Five Women Who Shaped Contemporary Interior Design

Key facts

• Sister Parish (1910–1994), born Dorothy May Kinnicutt, was a cousin of Dorothy Draper and known as the 'First Lady of American Decorating'.
• Parish opened her decorating business in 1933 with the sign 'Mrs. Henry Parish II, Interiors' after the Great Depression affected her family.
• Parish decorated the Kennedys' Georgetown house and the White House private quarters; she was replaced by Stephane Boudin, but the Yellow Oval Room was her design.
• Andrée Putman (1925–2013) was hired by Didier Grumbach in 1971 to start Créateurs & Industriels, where she promoted Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Issey Miyake, Ossie Clark, Claude Montana, and Thierry Mugler.
• Putman's breakthrough came in 1984 with the Morgans Hotel in New York; she founded Andrée Putman Studio in 1997 and designed Concorde interiors in 1994.
• Florence Knoll (1917–2019) founded the Knoll Planning Unit in 1943 and completed over 70 office interiors for IBM, GM, Look magazine, Seagram, Heinz, Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, and CBS.
• Kelly Hoppen (b. 1959), known as 'The Queen of Taupe', began designing at 16 and created interiors for the Celebrity Edge cruise ship in 2018.
• Kelly Wearstler (b. 1967) opened KWID in 1995; her Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills made her name, and she later designed Viceroy Hotels and Resorts.