Le Salon à New York de Miss Elsie de Wolfe

Elsie de Wolfe (1865-1950) was one of the most celebrated and innovative personalities in the field of interior design, and indeed was America's first female interior decorator, who early in her career pronounced that 'I am going to make everything around me beautiful. That will be my life'. An intimate of the Duchess of Windsor, her dazzling array of clients included Anne Vanderbilt and Henry Clay Frick (whose Fifth Avenue townhouse she decorated). The Cond Nast commission was one of her most celebrated decorating projects, and its daring combination of modern decorations and 18th century furniture with rich chinoiserie and floral wall treatments typified her ebullient approach. As a 1929 Vogue article on her own New York apartment remarked 'Throughout, old things have been used in the modern manner-a paradox that is extremely effective'.