decoration on a budget

“You know what? In this time, you can live well, but maybe you won’t spend your money on decorating,” Mr. Drake, a designer/decorator, said. “Maybe you’ll save it for a piece of art.”

“I think we just have to reinvent what we have,” she said, offering a decorating tip: instead of sculpture, consider athletic equipment. Ms. Bergreen used a surfboard and a saddle.

Last week, 32 designers and their assistants tweaked the rooms they had decorated for the Kips Bay Decorator Show House, the 37th, to benefit the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club. It was billed as a tribute to Albert Hadley, the Tennessee-born minimalist who provided a tether and balance for the English country house-style maximal ism of his partner, Sister Parish. Theirs was a slightly tense dialectic that played out in society living rooms for more than three decades. There was an implicit assignment to the decorators here to honor Mr. Hadley, now 88, in each of their rooms.


Bunny Williams's room included elements like a sisal rug stenciled with stars, lots of color and botanical gouaches, which seemed super-sized to fit the room.



An homage to the "Bocca della Verità" (The Mouth of Truth) in Rome, John Ike's room is a challenge to "be your truest self" in bed, he said. The bales of hay he used as side tables were "just an idea."



The panic room created by William T. Georgis, the architect who renovated the public spaces of Lever House, anticipated that the worst was still to come. There were nostalgic touches in this nearly black windowless space — a soundtrack playing David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World,” a motorized, twirling disco ball and “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!,” the Russ Meyer sexploitation film about homicidal go-go dancers, playing on the flat screen. Mr. Georgis had also included a stainless steel toilet from Gracious Home, a bearskin rug and an acrylic vitrine of fake semiautomatic weapons.



The wallpaper in Jamie Drake's room was hand painted by Alpha Workshops.


For being on a budget these decoraters did well in my opinion.
For those who are interested, I have talked about my fixation with window display before.

The Kips Bay Decorator Show House, to benefit the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club, is open April 17 to May 17. Cost: $30; (718) 893-8600, extension 245; kipsbay.org.