Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/768024
Elsie de Wolfe's Paris apartment. 50 lighter 18th-century chairs and white- painted furniture, mirrors, Chinoiserie, chintz, stripes, wicker, trompe l'oeil wallpaper, and garden-trellis motifs. Her social connections provided her with such distinguished clients as Amy Vanderbilt, Ann Morgan, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. She became an aristocrat herself when she married diplomat Sir Charles Mendl in 1926. T he Walk to Elsie's opens in May 1940, when de Wolfe (wearing Mainbocher couture) is entertaining luncheon guests at her French country home, the lavish Villa Trianon in Versailles. The party abruptly ends when they learn the Nazis are advancing to Paris and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor have evacuated the country. With only hours to spare, a parade of Rolls-Royces bearing de Wolfe and her — de Wolfe to Duquette "COME SCOOT CLOSE TO ME AND CALL ME MOTHER … YOU INTEREST ME." guests exit at top speed from the villa to the safety of the Ritz in Madrid. De Wolfe eventually makes her way to New York, then Hollywood, where she meets a young Tony Duquette, who arrived in Beverly Hills from Three Rivers Michigan a few years earlier after a blowup with his parents. A mutual friend, interior designer Billy Haines, arranged their introduction at a party one evening. "Come scoot close to me and call me Mother … You interest me," de Wolfe exhorted Duquette, patting the seat next to her. By night's end, she arranged for Duquette to decorate her house in Beverly Hills — for free. Duquette, who had a degree from the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles and was already freelancing for Haines and other prominent designers, would become de Wolfe's last — and most famous — protégé. With de Wolfe's connections,