George Stacey and the Creation of American Chic by Rizzoli International Publications

precocious connoisseurship and a keen eye for detail that prompted Odom to arrange a Parisian scholarship for Stacey. According to legend, Odom was so impressed that he extended a scholarship to the Paris Ateliers right then and there in the hotel suite. Sailing for France on the Rochambeau in 1922 marked a turning point for Stacey. With its glorious urban design, limestone architecture, and illustrious museums, Paris was a coup de coeur for the aesthetically passionate young New Englander and would remain so throughout his life. Meanwhile, the Paris Ateliers continued the refinement of Stacey. As in New York, the school emphasized sketching from life, an exercise that Stacey evidently valued, given that he guarded amongst his possessions a tattered sketching pass to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, as well as a photo of himself clutching his sketchpad. The outings sharpened his historical understanding, attuned his eye to craftsmanship, and stimulated his intellect.

hen in New York, Odom lived in luxury hotels such as the Pierre, where his fastidious taste necessitated painting the walls, rearranging and supplementing hotel furniture with his own antiques and slipcovers in off-white damask, and adding flowers. Odom summoned Stacey to such a room and asked him to point out the best antique prior to awarding him a scholarship to Paris.

Best of all, Paris was the center for the French furniture that already enticed him. While the school set up private visits to many of the finest dealers in town, Stacey devised his own supplementary antique study program. Designer Ethel Smith, who would later distinguish herself with a fifty-year career at McMillen, wryly recalled how she and Stacey would compete every day in Paris to find the most interesting antique. Invariably, the antique-obsessed Stacey won, never ceasing the hunt until he was certain he had triumphed. While the predictable result of the prescribed school program was that Stacey became a devotee of classicism, symmetry, and the eighteenth century, its unintended side effect was a lifelong compulsion to antique and acquire. Odom’s influence on Stacey extended well beyond the scholarship to Paris. The cool, controlled signatures of Odom’s style echo strikingly in Stacey’s work through-

out his career. The love of symmetry, subdued wall color with stronger colors in the foreground, the mixing of small-scaled custom upholstered chairs scaled to complement eighteenth-century antiques, the beautifully balanced wall arrangements, the disciplined restraint and love of the neoclassical are all elements of Odom’s work which infiltrated the Stacey oeuvre. Like Stacey, Odom loved objects as much as furniture—his exquisite collection of opaline glass glows to this day in a cabinet at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris—and was drawn to rich fabrics to contrast with the simplicity of the backgrounds he created. Odom’s insistence that classes be held in the elegant Hôtel de Chaulnes on the Place des Vosges, was not lost on Stacey either: the lessons of placement and proportion gained from intimate knowledge of these rooms was continually exhibited in Stacey’s own rooms. Stacey could take a vast room in a palace or a great room in the country, and impose a serene order on the space through thoughtful scale and furniture placement. Succeeding generations of designers would in turn admire the seamless spatial accord of furniture distribution, art arrangement, and positioning of objects on surfaces (Albert Hadley saved published photos of Stacey rooms in his personal design notebooks) and carry the tradition forward. Perhaps it was a glimpse of self-recognition that made Odom an aspirational figure for Stacey. Beyond the nascent connoisseurship, there were other similarities. Both men came from backgrounds indifferent to their artistry and sublimated their insecurity in the pursuit of beauty. The diffidence displayed by both men (Odom was known at times to communicate to his students indirectly through others, as it was too painful for him to address them directly) –and Odom’s unlikely but evident success, were also likely encouraging for the shy Stacey. The reputedly sumptuous lifestyle of William Odom— summers in Venice at the Palazzo Barbaro, a Rolls-Royce with perfectly liveried driver that crossed the Atlantic with Odom twice a year, two hundred bespoke Huntsman suits, and a valet—was footed by the profits of the antique business he operated in parallel with his responsibilities at the school. Plausibly, Stacey’s own venture as an antique dealer in Paris was inspired by Odom’s example. The training at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art, and in particular the Paris period, were touchstones throughout Stacey’s career. His fine eye for

