At New York's Kips Bay Decorator Show House, themes for interiors range from a "panic room" (with martinis and fake Kalashnikovs) to a child’s room out of Wizard of Oz.
A $75 million Manhattan mansion, whose last tenant, Salander-O’ Reilly Galleries LLC, has been accused of swindling investors out of $88 million, has gotten a posh makeover. New York’s annual interior-design extravaganza, Kips Bay Decorator Show House, has taken over the 1922 neo-Italian Renaissance townhouse with pillows, a Steinway and a Buddha head.
The exhibition raises money for Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club, an organisation helping disadvantaged children in the Bronx. In recent years, the nonprofit group, which selects the designers, raised around $1 million from ticket sales, galas and cocktails. Earlier this month, 220 patrons, including Martha Stewart, paid $600 each for the show’s preview dinner.
More than 30 high-end decorators are participating in Kips Bay’s 37th edition, transforming the five-story building into an escapist design fantasy. They tore down the walls of cramped offices, turned a walk-in closet into a glamorous (nonfunctional) bathroom and converted a tiny basement space into a chic “panic room” complete with a martini set, oxygen tank, Kalashnikovs (fake) and a painting by contemporary artist George Condo (real).
“If the world’s order completely breaks down, this is the place where you can escape,” said William T Georgis, the panic room’s creator. “You’ve got water, cigarettes, music, martinis, some handguns, grenades and a bulletproof vest. What more do you need?” The Salander-O’ Reilly Galleries was padlocked by a court order a year and a half ago. Lawrence B Salander, who rented the mansion, is free on bail awaiting trial. He is accused of stealing $88 million from investors, clients and Bank of America.
Two Months Free
The building is listed at $75 million with Sotheby’s International Realty. The owner, a real-estate developer and art collector named Aby Rosen, lent the townhouse to Kips Bay for more than two months free of charge. “I am a supporter of Kips Bay,” Rosen said in a telephone interview. “I had the house empty and I gave it to them.”
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“This is your best way to expose a house to the market,” said Janna Bullock, a real-estate developer, who lent two mansions to the Kips Bay show in 2004 and 2007. “You have thousands of people come through your house and most of them are your target market.”
Bullock, who sold one of the mansions, is participating in the exhibition as a decorator this year. A contemporary-art collector, she transformed a fifth-floor landing and a stairway shaft into light-filled, moss-covered viewing rooms. She used the space underneath the mansion’s glass ceiling to create a living room in midair. Furniture sculpture by Russian artist Anya Zholud, outlined with iron wire and hollow inside, seems to float overhead. Sam Taylor-Wood’s panoramic photomontage of a lounging family wraps around the walls.
“Wizard of Oz”
Designers pay for the transformations. For instance, Zoya Bograd spent nearly $100,000 to create a child’s room inspired by the 1939 The Wizard of Oz movie, starring Judy Garland. Bograd dropped the ceiling to hide an ugly air- conditioning duct and built a platform to elevate a pink vinyl bed. She also encrusted purple lamps with Swarovski crystals. The retro furniture, made of wood and covered with silver foil, includes a dog bed that resembles a miniature throne with fuchsia padding.
“It represented a Munchkin Land for me,” Bograd said of the dog bed. “I was hoping to make people feel good and forget about the economy.”
Designer Matthew Smyth also looked to the past to escape the present. He constructed a room where teenage heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, now 85, may have read Walt Whitman and spritzed herself with Chanel circa 1940. “It was like doing a set for a movie or a play,” Smyth said.
Using Vanderbilt’s diaries and memoirs, he created a dreamy lap of luxury, complete with a Burmese carved rosewood chair and Persian side table with pearl inlay. A 1928 mirrored screen painted with large peacocks seemed like a steal at $3,500. It was spoken for before the show opened. “Gloria bought it,” Smyth said.