Who Was The First Luxury Interior Designer?

There is a permanence to luxury and class, and whilst there will always be trends and concepts in modern luxury furniture that move in and out of fashion, the right pieces will always be part of a strong interior design concept, even if they are used in different ways.

This is part of the reason why a lot of establishments that specialise in selling beautiful timeless furniture pieces will also offer planning and design services to make the most of your home and get a style that is light, striking and supremely welcoming.

This was not always the case, of course, and it was thanks to the first professional interior designer of any renown that rooms were designed to make the most of their furniture pieces and create as inviting a space as possible during an era of design built around claustrophobic maximalism.

The Lady Mendl

Known personally as Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl was born circa 1859 and very quickly developed a particularly strong dislike of Victorian interior design, particularly as it had shifted in a more Gothic, melancholic direction following the death of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria’s choice to wear black for the rest of her life.

Describing herself as a rebellious figure in a world she considered “ugly”, and whilst she pursued acting as her career choice initially, she found herself more interested in the staging aspect and by the start of the 20th century had become fully immersed in interior design.

Wanting a break from the ostentatious, opulent and dark designs popular in the era of the late Queen Victoria, she converted the interior of Irving House from a high Victorian style into one that matched her own design sensibilities.

She opted for designs based around light and nature, with a particular focus on greens, whites and pale shades in an attempt to draw as much natural light into the room as possible.

Lady Mendl also turned mirrors into a key feature of the home, opted for lighter pieces of luxury furniture and chose wallpaper designs which featured optical illusions, all with the aim of making light, airy, soft spaces to enjoy.

If any of these design choices sound familiar, it is because they have since become the standard for many luxury interior design styles.

Her style quickly garnered attention, aided by her pre-existing fame, and architect Stanford White asked her to design the interior of the Colony Club, a women-only social club in New York City.

The style, inspired by outdoor pavilions and Pre-Revolutionary France, became exceptionally popular upon its opening in 1907, primarily because of her revolutionary interior design that removed the weight and cloying nature of interior fashion of the time.

This made her the most popular interior designer from the start of the 20th century until the 1930s and her design sensibilities proved to be extremely influential.

In Mrs De Wolfe’s signature dramatic fashion, she claimed she let the air and sunshine into American homes, and there was a distinct change in interior decoration before her work at the Colony Club and afterwards, with an outstretched influence still felt to this day.