Rachel Weisz Acts out Her Fantasy Life As a 19Th-Century Salonnière,With
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Stately Homage Rachel Weisz wears Vera Wang’s custom-designed duchesse-satin dress. Fred Leighton ring. The 19th-century Roman mirror belonged to the late Fernando Sanchez. The courtesan portrait is Weisz’s. Louis XV table, David Duncan Antiques, NYC. Phillip Jeffries’s Hyacinth grass- cloth wall covering. Moroccan rugs from Madeline Weinrib at ABC Carpet & Home, NYC. Decorator, Jesse Carrier. Hair, Renato Campora, using Kérastase Paris, for the Wall Group; belle of the makeup, Fulvia Farolfi for Chanel. Set design, Mary Howard. Fashion Editor: Phyllis Posnick. boudoir Decorating Editor: Carolina Irving. Rachel Weisz acts out her fantasy life as a 19th-century salonnière, with an interior to match. By Eve MacSweeney. ost of us inhabit an environ- ment in our heads that is quite different from the one we actu- ally live in. And if you’re an actress, like Rachel Weisz, you probably inhabit mmore exotic places than most. Weisz has been thinking a lot about interiors lately, having recently moved into an East Vil- lage town house that she is in the throes of decorating. In this, she admits, she finds herself restrained in some of her wilder impulses by the fact that she lives with a “minimalist Brooklyn boy” (film director Darren Aronofsky) and their toddler son. The downstairs living space and kitchen are spare and modern, and the upstairs entertaining floor will be “a halfway house,” she explains, “with antiques and modern furniture and beau- tiful Farrow & Ball gray walls.” Only in her personal study, which she calls “my secret little English room,” has she so far unleashed the unfettered femininity and romanticism she adores, with rose- sprigged wallpaper, a nineteenth-century needlepoint rug, a vintage door with etched glass “that looks like it came from an old perfume shop,” miniature china Details, see In This Issue figurines, and “a little tinkly, tinkly glass- beaded French chandelier.” In order to help Weisz realize her ulti- mate fantasy interior—even if she winds up incorporating only a little of it into her East Village decorating scheme—design- er Vera Wang and New York decorator Jesse Carrier sat down with the actress to discuss her tastes and inspirations and create the room of her dreams. Wang, 000 Photographed by Annie Leibovitz who dressed Weisz in oyster-colored A majestic bed as a centerpiece for period romance silk satin with a jeweled neckline for last living and entertaining appeals to Weisz, year’s Oscar ceremony (she was present- who is fascinated by the lives of such Weisz’s and Wang’s inspirations ing an award after her win the previous courtesans of nineteenth-century Paris as year for The Constant Gardener), is a Céleste Mogador, a dancer who finished granD manner Sargent’s Acheson great match for the actress’s sensibilities. up as a countess, and Cora Pearl, the Sisters, 1902, surveys “I think of Vera as very romantic and British-born beauty said to be a model the convivial scene very modern,” says Weisz of the designer, for Zola’s Nana. “It was an interesting in the Blue Drawing who in turn finds that Weisz “strikes a way that women got power at a time Room at Chatsworth. rare combination of being feminine but when they didn’t have any,” she says. very now,” qualities that lend themselves “I think a lot of them were incredibly to Wang’s signature glamour with an intelligent—it can’t just have been about edge. Weisz’s ability to span looks and how good they were at sex! I’ve always eras also contributes to her range as an been obsessed with the French salons actress: She was a resplendent Queen in these boudoirs, where Baudelaire Isabella of Spain in Aronofsky’s 2006 came, and Prince Napoleon came, and movie The Fountain but is decidedly con- they let down their guard and had real temporary in her latest outings: Adam conversations about things. I love the Brooks’s romantic comedy Definitely, idea of a very private space that’s also Maybe and Rian Johnson’s upcoming ready for entertaining, where anything The Brothers Bloom, with Mark Ruffalo, could happen.” Adrien Brody, and Rinko Kikuchi. To fit her role as a salonnière, Vera The British often grow up in versions dresses Rachel in a ravishing purple of shabby Victoriana, complete with satin strapless dress with a train dripping handed-down family furniture, but Weisz with purple roses and an artfully crushed was raised in the London neighborhood bodice line, likened by Weisz to a Georgia of Hampstead Garden Suburb in a 1911 O’Keeffe flower, that gives it an unexpect- aStor PlaCe house decorated in the Danish-modern ed twist. “Rachel can wear any color well, art Class Albert Hadley’s style. Hence, of course, she yearns for the including neutrals,” says