Legends of Design: Sister Parish

When we talk about legendary designers as I do in this (semi)regular series of "Legends of Design," one name always ranks among the top: Sister Parish. With an approach that helped define American interior design as we know it, Parish was a true original--combining tradition with personality, elegance with comfort, and history with charm.

Image via Sister Parish Design

Born Dorothy May Kinnicutt in 1910, she was nicknamed "Sister" as a child, a name that would stick with her throughout her life and career. Raised in a prominent New York family, Parish was surrounded by refinement from an early age (the family had homes in Maine, and Paris as well as Manhattan!). In fact, her father collected antiques and her mother's cousin was the celebrated designer Dorothy Draper, previously here. Yet, it wasn’t high society that shaped her unique aesthetic--it was her deep love for home, storytelling, and the lived-in feel of beautiful, well-loved rooms.

Image via Sister Parish Design

A Sister Parish room.
photo credits: Bartlett, Apple Parish, and Susan Bartlett Crater.
From Sister: The Life of Legendary American Interior Decorator Mrs. Henry Parish II.
St. Martin's Press, 2000. via Sister Parish Design

Another Sister Parish room.
Photo credits: Bartlett, Apple Parish, and Susan Bartlett Crater.
From Sister: The Life of Legendary American Interior Decorator Mrs. Henry Parish II.
St. Martin's Press, 2000. via Sister Parish Design

She officially began decorating professionally in the 1930s, launching her firm during the Great Depression, a bold move that showed her determination and resilience especially considering that she was completely untrained and had never read a book about interior design or worked in the field in any capacity. Her big break came in the 1960s when she was chosen to redecorate the Kennedy White House, although legend has it that the working relationship between client and designer was anything but smooth with Parish saying that Mrs. Kennedy felt she did not have to pay all the design fees owed. However, her signature mix of American country charm and classical European elements brought warmth and authenticity to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The yellow Oval Room in the Sister Parish-decorated White House

In 1962, she partnered with the young and equally talented Albert Hadley, to work on the Kennedy White House--"I only did the drapes" he famously quipped. Two years later, they cemented their partnership, forming the legendary firm Parish-Hadley. Their partnership lasted over 30 years and set the gold standard in American design. Together, they created interiors that were timeless, eclectic, and deeply personal.

Image via Sister Parish Design

Image via Sister Parish Design

Parish-Hadley interior, photographed by Peter Frank Edwards/Redux

Their client list reads like a who’s who of American society at the time: the Gettys, Babe and Bill Paley, Brooke Astor, Betsey and Jock Whitney, Jacqueline and John Kennedy, and Sarah, Duchess of York. But it wasn't just the rich and famous who adored her work, it was anyone who loved the Parish-Hadley style that combined high and low.

Sister Parish was a master of juxtaposition. She wasn’t afraid to mix chintz with needlepoint, antiques with slipcovers, or high-end pieces with humble ones. She believed rooms should evolve over time and reflect the soul of their inhabitants. This philosophy—anti-minimalist, rich in texture, and deeply layered—continues to influence designers today.

She also helped shape a distinctly American approach to decorating: less about perfection, more about personality. Her rooms often included hand-painted floors, soft lighting, embroidered fabrics, and a sense of cozy grandeur that felt both elevated and inviting.

A 1999 Architectural Digest article described Parish's style: "Her interiors as a rule were refreshingly unstudied, unself-conscious, and unstrained...A Sister Parish room overflowed, to be sure—but buoyantly. It was romantic and whimsical but not sentimental; and, always, it was light—the rug might be Aubusson, the mirror Chippendale and the chandelier Waterford, but she undercut these "brand names" with all manner of charming distractions. Her living rooms lived: They were friendly to the world."

In 1994, House Beautiful editor Lou Gropp said, "There is no question that Sister Parish was one of the biggest influences on decorating in the United States. She dominated the decorating of the 1970s and '80s, and many of her ideas that were fresh and new in the 1970s are now in the mainstream of American decorating."

Sister stayed on as a partner at Parish-Hadley into her 80s. She passed away September 8, 1994 in Maine. Albert stayed on, running the firm until 1999. After closing Parish-Hadley, he opened his own design firm, Albert Hadley, Inc.

As you can see, Sister Parish’s legacy is more than just her iconic rooms. It’s her approach to creating homes that feel lived-in, loved, and full of life that added to the evolution of interior design

Today, the Sister Parish brand lives on. Her granddaughter Susan Crater opened Sister Parish Design in 2000, and the company sells archive and Parish-inspired designs in fabric and wallcoverings!

Happy designing!

Legends of Design: Kelly Wearstler

Can one be a Legend of Design and still be alive? For this installation of Legends of Design, I say "yes."

