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Inside a French Quarter Home Vivified by Nicky Haslam

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Few designers are as comfortable combining elegance and irreverence as Nicky Haslam, who recently professed his love for fakes while leading T Magazine on a tour of his London flat, which he appointed with a bedroom floor of wall-to-wall AstroTurf, a 16-foot-high fireplace of faux marble, a host of "counterfeit terra-cotta statues," and a life-size nude portrait of himself in the style of Lucien Freud. Gracing the pages of the latest Architectural Digest is a French Quarter one-bedroom he decorated for Frances and Rodney Smith—whose portfolio of historic New Orleans properties includes the Soniat House hotel—which finds the 74-year-old designer to the stars (Mick Jagger, Truman Capote, Maurice Saatchi, Madonna), style columnist, and occasional cabaret singer quite naturally opting for a tad more restraint. Of course, for Haslam, that doesn't preclude installing a head-turning plaster cast of a 19th-century terra-cotta relief above the mantlepiece in the living room.


↑ The master bedroom was dressed up in blue-pleated fabric, and features a "showstopping antique Venetian headboard" with a ruched-velvet edge.


↑ Haslam had decorative painters Chris and Paul Czainski marbleize the 18th-century wood columns flanking the entrance to the dining room, which features both an 18th-century French crystal chandelier and a papier-mâché mirror originally made as a stage prop. Head on to AD for more on the project.

· Designer Nicky Haslam Adds His Trademark Flair to a New Orleans Home [Architectural Digest]
· Printed Page archives [Curbed National]
· Inside Nicky Haslam's Audacious, Theatrical London Flat [Curbed National]
· All Nicky Haslam coverage [Curbed National]
· All New Orleans coverage [Curbed National]