the designer. But dazzling William Merritt Chase’s A Memory: In the Italian lived-in look of English and Irish country it has to be said that the jewel tones of her library for Villa, c. 1910, courtesy of Christie’s. Louis XV–style Brooke Astor. fauteuil from Todd Alexander Romano, NYC, houses, like those belonging to the writer spring collection look particularly stun- upholstered in Thomas O’Brien’s Moriyama from Lee Polly Devlin, which she visited often as a ning against Weisz’s white skin and dark Jofa. Nineteenth-century table from David Duncan child. “I love a bit of a crumbling wall,” hair and brows. “Vera, can you make me Antiques. William Yeoward Crystal’s Pippa vase. In this she says with a laugh, “and seats that a life to go with this dress—at least for a story: flowers, Lewis Miller for LMD Floral, NYC. look like they’ve been sat in a lot. Darren day?” she jokes during a fitting. Sittings Editor: Hamish Bowles. says I have old-lady taste.” Besides the It just so happens that Wang is in the fictional settings for the characters of process of moving from an apartment fur- new wave Henry James and Edith Wharton, with nished in the Empire style to a new, mini- Weisz’s artworks, by Raymond their indoor ferns and society portraits, mal interior. So she lends Weisz her tufted Pettibon and, f o r e g r o u n d , Louise Bourgeois. historical interiors she admires include sofa strewn with pillows in Carolina Irving Elsie de Wolfe’s cozy bathroom at the fabrics and antique textiles, nineteenth- Siren Call Villa Trianon, its walls papered in a floral century étagères, and gilded carriage Sargent’s sultry print and hung salon-style with Chinese clock for the “set” assembled in the Os- Lady Agnew of paintings; the duchess of Devonshire’s borne, a building on New York’s Fifty- Locknaw, 1892–93. comfortable grandeur at Chatsworth; and seventh Street. A room is colonized in a bedroom with a four-poster swathed in a grand apartment formerly occupied Parlor gameS long cream brocade curtains in Michael by Fernando Sanchez, the late couture- Massed china and chintz crowd Casey’s eighteenth-century Dublin town loungewear designer and friend and Polly Devlin’s Dublin house. house, its walls distressed and hung with confidant of Yves Saint Laurent’s. (As a brace of family portraits. Details, see In This Issue reported in Vogue’s January 1989 issue, the Spanish-born Sanchez lived here in lavish but uncluttered style with his five parrots; all that remains of his furnishings is an enormous Baroque mirror Weisz is quite happy to include in her boudoir.) Following her directives, Carrier has created this world in a room with an intri- Sweet DreamS MOORE; DERRY oil JOHN on SINGER canvas/ SARGENT, © National Gallery of Scotland/The Bridgeman Art Library; IANTHE STEELE. Details, RUTHVEN/Interior see Archive; In WILLIAM This P. Issue. cate layering of textures, centered on a lit à Antique Fez and 18th-century French la Polonaise conjured from a large framed embroidery pillows, Virginia Di Sciascio bed from Anthropologie draped with Antique Textiles, NYC. Bed linens by Michael Smith–designed fabric lined in neSting inStinCt Volga Linen. Mirror and pictures from Birdcage from Todd Alexander Romano. Portrait Amy Perlin Antiques; Dalva Brothers, Clockwise from top: Wang’s washed pea-green silk (fresh from plaque from Lars Bolander, NYC. Blue-and-white vase NYC; Sentimento Antiques, NYC. from John Rosselli & Associates, NYC. Faux column canvas panels from Amy Perlin Antiques, NYC. Photographed by François Halard age of oPulenCe Anthropologie’s Italian Campaign bed, with canopy in Jasper Fabrics’ Indian Flower hemp from Michael S. Smith, lined in Clerici Tessuto’s satin, custom-printed for her spring runway) and gathered into a Vera Wang. Amethyst and peridot pillows in Lee Jofa’s crown of ostrich feathers. Surely the best- Empress silk velvet. Antique velvet ikat from Virginia Di dressed bed in town, it is topped with an Sciascio Antique Textiles. Louis XV–style chair from David antique Turkish silk velvet ikat and pillows Duncan Antiques. Genovese rock-crystal chandelier from Amy Perlin Antiques. Louis XVI–style bench from covered in Fez embroideries and vintage Chelsea Editions, NYC. Conversational sofa by George prints. “I can’t bear things that match,” Smith, upholstered in Schumacher’s Gweneth linen. Weisz specifies. Moroccan carpets are Rare books from Nick Harvill Libraries, West Hollywood; laid on the floors, and the walls are soft- Charlotte Moss, NYC. Details, see In This Issue. ened with lilac-gray grass cloth against which paintings are hung or propped. Weisz has contributed to the installation with some of her own Louise Bourgeois prints, a Raymond Pettibon wave paint- ing, and a small oil of a naked odalisque that she picked up in a New York flea market.