Elsie de Wolfe

Elsie de Wolfe, also known as Lady Mendl, (December 20, 1859? – July 12, 1950) was an American actress, interior decorator, nominal author of the influential 1913 book The House in Good Taste, and a prominent figure in New York, Paris, and London society. According to The New Yorker, "Interior design as a profession was invented by Elsie de Wolfe," although the praise is not strictly true. De Wolfe was certainly the most famous name in the field until the 1930s, but the profession of interior decorator/designer was recognized as a promising one as early as 1900, five years before she received her first official commission, The Colony Club in New York. During her married life (from 1926 until her death in 1950) the press often referred to her as Lady Mendl. She was born in New York City and died at Versailles, France. Cremated, her ashes were placed in a common grave, the lease expired, in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. 2Career Among de Wolfe's distinguished clients were Amy Vanderbilt, Anne Morgan, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Henry Clay and Adelaide Frick. She transformed the interiors of wealthy homes from dark wood, heavily curtained palaces into light, intimate spaces featuring fresh colors and a reliance on 18th-century French furniture and accessories. In her autobiography, de Wolfe — born Ella Anderson de Wolfe and the only daughter of a Canadian-born doctor —called herself a "rebel in an ugly world." Her sensitivity to style and color was acute from childhoo