Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1420844
(Continued) By Billy Fong Photography Tamytha Cameron W hat is it that people always say: The sequel is never as good as the original. Well, in the case of Kips Bay Decorator Show House Deux, I beg to differ. Congratulations are in order for the honorary chairs of the 2021 edition, Jamie Drake and Bunny Williams; co-chairs Veranda's Steele Marcoux, Jan Showers, Jean Liu, and Chad Dorsey; and vice chairs Trish Sheats and Laura Lee Clark Falconer, as well as Kips Bay's Nazira Handal. The day-long VIP preview party brimmed with the most soignée crowd. I must confess, I stayed over my allotted two-hour time window. (Kips Bay team, please don't chastise me, but it was too good, and I still didn't have enough time to savor it all.) Having worked for art museums for close to two decades, I always give this advice: Enjoy the opening party for the crowd, then come back and walk the galleries quietly on your own. That way, you can take it all in and not be continuously clinking cocktails with long-lost friends. I enjoyed a few saucy moments that day. The marvelous Ken Fulk (just Ken to dear friends like Aurelia Heppner, whom I bumped into in his show house room) had shirtless male bartenders (a detail that's always thoroughly appreciated) serving up cocktails next to a table with a mystical tarot-card reader. I bumped into Houston's fabulous Becca Cason Thrash in Dennis Brackeen's breakfast room (I dare say you would never call it a nook). The room was a symphony of shades of yellow with blue-and- white porcelain vases atop Grecian pedestals. And did I mention the black pagoda buffet? When she saw my mouth drop, Cason Thrash commented, "Isn't it divine?" OPENING DAY OF KIPS BAY DECORATOR SHOW HOUSE DALLAS — THE SEQUEL Mark D. Sikes, Caroline Gidiere Nazira Handal, Paloma Contreras Kips Bay Decorator Show House Dallas 2021 Designers Daniel Annese Ron Mize Hannah Cecil Gurney, Mark Elias Christine Speare Corey Damen Jenkins Heather Taylor Steele Marcoux David Hamilton, Virginia Davis 102