfort.