Charlotte Moss, the decorating diva to stylish New Yorkers, wants to tell people how to do without her.
Moss, who is best known for her English country house look in American homes, encourages people to become their own decorators. Though some may need help in pulling it all together, she believes that with a little practice, you can make your home express your personality.
The best rooms have three essential ingredients: comfort, passion and a sense of humor, says Moss, who will be kicking off the 28th Annual Winnetka Antiques Show with a slide lecture titled “Design Inspiration: Where Decorating Ideas Come From” on March 3.
“Learn about yourself and educate your eyes so that you can do things for yourself,” advises Moss. “You get ideas from other people, and you learn to add your own and other ideas to them to suit your own needs. No matter how much money you might have, if you haven’t educated yourself, you don’t even know what you like. Go to museum exhibits, to art galleries, the opera, the ballet, to get the creative juices flowing.
“The final test of any room,” she says, “is if you can curl up and read a book in it.”
An ex-Wall Street executive who has had no formal design training, Moss does not believe in sticking to the rules to the point where a home loses its livability.
One of her few dictums is “trust yourself,” which makes her upcoming lecture more an exercise in educating one’s eye and finding one’s own creative heart rather than a strict treatise on a traditional style.
Moss even talks about “un-decorating”–mixing the old with the new in unexpected ways to bring a fresh look to a style–and tells how to go about it.
Often, she says, the things that have influenced her have come as a surprise, cropping up in her work as a gift from the unconscious.
Moss has won several House Beautiful’s Top Ten Showhouse Awards for design excellence with her appearances in decorator showhouses. Her work and ideas have been widely disseminated in numerous international shelter magazines, on CNN, and on ABC-TV’s “Good Morning, America.” Her two books, “A Passion for Detail” (Doubleday, $40) and “Creating a Room” (Viking Studio Books, $24.95), encourage readers to develop their own personal style by experimenting.
A lot of her own inspiration comes from the things she sees on her travels. “It could be a motif, a building or a shape. It could be some old piece of Italian furniture that has great coloring in it” that will turn up in her work later, she says. She always takes a small camera with her wherever she goes and advises others to do the same. “I keep shoe boxes full of photos.”
But inspiration may be no further than the back yard. The fresh and striking color palette that is the signature of her work has gained much inspiration from her own East Hampton, N.Y., garden–a composition of dots of tone and color that resembles an Impressionist painting, she says. A lovely chartreuse is used often, even on expanses of walls. That color comes from a zinnia named Green Envy, she says.
Born in Richmond, Va., Moss was painting her room and rearranging furniture from the time she was 12. After a first marriage ended in divorce, she worked for a time on Wall Street, selling tax shelters. This gave her the financial opportunity to go to England, buy some antiques and see if she was any good at selling them.
Her timing proved great. It was 1985, when the interest in things English was booming.
But even now, she is more successful than ever. On March 4, Moss will open a furnishings boutique on the seventh floor of the New York Bergdorf Goodman store. Her exclusive line of “everything from a cachepot to a love seat” will be displayed in room vignettes.
Her ongoing success may be because her look keeps evolving. She suggests freshening up the American version of the English country house look and bringing it into the 21st Century.
“Just pare it down,” she says. “The ’80s version is history. . . . You can have luxe, but don’t let it suffocate you. Take something rich and put it on something small, so it is not overwhelming. You have to temper the look. Use one fabulous piece of furniture, one painting or watercolor of a faraway place, instead of many. Instead of damask on all the walls, put it on one small chair.”
But at the root of all of Moss’ changes is one constant: that the home is the center of the universe, a place to create escape spaces from the pressures of the world at large.
“What it really is all about,” she says, “is to take what . . . my clients want to do, and mix practicality in with the fantasy. To those who say you can’t do that, I say, yes, you can.”
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THE FACTS
28th Annual Winnetka Antiques Show
What: 52 dealers from 15 states offer furniture, jewelry and silver, folk art, nautical brasses, pewter, paintings, porcelain, vintage clothing, prints, maps, manuscripts, books, quilts, rugs and more; kickoff event is lecture by Charlotte Moss
Where: Winnetka Community House, 620 Lincoln Ave., Winnetka
When: lecture, March 3; show, March 7-9
Hours: lecture, 1 p.m.; show, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. March 7, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. March 8, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. March 9
Admission: lecture, $30, including formal tea; show, $10 for three days
Call: 847-446-0537
