With fabulous flair

What has fabulous flair?

an office with fabulous flair

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Some fabulous kitchens...

My design

Posted by Leila Armstrong Winssinger at 2:34 PM

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Who had more fabulous flair than this woman?

so her....so Diana Vreeland!

Vreeland was the eldest daughter of American socialite mother Emily Key Hoffman and British father Frederick Young Dalziel. Hoffman was a descendant of George Washington's brother as well as a cousin of Francis Scott Key. She also was a distant cousin of Pauline de Rothschild. On March 1, 1924, Diana married Thomas Reed Vreeland, and they moved to London. Like Syrie Maugham and Elsie de Wolfe, other society women that ran their own boutiques, Diana operated a lingerie business near Berkeley Square whose clients included Wallis Simpson and Mona Williams. She often visited Paris, where she would buy her clothes, mostly from Chanel, whom she had met in 1926. In 1937, the Vreelands moved from London to New York City. They found New York City to be extremely expensive. Carmel Snow, the editor of Harper's Bazaar, was impressed with Vreeland's clothing style and asked her to work at the magazine. From 1937 until her resignation, Diana Vreeland ran a column for Harper's Bazaar called "Why Don't You?". One example is a suggestion she made in the column, "Why don't you.... Turn your child into an Infanta for a fancy-dress party?" Vreeland disliked the common approach to dressing that she saw in the United States in the forties. She detested "strappy high heel shoes" and the "crêpe de chine dresses" that women wore even in the heat of the summer in the country. In 1955, the Vreelands moved to a new apartment which was decorated exclusively in red. Diana Vreeland had Billy Baldwin decorate her apartment. She said, "I want this place to look like a garden, but a garden in hell." Regular attendees at the parties the Vreelands threw were socialite C.Z. Guest, composer Cole Porter and British photographer Cecil Beaton. In 1957's Paramount movie musical Funny Face, the character of Maggie Prescott (as portrayed by Kay Thompson) was based on Vreeland. In 1960, John F. Kennedy became president and Diana Vreeland advised the First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in matters of style. "Vreeland advised Jackie throughout the campaign and helped connect her with fashion designer Oleg Cassini, who became chief designer to the first lady.

Nancy Lancaster

Nancy's living room

Nancy Lancaster was a 20th-century tastemaker and the owner of Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, an influential British decorating firm that codified what is known as the English country-house look. Nancy Lancaster was a niece of Nancy Astor, the British politician, and of Irene Gibson, the wife of the Gibson Girl artist Charles Dana Gibson. She was first married, in 1917, to Henry Field, an heir to the Marshall Field department store fortune. He died five months later, following an operation to remove his tonsils. In 1920 she married bisexual journalist and investor Ronald Tree, a cousin of her first husband, and moved to England. In 1933 the Trees bought Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire, and it was the decoration of this house which earned Nancy the reputation of having "the finest taste of almost anyone in the world." She married, thirdly, in 1948, Lieutenant Colonel Claude Lancaster, who owned Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire. Renowned today for its gardens, it is a popular tourist site and said to be Nancy Lancaster's favorite home of all despite their divorce after only five years in 1953. The couple had been having an affair for years prior to their marriage, and Nancy Lancaster later claimed that it was the suffocating, day-to-day intimacy caused by their marriage that made her realize why they were successful as lovers and ill-suited as husband and wife. In 1950 she was forced to sell her beloved Mirador, and so in 1954 Nancy bought Haseley Court near Oxford. She renovated and decorated the house with the help of her business partner, John Fowler. They also created the famous Yellow room at Avery Row, Mayfair one of the finest rooms in London.

and there was Sister Parish

Sister Parish born Dorothy May Kinnicutt was an American interior decorator and socialite. She was the first interior designer brought in to decorate the Kennedy White House. Parish's influence can still be seen at the White House, particularly in the Family Dining Room and Yellow Oval Room. A stately and occasionally eccentric white-haired lady, Parish was the design partner of Albert Hadley, a Tennessee-born decorator, with whom she co-founded Parish-Hadley Associates (1962-1999). Both were equally influential, Parish for her homey, cluttered traditionalism and passion for patchwork quilts, painted furniture, and red-lacquer secretaries and Hadley for his clean-cut take on modernism. She was partial to the understated English country house look, and her combinations of Colefax and Fowler chintzes, overstuffed armchairs, and brocade sofas with such unexpected items as patchwork quilts, four-poster beds, knitted throws, and rag rugs led to her being credited with ushering in what became known as American country style during the 1960s. As the only daughter in a five child family, Parish acquired the nickname "Sister," which lead to her being mistaken in the press as a nun with a talent for arranging furniture. Married in 1930 to Henry Parish II, an investment banker with whom she had three children, Parish opened her firm in suburban New Jersey in 1933 as part of a plan to help the family finances during the Great Depression. Briefly, she worked as the American business partner of London-based tastemaker Nancy Lancaster, the Virginia-born owner of the eminent British textile firm Sybil Colefax & John Fowler. In addition to the White House, Parish's clients included the philanthropist Jane Engelhard and the socialite and art collector Betsey Cushing Roosevelt Whitney. One of Parish's cousins was another influential 20th-century interior decorator, Dorothy Draper.

with a room that she designed..

some of today's women with fabulous flair..Diane Keaton

Keaton's room

Carolyn Roehm

Roehm's room

Charlotte Moss

great flair from a designer of today

another Moss

Moss always delivers!

some fabulous rooms..with great flair

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eating must please the eye, PLEASE!

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outside design is as important as the inside..

About Me

Leila Armstrong Winssinger: Leila Armstrong Winssinger is an award winning interior designer who has three college degrees, wrote and illustrated a children's book, and has a line of greeting cards. She is a Cordon Bleu schooled cook that has also designed logos and written some songs for fun. She continues to live every day to the fullest be it in London, New York, California, or Arizona.

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