Page 32 - Architectural Digest - USA (February 2020)
P. 32
DISCOVERIES
1
1. EVANGELINE
BRUCE’S FRENCH-
INFLECTED LONDON
DRAWING ROOM,
WITH ITS LEGENDARY
SILK DRAPERIES.
2. IT APPEARED IN AD’S
MARCH 1991 ISSUE.
THEN AND NOW
London Pride
A soigné circa-1970 drawing
room by John Fowler 2
leaves decorator Suzanne and Fowler was mad about Marie Antoinette. “The hand-
Rheinstein spellbound painted silk cushions, the Louis XVI furniture, the palette of
melons, lemons, corals, and blues. That lightheartedness made
a big impression on me,” the Los Angeles–based Rheinstein
says of the Bruces’ confectionary digs in Albany, London’s most
I observes of a favored interior: the London drawing thing in it was wonderful of its kind.” Notably the fantastical FROM TOP: DERRY MOORE; GABRIELLE PILOTTI LANGDON
exclusive apartment house. “It had so much charm, and every-
t’s still kind of thrilling,” designer Suzanne Rheinstein
oyster silk draperies frothing from ceiling to floor, the fabric
room of best-dressed hostess and amateur historian
Evangeline Bruce, featured in AD in March 1991.
cut with scalloped pinking shears, a detail that Fowler had
Decorated about two decades earlier by John Fowler,
took the bait. “I got this very, very, very elderly lady out of
a partner in the blue-chip British firm of Sibyl Colefax spotted on an antique dress in a museum. Rheinstein, smitten,
& John Fowler, it had a Francophile air and understandably retirement who had a pinking machine,” the decorator recalls,
so. Bruce’s late husband, David, had been U.S. ambassador to “and had her make curtains for my daughter’s room with a
Paris (among other spots); her favorite year was 1795, a Colefax and Fowler glazed chintz that was so shiny you could
tumultuous period when the Bourbon monarchy collapsed; practically see your reflection.” —MITCHELL OWENS
30 ARCHDIGEST.COM
