This article originally appeared in the November 2010 issue of ELLE DECOR. For more stories from our archive, subscribe to ELLE DECOR All Access.
Suzanne Rheinstein’s new book, At Home: A Style for Today with Things from the Past, showcases the way several families live in two separate abodes with largely different styles. But she almost didn’t make it into her own book. Rheinstein, the acclaimed Los Angeles–based designer and proprietor of Hollyhock, lives in a Georgian house in the Hancock Park neighborhood, and had for decades pined for a proper Manhattan apartment. When her daughter, Kate, who lives in New York, got married and grandchildren seemed likely (now there are two), Suzanne’s husband, Fred, finally relented. He also found the perfect spot.
The apartment, a light-filled corner space on the Upper East Side, is half of a former duplex—the grand, public half. That means it has a living room of abundant dimension rare in a one-bedroom, as well as a library, bedroom, and primary bath. She has imbued it with a markedly different look from her West Coast residence. “We adore our house in L.A.,” she says. “It’s very forgiving and full of wonderful family treasures. But for New York, I wanted something a little more city, a little more stylized. And I wanted the palette to be a little more calm.”
To that end, she employed soothing grays and creams and taupes and soft, greeny blues, including the many fabrics she chose from her own line for Lee Jofa. Some, like the damask on a pair of vintage wingback chairs, are used on the wrong side “to keep them from being too out-there,” she explains. There’s color, she adds, but “it’s just very offbeat, like the pale ochre pillow on the chaise, or the velvet on the pair of stools—I don’t even know what you’d call that.”
The sense of calm is further enhanced by the walls. In the library they’re covered in her own French Paisley, which is also used on the Syrie Maugham sofa. “I’ve always loved those French rooms where everything is done in the same fabric,” she says. “It makes the room enveloping without being ‘cozy,’ if you know what I mean.” When she realized that the living room’s windows, beams, and alcoves would make it difficult to hang art, she hired Bob Christian, an artist and decorative painter who is a frequent collaborator, to create a subtly gorgeous mural that surrounds the room.