Showing off in Manhattan

May 17, 2016

The 2016 Kips Bay Show House showcases the imagination of our industry – including some handsome mirrors by our friend and client Mark Evans.

There are decorator show houses, and then there is the Kips Bay Decorator Show House. Over the past 44 years the show, or “annual glitz-a-thon” as The Washington Post’s Jura Koncius terms it, has become the most prestigious such affair in the country. “The designers selected to participate are among the best in the world,” she writes. “And the creativity they weave into their spaces ends up in the pages of major shelter magazines and eventually trickles down to a home retailer near you.”

The event has raised $20 million over the years for Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club. This year’s setting is a 10,000 square-foot, six-level townhouse, The Carlton House Townhouse, adjacent to a new condominium fronting Madison Avenue. For $49.5 million, the new owner can look across 61st street into the stylish floors of Barneys New York.

The Post’s writer observed several design trends in the house: armless sofas, unconventional fireplace surrounds, the color blue, and lots of silver and gold used together. She noted a blooming of LED fairy lights, embedded in bookcases, sewn into curtains and draped on chandeliers.

In a sitting room with a soft palette by Atlanta designer Suzanne Kasler, we were pleased to observe an eye-catching array of convex mirrors made by our client and good friend Mark Evans for Quintus, the Los Angeles home furnishings company endorsed by our friend and client Roger Thomas. Mark crafts these objects with precision, wit and energy in his basement studio in San Francisco, and they make a fine scene in this year’s edition of one of our design world’s most extraordinary shows.

See more photos of the house by Architectural Digest and by The New York Times.