Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1543536
A Designer Dream By Billy Fong. Photography Tamytha Cameron and Jordan Geibel. KIPS BAY DECORATOR SHOW HOUSE DALLAS PREVIEW PARTY AND PRESIDENT'S DINNER H ere's the formula for a perfect fall event: temps that allow for al fresco cocktails, a guest list made of design-world stars (and stargazers), and VIP access to room after gloriously designed room envisioned by a who's who of creatives. All of that and more were on the agenda when Kips Bay Decorator Show House Dallas opened the doors of the 25,000-square foot two-story French- Renaissance-style building on Turtle Creek owned by Vipin Nambiar and his HPN Capital Partners. Once intended as Dallas' first Mandarin Oriental hotel, the site rests between Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek and the upcoming Four Seasons Hotel & Residences. Many guests had previewed the show house the evening before for the cocktail hour preceding the Kips Bay President's Dinner — and all agreed that this year's show house was dreamy, dreamy. Both evenings, the Kips Bay designers were there to charm guests with the challenges they faced over the days leading up to the unveiling. The evening's chairs were Dallas decorating royalty: Show House honorary chairs Jan Showers and Jamie Drake, co-chairs Chad Dorsey and Jean Liu, and vice chairs Shelby Wagner and Trish Sheats. When one entered the VIP party, the first space was the grand foyer created by Dallas-based Sees Design. Corbin and Sara See explained that their inspiration was Bill Blass' much photographed Sutton Place apartment. Another standout was Doniphan Moore's salon-style poker room, which ended up on the cover of December PaperCity. He named it The River Room, a reference to the final card dealt in poker, which is called the river. Moore's space was wrapped with a plaster frieze created by Casci Ornamental Plaster and included a Zelouf & Bell champagne cart, which I'm still envisioning weeks later for my own home. But enough about the rooms, and on to the crowd. I spent a good two hours catching up with old friends and made quite a few new ones. I caught up with Lance Scott, Jan Showers, Shelby Wagner, Melissa Gerstle, and Maura and Dan Houchard on the spacious back veranda — those moderate temps were too nice to resist cocktailing outdoors. Much of the chitchat involved what events we would all be attending that jam-packed week (the Kips Bay opening events wonderfully complement the programming for Texas Design Week Dallas) — and, of course, what outfits would be worn during this Olympics of design. Partygoers: 1. Marcus & Autumn Mohon Trish & Mo Sheats 2. Mackenzie Zarr Nicole Zarr 3. Shelby Wagner Jan Showers, Jim Druckman Claire Emanuelson Daniel Quintero 4. Kimberly Schegel Whitman Jan Showers, Amy Astley 5. Vipin & Andrea Nambiar 6. Ann Chan Lu 1. 2. 3. 5. 6. 4. (Continued) 66