Kennedy private quarters. Sister Parish & Stéphane Boudin; Washington, D.C. (US), 1962

Can you detect Jackie Kennedy’s Francophile style in this interior?

These Presidential private quarters, featured in our new Atlas Of Interior Design, could make you feel as if you’re in Paris. . .

Scan through our new Atlas of Interior Design and you’ll not only traverse the globe, but also move through different periods and stylistic movements. This new book offers readers a worldwide tour of more than 400 incredible, perfectly conceived residential interiors created over the past eight decades.

There are beautifully realised, period-correct, mid-century Californian houses; delightfully comfy British Victorian homes; European, neoclassical manor houses; and elegant, Art Nouveau villas, as well as much more besides. Well-informed interior enthusiasts will probably be able to place plenty of the inclusions in time and place, without even looking at the captions.

However, a few inclusions mix up easily placed influences, to great effect.  Consider the family dwelling the Kennedys created on entering the White House in the early 1960s. “The White House was designed by Irish architect James Hoban and was completed in 1800, becoming over time the most famous home in the world,” explains our book. “In 1961 the new President Kennedy and his wife Jackie Kennedy moved in and renovated with style. The cost of the redecoration of their family quarters has been estimated at an extraordinary two million dollars.

 

Atlas of Interior Design
Atlas of Interior Design

 

“Jackie famously employed not just one interior designer but two. As a great Francophile, she turned to Stéphane Boudin, who designed the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s Paris residence in the early Fifties, for the State Rooms. Boudin was known for his vivid use of color and choice of French antique furniture—advised by collector Henry Francis du Pont. The Kennedys also wanted to recreate some of the look and feel of their former home in Georgetown, designed by the celebrated decorator Sister Parish, and asked her to focus on the private quarters—including the West Sitting Hall. Perhaps inevitably, tensions developed. After a dramatic falling out between Jackie and Parish, Boudin was invited back to rework a number of additional personal spaces. In February 1962, Jackie proudly unveiled the interiors via a televised tour broadcast by CBS.”

To see the Windsors’ Paris residence mentioned above, and many more breathtaking and extraordinary interiors across the world, order a copy of our new Atlas of Interior Design here.