Wowlebrity David Keeps has an article in today’s LA Times about legendary Vogue editor Diana Vreeland’s living room, which you can catch gasp-inducing glimpses of in the upcoming documentary Diana Vreeland: The Eye Must Travel (opening Friday). “Vreeland famously told Park Avenue interior designer Billy Baldwin in 1955 that she wanted her living room to ‘look like a garden, but a garden in hell,'” writes David. “Looking at Baldwin’s finished interpretation – the setting for Vreeland interview footage – the mind has to boggle. The room had Venetian blackamoors, mirrored walls, crystal sconces, sculptured busts, crocheted afghan blankets and decorative seashells. Baldwin took Vreeland’s ‘garden in hell’ directive to heart. ‘I knew what that meant: red,’ he wrote in his 1974 memoir, Billy Baldwin Remembers. The designer found scarlet chintz with brilliant Persian flowers in the shop of London decorator John Fowler. ‘I raced home with yards and yards of it,’ he wrote, ‘and we covered the whole room — walls, curtains, furniture, the works.’ Featured in magazines and Vreeland’s autobiography, the red ‘garden in hell’ has become a designer touchstone.” Read the full article here.
