Not your typical Palm Beach mansion, this year’s Kips Bay Decorator Show House is a single-family brick Providencia house built in 1937, located on a corner lot in West Palm Beach.
With 7,706 square feet of living space, five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a backyard and outdoor pool, the initial showstopper is the large and towering banyan tree that greets you as you approach from the Intracoastal side of the home at 1125 N. Flagler Drive.
Featuring the work of 23 designers and architects, this home, a fundraising event for the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Clubs will also support the Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County and is open to the public through Sunday, March 16.
“Each year, the Kips Bay Decorator Show House Palm Beach inspires our community with its extraordinary creativity and generosity,” says Jaene Miranda, president of Boys & Girls Clubs of Palm Beach County. “The funds raised through this event directly impact the lives of over 30,000 children, empowering them to dream big and achieve their full potential.”
Modeled after the great winter gardens of Europe (think L’Orangerie at Versailles), Palm Beach-based Leta Austin Foster & Daughters Inc. created the “Winter Garden in Treillage,” in the home’s vestibule and foyer.
Hanging above a table showcasing patterns from their Palm Beach shop in the Via Mizner is a painted faux-bamboo lantern from Soane Britain. On the walls are a honeysuckle trellis wallpaper design, an homage to the dining room at the Colony Club in New York, and above the picture window, specially crafted pagoda-style cornices (“very hard to do”) by Gordon Ferguson Interiors.
Inspired by the great period of Palm Beach during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, Marshall Watson & Reid Deane Ganes (MWRDG) designed the “Deco Oasis” living space.
The room, partly inspired by the Jazz Age and partly by a French ocean liner — the 1932 SS Normandie (there is a porthole in the living room) — is family-friendly, Watson says.
The New York and Palm Beach-based designer segmented the room into two seating areas featuring a dining table and a découpage backgammon table from Bamboo & Rattan, where families can sit together and play après-diner games.
Featuring Addison Mizner-like architectural details, two Paul Frankl chairs bookending the 1940 style Carnegie sofa, a hand-stenciled sisal rug from Patterson Flynn Martin and bamboo trim on the moldings, complete with — look closely — champagne bubbles floating on the ceiling.
Watson, who gets his inspiration from designers William (Billy) Baldwin, who designed the White House for President John F. Kennedy and British interior designers Sibyl Colefax and David Hicks, created a room that is a testament to understated elegance.
His second coffee table book, Defining Elegance, featuring his design aesthetic from Connecticut to California, is coming out this month.
In a departure from the green-theme and foliage-inspired designs, Chicago-based designer Erin Shakoor’s “The Continuum” is a sleek mixture of blacks and golds for a bathroom, mixing pattern upon pattern to create an upscale and elevated room.
Also creating a sleek look in “The He(art) of the Home” (aka the kitchen) is Rajni Alex of Rajni Alex Design of Boca Raton and New York, whose vision for the kitchen, hallway and laundry room makes use of a palette of burgundy-brown cabinetry, violet marble and ebony countertops complete with built-in wine and espresso bars.
In this her first endeavor with Kips Bay, Alex uses appliances from JennAir’s Burlesque line, Dekton Kelya countertops from Cosentino and Calacatta Viola marble by Armina Stone for the backsplash.
Everything is well-organized, with recessed drawers to hold objects from snacks to pet food and bowls, and a laundry room decorated with Pioneer Linen and Cat Alexander and Schumacher wallpaper. A small anteroom off the kitchen gives a nod to Palm Beach glamour, but is not stereotypical.
Molten wallpaper by Fromental drips liquid silver without being ostentatious, with a custom hand-blown glass botanica light fixture by Avram Rusu Studio in both the sitting room and the adjacent kitchen.
“When I saw the wallpaper, it literally melted my heart,” says Alex, whose design aesthetic is to connect the past with the present, as the house is not quite a century old.
The hallway leading to the kitchen is an immersive experience, Alex says, not just a passageway.
In a nod to the large banyan tree in the front of the house and another one by the pool, the passageway features a custom Maria Trimbell mural wallcovering and an antique Oushak runner by Sacco, evoking visions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Returning to the green theme, Christopher Drake and Will Steele of Bierly Drake and Steele of Palm Beach created “Le Jardin Botanique,” a sophisticated dining room with a “feeling of the town,” bringing the outside in with tropical greenery punctuated with touches of black for a dramatic effect, creating a sense of timelessness.
Also in the same hue is the “Lilly Pad,” an homage by Amanda Reynal of Amanda Reynal Interiors to Palm Beach designer Lilly Pulitzer’s greens, pinks and light blues.
Transforming an office space into a ladies’ lounge, Reynal collaborated with Lee Jofa x Lilly Pulitzer, coinciding with the debut of their new interior fabric, wallcovering, and trim collection, which launches this spring.
“It’s an opportunity to use a fashion brand to translate to an interior design,” says Reynal, while wearing a Lilly green shift dress.
Reynal creates a whimsical and livable contemporary space with vintage touches. The centerpiece of the room is the Lee Jofa x Lilly Pulitzer grasscloth wallcovering with aqua and green palm trees, and a Kelly green lambrequin over curtains by The Shade Store.
In the powder room, the Lilly wallpaper coordinates with the teal Kohler sink and toilet. There is faux tortoise shell artwork by Pulitzer’s daughter, Minnie Pulitzer, and an underwater shark photograph by Pulitzer’s grandson, Chris Leidy, hanging over the sofa as well as original Slim Aarons photography from the Lilly Pulitzer private collection.
It was a challenge, Reynal says, to create not only a sense of place but a livable one.
“I wanted to create a space you can live with,” she says. “You can’t change your décor, like your clothes, every day.”
“I want people to be able to picture themselves living here,” says the designer, who is making her second appearance at Kips Bay.
Other rooms not to miss:
• The second-floor bathroom by Pennsylvania designer Kelly Collier-Clark of House of Clark Interiors, with its Caribbean scenery wallpaper and cranes flying on the ceiling overhead. In the hallway, Palm Beach artist Serge Strosberg’s painting of Addison Mizner’s pet monkey, Johnny Brown, greets visitors as they ascend the staircase to the upper level.
Adjacent to the bathroom is the wellness lounge where designer Marie Cloud of Indigo Pruitt Design Studio creates a “Renewal Retreat” with the intention of “Rest, renew, reflect.”
Bathed in a color palette of lavender, rosemary and mint with a soupçon of chartreuse, the room features an adjacent space for reflection with a wall of back-lit blue and white quartzite from Primestone. Is it the ocean? Is it the sky? Whatever it is, it’s meant to calm.
• Last, but not least, Miami-based husband-and-wife team of Monica Santayana and Ronald Alvarez of Moniomi Design created a multifunctional recreational room, titled “11:11” that is elevated, but fun. The space, centered around a large, marble-and-onyx ping-pong table that doubles as a dining table, exudes a spirit of playfulness despite its luxurious furnishings.
Santayana calls the adjacent bathroom, with its Rosie Li chandelier and vintage Kohler fixtures in Heritage Pink, “The Enchanted Forest,” as it brings the flowers and foliage of the outside into the powder room.
The Kips Bay Decorator Show House is open through Sunday, March 16. A Show House ticket is $50 when purchased in advance. If buying more than 10 tickets at a time in advance, the ticket price is $45. If you wish to buy tickets on the day of at the Show House, those tickets are $60 and subject to availability. Visit www.kipsbaydecoratorshowhouse.org.