Welcome to my Guest Room
Wherein I share the inspiration for the most densely wallpapered room in my home, courtesy of my friend, the textile designer Andra Eggleston
My Guest Room | Too Much is Absolutely Enough
When I started to plan my home renovation/redecoration seven years ago, I knew one thing: I wanted a room covered in fabric.
I’m a big fan of the American decorator Billy Baldwin, who had a thing for pattern-on-pattern design, a maximalist signature that saw him use the same print on repeat in a single room — for instance, a living room with shirred walls plus upholstered furniture (he loved a cozy couch) plus curtains, etc., all in the same size print — or playing with different variations and the scale of a one master pattern. He did this in some of my favorite old-school New York living rooms, including the fashion high priestess Diana Vreeland’s deep red floral print living room, which she called her “Garden in Hell.” It’s a look that I hope to recreate one day. (There’s a good story about it here.)
In the meantime, I decided to try the print-all-over concept to my guest room. My situation was drastically different from that of Babe Paley, Gloria Vanderbilt and Jackie Kennedy, all Baldwin clients in the late-mid 20th century, who embraced the maximal application of similar prints in one space. I was on a budget.
“You can’t afford it.” That’s what my dear friend, the textile designer Andra Eggleston, said when I told her I wanted to pull a Billy and shirr my guest room in “Cairo,” a now-retired print from the first collection produced by her company electra eggleston: a pink and black hieroglyphic-style print based on a drawing by her father, the legendary photographer William Eggleston.
I’d already used Cairo to upholster a pair of Regency-style chairs I got for $5 each years ago at a thrift store in Naples, Florida. (Below, there’s an almost decade-old pic of Andra and her son Louis in the chairs, taken by outstanding Nashville photographer Heidi Ross. The shot is from a feature in the first iteration of The Callaway Report that is well-worth checking out. ) I wanted to use the chairs as a jumping off point for Baldwin-esque, all-over coverage that would find the print on the room’s walls, molding, bedspread, dust ruffle, pillows, and curtains. Think overkill — but make it fabulous.
Andra wasn’t being snotty with her response; she was being practical and maybe a little protective. Covering my walls in her fabric, made from luxe 100% Irish linen, and then having custom pieces made from it for the bed and curtains would be a huge investment that I didn’t need to make, no matter how enthusiastic I was about the idea.
Happily, she had a more reasonable and affordable solution: make Cairo into a wallpaper and roll out the other fabric elements over time.
Andra had already been talking to a very cool, largely b2b wallpaper company in the northeast called Twenty2 which had approached her about a collaboration. She put me in touch with their enthusiastic women-led team and we came up with a plan to make my print-all-over wallpaper dreams come true.
It took Nashville wallpaper hanger Debbie Hall and two members of her team working together two and a half days to hang the Cairo paper in my guest room, mainly due to my insistence that all exposed surfaces — ceilings, doors, and molding from floor to ceiling — be covered. I know from wallpaper hangers — my mother’s family’s business was interior design, with a focus on wall and floor covering. At one time, my childhood home had more than 20 patterns in it (in two situations, my mother mixed five or more prints in a single room — eat your heart out, Baldwin). Unlike Tony Loftis, my mother’s wallpaper hanger nemesis during the year-plus renovation of her dream home back in 1978, Debbie’s team did an incredible job, aligning the print to flow up the back wall, across the ceiling and down the other three, while perfectly lining up the returns.
Eventually, I’ll make my print-all-over dream come true. In the meantime, “Andra’s Room” is still a stand-out, I suspect for its audacity as much as its ability to serve as a blackout room. Indeed, when you close the curtains, the room turns into the chicest of caves, perfect for those who love to sleep in.
A Case for Meeting Your Idols
When I moved to New York in 1995, it was to attend grad school in NYC. I got my masters in Cultural Criticism & Reporting, a concentration within New York University’s journalism school.
The CRC major was kind of like an American studies program for journalists. I read lots of theory — lots of Foucault, Sontag, a little Derrida — and lots of criticism, natch. Of course, everyone in the program had to take basic reporting classes, too.
I can’t remember the class, the assignment, or the professor — or who I talked to, for that matter — but for one class during our first semester we were assigned to interview a working journalist that we admired.
My friend Nadine — a smart, sexy Brit who hit on and broke a few hearts of some the guys in my clique — had a mad love for Gay Talese, the natty practitioner of the New Journalism (aka literary journalism) whose stories for Esquire in the ‘60s are required reading. (His feature about Frank Sinatra, called “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” is one of the best examples of New Journalism out there.)
Anyway. Nadine did something amazing: she found Talese’s number (was it in the phone book? That’s how you found people back then), called him up, and asked for an interview. He was more than happy to oblige. (Related: I had a college friend who loved the writer Ken Kesey. Kesey’s name was listed in the Pleasant Hill, Oregon, phone book. So my pal dialed him up and they talked about writing for hours.)
Not only did Talese spend several hours at his apartment with Nadine, talking about his work, the next night he took her to Elaine’s, the famous Upper East Side restaurant that was a draw for writers and other creatives, as well as being his regular Sunday night hang. (I went a few times with Post people; once, Martin Scorsese, another regular, was at the next table, which was a bit of an “only in New York” moment for me.)
I remembered this story randomly last week, while I was enjoying a list of “Things Gay Talese Loves/Things Gay Talese Hates” in the Instagram feed of Dream Baby Press, a “literary entertainment company focused on literature and poetry.” I’m not sure how I was fed their feed, but all I can say is thank you, weird Meta algorithm, for bringing this Instagram handle into my life. (How often can you say that?)
Gay Talese is now 93 years old, and as you can tell from his answers to DBP, is still enjoying life. As well he should.
Spend some time on the Dream Baby Press website or Instagram. It’s a kick.
The guest room is BEYOND. Gorgeous!!
My favorite room!!!! The crystal cave!