Kips Bay - A Change of Place And Pace

As a gift from Kravet, participants of the company-sponsored "Blogfest 2012" in New York were treated to an exclusive visit to the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club's Decorator Showhouse on its 40th anniversary.

Traditionally and up until this year, venues for the annual event were exquisite townhouses, usually located on the Upper East Side as appropriately elaborate and luxurious backdrops for the skillful work of top-rated interior designers.

This year - by accident or design - the showcase is a double penthouse in a thoroughly modern building located on the far West Side. Take it as an omen for changing times or changing preferences of the cognoscenti or as a happy accident, this new venue offers a refreshed look at decoration and its possibilities within modern frameworks. Always a harbinger of decorating trends to come, Kips Bay this time around even becomes a surprising showcase for modern techniques available to interior designers today.

Before I get to those, I want to talk about color.
If you are anxious to know what next year's BIG color is going to be, look no further than Kips Bay. It's going to be Emerald Green with the addition of all the leaf greens of nature you can think of.
While greens have been in the wings of a rising color family for some time, especially the blue-trending greens, Kips Bay is a clear affirmation that this part of the color wheel is rising in direct proportion to the growing interest in and concerns for nature and the spreading obsession of integrating all things outdoors with the indoors.

At the new location for the Kips Bay Showhouse, that's a very easy thing to envision - surrounded as this spectacular space is by views of an outdoor pool , a fully landscaped outdoor lawn, stone and flower garden plus multiple terraces, all on the 21 floor - and to boot looking out over the Hudson River .

But I think more is at work here as the majority of the rooms are outfitted in shades of green - the most complete nature preserve being offered by Charlotte Moss who, to complete your sense of living in a garden, used digital technology to create murals of formal gardens covering one entire wall while the opposite wall becomes the backdrop of realistic boxwood for a cozy setting.
To complete the living in the country experience, she also used a digitally imaged wall covering using old barn wood siding as the decorative motif and baseboard trims of imaged tile designs. If this takes, just imagine how much money you can save in decorating - provided that is you have the imagination and the decorating skills of Charlotte Moss.

Thom Felicia chose "Green with Aviary" for his "A Tribute to Albert Hadley," the iconic designer who recently passed away, echoed by "Gentlemen's Quarters - A Homage to Albert Hadley" designed by Brian J,McCarthy, Bunny Williams and David Kleinberg &Design Associates, all alumni of the legendary firm of Parish-Hadley.

Emerald green is also the (surprising) choice of Jamie Drake for a wonderfully cozy library, "We Love Print," topped only by the definitive declaration of emerald green by Todd Anderson Romano in a tour de force dining room dominated by a faceted emerald green mirror and emerald green walls. And finally, absinthe green in a room by James Rixner and apple green as the dominant color for a Playroom by Laurie Bohn.

That neutrals are alive and well is demonstrated by Susan Zises Green in a beautiful two-story living room painted a pale gray and furnished with truffle colored upholstery and a "patched" Stark carpet. Accented with pale aqua and soft pinks, the mix combines into a delicious medley of soft and sensuous

Alexa Hampton, too, chose neutrals to dramatic effect. An all-white bed with a print lined canopy is the focal point of her bedroom, which is at once seductive but made strongly definitive in her choice of charcoal walls in high gloss lacquer called Dragon's Breath because of a touch of green to the gray. Black antique furniture with accents of gold perfectly mirror an impressive Caromandel screen suggesting privacy in the presence of so much exposure and glass.

For anyone interested in decoration at its best, this is a Must See - open through June 14.