Kelly Wearstler began her design journey after a stint working in motion picture art departments in Hollywood by opening up her eponymous studio in 1995. She soon met her future husband, Brad Korzen who hired her to design his own home as well as several properties owned by his real estate group, Kor Realty Group. She has since developed into a force in the industry. Known for her clothes and high heels as much as her interiors, Wearstler has mined several design styles, working in once-popular vernaculars and pretty much single-handedly bringing them back into the consciousness of the design community. Mid-Century Modern gave way to Hollywood Regency (previously mentioned here), beautifully profiled in her second book, Domicilium Decoratus: Hillcrest Estate, Beverly Hills, California.

This was my first complete exposure to Wearstler's work and I was dazzled. It is a profile of her own home, the Hillcrest Estate in Beverly Hills. The decor inside is full-on Hollywood Regency with a deft mix of antiques, vintage, and modern with touches of exotica.

Wearstler, maybe more than any other current interior designer, truly revels in what she does. One can tell by her creations that she truly loves textures, shapes, color, space, pattern...all the basic elements that make up an interior design...and the marvelous frisson that can result from their unexpected combinations. Look at the love and care with which she assembled her Hillcrest Estate above, curating a maximalist experience that is jaw-dropping.

Wearstler has designed an incredible number of hotels starting with the Avalon Beverly Hills in 1999 as well as a long list of restaurants; visit her website to see photos of these projects as there are too many to include here in this post. As she has moved from project to project, she has expanded her visual vocabulary and now includes silhouettes and colors of the Memphis/Ettore Sottsass movement (previously here) as well as the rounded sturdy organic shapes of Brutalism. Let's look at her Malibu beach house to see an example of these styles. She eschews the tired blue-and-white beach house theme for a sun-bleached approach with not a blue to be found. The simplicity of the design itself allows nature outside to be the star.

Wearstler has also designed homes for many celebrities and non-celebrities...so, because I just can't resist, I leave you with some views of a home she designed for a couple on Mercer Island In Washington. Again, on display is her commitment to natural stone, textures, unexpected colors, and materials. Just phenomenal.

Happy designing!

Legends of Design: Dorothy Draper

Who was the first interior designer in the United States? An intriguing question indeed, since there seems to be two answers...

In a previous post here, I wrote about a woman named Elsie de Wolfe who is considered to be the mother of Interior Design as a profession. Born in 1865 (although her Wiki page wonders if she was born in 1859), de Wolfe had many society friends who admired her work in her own home and asked for her services to brighten and refresh their own spaces. But it wasn't until 1905 that de Wolfe became known as a true, professional interior designer when famed New York City architect Stanford White was designing The Colony Club, a women's socialite club on Madison Avenue started by suffragettes, and brought de Wolfe in to design the interior spaces. Based on that success, she opened up her design studio on 5th Avenue.

However, a few years later, another driving force in Interior Design arrived in the form of one Dorothy Draper. She was born into the wealthy Tuckerman family in Tuxedo Park, NY in 1889 who divided time between three homes--a mansion in Tuxedo Park, a Manhattan townhouse, and a summer cottage in Newport, Rhode Island, as well as traveling to Europe for summers. Her class and milieu certainly formed her taste and in a 2006 New York Times article about Draper, Donald Albrecht, the curator of architecture and design at the Museum of the City of New York, said her "background not only provided Draper with a valuable network of clients and an innate sense of entitlement and authority, but also offered her a first-hand acquaintance with the historical styles that she would freely interpret and transform."

Dorothy married George Draper in 1912 and began decorating a series of homes they bought and sold. Much like de Wolfe, her socialite friends saw and admired what she was creating and sought her out to design their own homes. And in 1925, she opened up what is considered the first official Interior Design business in the United States, the Architectural Clearing House. Four years and many successful renovations later, she changed the name of the firm to Dorothy Draper and Company.

She championed a very specific aesthetic that was a blend of elements from Louis XIV, the wild ornamentation of Rococo, and a bit of neoclassicism from Louis XVI with contemporaneous elements and silhouettes from the 1920s. Her favorite color palette of red, green, powder blue, and yellow was offset by her penchant for cabbage-rose chintz, bamboo trellis and cabana stripe prints, palm frond wallcoverings, and black & white checked flooring. Her maximalist style came to be known as "Modern Baroque," or "Hollywood Regency" which can be seen in films from the 1920s all the way up to the 1950s. Her style can also be directly traced to the work of current designers like Kelly Wearstler and Johnathan Adler.

Draper's most famous project remains The Greenbrier, a massive resort in West Virginia dating from 1858 (!), that still prominently features her design sensibility. Draper was retained in 1946 to refresh and redecorate the resort, mingling her Modern Baroque flair with a Federalist style appropriate to the area. And while there have been changes over the years, the facility has not abandoned the original candy-colored schemes and details. Dorothy Draper is there in bright, full spirit. You can stay at The Greenbrier and see Draper's iconic work for yourself. Visit their site for information.
All following photos from The Greenbrier.

In 1964, Dorothy Draper sold her company to designer Carleton Varney who had worked closely with Draper for four years. He faithfully continued the legacy and style of Draper until his death in 2022 but Dorothy Draper and Company is still in operation.

Happy designing!