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own art gallery, lobbying for U.S. intervention in World War II (she even set up an office, where she was photographed by Harper’s Bazaar’s Louise Dahl-Wolfe), ordering couture clothes, and dripping jewelry, embodied every aspect of Café Society. (Ever the “It Girl,” Frankie could always draw the oxygen out of a room. English designer Nicky Haslam remembers the power of the sixty-year-old Frankie in her impeccable Parisian clothes, so magnetic a presence that even his practiced eye could not register any design details in the room, so taken was he with her charm. ) Upon their marriage, a piece of land on Peacock Point, the family property in Locust Valley, was designated for a country house for Frankie and Ward. At first, the young Cheneys intended to build a proper Georgian house in keeping with the main house at Peacock Point. But given Frankie’s inclination to high style, a conservative house like her mother’s was not to be. Although the drawings for the house were well advanced when Frankie and Ward Cheney went off for a visit to Monticello, upon arriving at their destination, Frankie rushed a call in to her architect to stop the project; Thomas Jefferson had inspired a new vision: an Art Deco octagonal house. Characteristically—and fortunately—the Cheneys had hired a progressive young architect, Harvey Stevenson, who proved an adept stylist. Stevenson easily transitioned from Georgian house to Art Deco pavillon of cinder block (at the time an

t first, the young Cheneys intended to build a proper Georgian house on the Davison family property at Peacock Point. However, as Frances had an inclination for high style, a conservative house similar to her mother’s was not to be. Although drawings for Frances and Ward Cheney’s house were well advanced when the pair went for a visit to Monticello, upon arriving, Frankie rushed a call into her architect to stop the project. Thomas Jefferson had provided her with a new inspiration: an Art Deco octagonal house. For the Cheneys’ modernist Monticello, Stacey created a living room worthy of a contemporary Jefferson that blended glamour, historicism, and swagger with stylish restraint. Striking in its simplicity and blending classical and modern styles, the room revealed Stacey’s training by Frank Alvah Parsons, who vaunted the study of historical space as the foundation for relevant contemporary design. The wood swags flanking the fireplace were the first of many commissions Stacey placed with Frederick P. Victoria throughout his career.

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teuben and Georgian crystal smartly offset classically inspired klismos chairs, plaster medallions, rosettes, consoles, urns, and pedestals in the chic living room Stacey designed for Ward and Frances Cheney. Sleek satin upholstery groupings promote conviviality, while the dynamic interplay of light and dark tones adds panache to a poised room.

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tacey’s design for the Townsend Martin dining room stands out for drama, recalling the chiaroscuro effects in Diana Vreeland’s foyer. Height is the theme of the room; matte walls, tall baroqueshaped window cornices, and Italian consoles surmounted by enormous dark paintings lead the eye upward. Régence chairs and a rock crystal chandelier add pre-war assurance to wartime design, while tall candles teeter everywhere.

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oting that wartime entertainment typically consisted of quiet gatherings of friends, Vogue featured what were then considered simple at-home evening dresses in an article entitled “Dinners with the Curtains Drawn.” Interiors by George Stacey for Mr. and Mrs. Edward Elkins featured a fantastical secretary with Chippendale-inspired pediment, a Louis XVI bergère, and an overscaled print on the windows. Furniture profiles and mousseline skirts alike popped with razor-sharp precision against the dark walls. Stacey stalwarts, glittering sconces, supplied the finishing touch. Even in wartime, a Stacey room was destined for elegance. The interplay of stripes highlighted by solid banding neatly paralleled Stacey’s own appreciation of crisp contrast. He probably would have approved of the handsome dinner-jacketed accessories, too. Frederick P. Victoria, a favored Stacey resource for antiques and custom furniture, provided the cabinet. The wallpaper matched the curtains in the previous photo.

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the Cheneys’ modernist Monticello, Stacey created a living room worthy of a contemporary Jefferson that blended glamour, historicism, and swagger with stylish restraint. Striking in its simplicity and blending classical and modern styles, the room revealed Stacey’s training by Frank Alvah Parsons, who vaunted the study of historical space as the foundation for relevant contemporary design. The wood swags flanking the fireplace were the first of many commissions Stacey placed with Frederick P. Victoria throughout his career.

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rdent Francophile Babe Paley filled her bedroom at Kiluna Farm almost entirely with French pieces. Under Stacey’s tutelage, she also seemingly developed a weakness for blackamoors. The tufted upholstery, black lacquer desk, and chalky Louis XV chairs exhibit the post-war Stacey touch. Generally, Stacey, like William Odom, preferred solid color rugs and simple window treatments in accordance with French taste. In this room, he made an exception, furthering the Proustian idiom with crenellated window valances and patterned carpeting. Stacey’s designs in the 1940s were increasingly distinguished by a signature use of red and green, a palette well suited to the striking looks of debutante-of–the-century Brenda Diana Duff Frazier—“the most glamorous, black-haired, gardenia-skinned, ruby-lipped debutante who ever wore a strapless dress,” according to The New York Times. Stacey worked vivid notes of crimson into a living room in Oyster Bay, New York for Frazier, who had set the fashion for red lipstick. (Some claimed, quite plausibly, she had styled herself on Walt Disney’s Snow White, who sensationally debuted the year before she did.)

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