biography
| name: |
de Wolfe, Elsie
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| |
also known as Lady Mendl
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| sex:
| female
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| lived:
| (1865–1950)
|
| biography:
| Interior decorator, born in New York City, New York, USA. She adapted the fashion sense of her acting years (1890–1904) to a career as America's first professional woman decorator. The transformation of her own house (1898) from gloomy, cluttered Victorian to light, airy Neoclassical led to freelance work on New York's Colony Club, the Frick mansion, and houses of the wealthy. The restoration of her own Villa Trianon in France and her marriage to a British diplomat marked her 1920s and 1930s. World War 2 brought the couple to Los Angeles. A self-promoting eccentric, she claimed the introduction of blue-tinted hair, white upholstery, and leopard chintzes. |
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