Before: A minimalist living and
dining space needs jazzing up.
The problem: "I had a
very unfortunate moment of Santa Fe in the late eighties, and so with this
apartment I didn't want anything muted or watery or pastel," says Lisa Kogan, O, The Oprah Magazine's writer at large. Her senses
singed by all that burning sage, Lisa's taste is now so exquisitely sharp you
could cut your finger on it.
The ghosts of Mies and Breuer and Eileen Gray nod
approvingly down from style heaven on the chic black, "weimaraner taupe" and
crisp white of her living room. Yet, says Lisa, "I feel like I've got a good
little black dress, and I don't know how to make it great. I want to be a bit
daring, but I'm torn because I like things to be very spare and clean, and I
also like them to be very whimsical and out there. So I told Todd, just think
feng shui meets rococo."
After: Apply spots of color judiciously throughout the rooms. The dining room repeats the blue and citrus color theme of the living room with orange silk on the French doors leading to the kitchen, and chartreuse floor-to-ceiling silk curtains.
After: Multistripe lampshades and
pillows, a blue wall and a chartreuse vase and mirror frame inject color into
the neutral living room. Black accents tie it all together: trim on the sisal
rug, a lampshade and the Plexiglas top on a chartreuse
console.
The solution: Stylist Todd Moore saw a blue
vase and a bowl of green apples, and his magic started to happen. He found
pillows in a sharp little stripe: that Windex blue, tweaked by black, orange,
and chartreuse. He found ribbons in each one of those colors and mimicked the
pattern on two matching lampshades. Then he took the color of each stripe and
carried it through the room. The blue covered one whole wall and winked from a
group of milky blue goblets. The orange ricocheted from a bowl of oranges to an
orange book to two panels of vivid, orange silk Todd hung behind the glass of
the French doors that lead to Lisa's kitchen. A mirror was reframed and painted
chartreuse, as was a table that Todd set behind the sofa. And for every perk of
color, he added what he called a 'ground of black.'
