To furnish a landmark house designed by the architect Stanford White, she and Mrs. Rayner, who enjoyed discovering beauty in unlikely places and at underwhelming prices, did not shy from projects that her equally celebrated competition might consider beneath their dignity.
#Chessy rayner professional#
In one New York living room, moody paintings by Manet and Van Dongen seemed to be emerging from the surface of the gold lacquered walls as from the bottom of a pond.īut despite her professional eminence, Mrs.
#Chessy rayner mac#
MAC II's spare, uncluttered rooms are known for luxurious but simple finishes, comfortable seating and art that is part of the space, not a dominant element. ''One of the reasons that I chose her was because she told me I could keep all of my old furniture.'' ''Chessy was a decorator, not a re-decorator,'' said Arnold Scaasi, the fashion designer. Marian McEvoy, the editor of Elle Decor magazine, said that what distinguished their projects was ''pragmatic glamour.'' Soon, however, they became a force to be reckoned with, and by the early 1980's had amassed a portfolio of residential and commercial projects for boldface celebrities like the artist Kenneth Noland, the television producer Douglas Cramer and the fashion designer Bill Blass. Their first published project was a bedroom for the 9-year-old daughter of a friend, with tall bookcases made of bamboo poles and topped with burnt-orange felt valances. Rayner wryly told Vogue soon after MAC II opened, ''You can see how much dignity we command.'' And Mica does not have to work.'' Everybody else called them ''the girls.'' As Mrs.
Sister Parish, the white-gloved martinet of American decorating, dismissed them with chilling politesse: ''Chessy is a nice girl.
Though House and Garden hailed the company for its ''consistently clean and crisp adaptations of shifting modes,'' initially, fellow designers looked upon the two young stylish women with disdain. Rayner, a stockbroker who later became an executive at Conde Nast Publications. Thomas Protestant Episcopal Church in Manhattan, in 1952, to William P. The only child of Richard Hall and Chesbrough Lewis, a cafe society beauty famously photographed by Horst and Avedon, she dutifully followed her social destiny: finishing school, Briarcliff Junior College and candle-lighted wedding at St. Rail-thin, exotically featured and crowned with a lion's mane of hair that gave her the look of a space-age Nefertiti, Chesbrough (Chessy) Lewis Hall was born in 1931 in Perrysburg, Ohio, into a privileged world where little was expected of a young woman except a fairy tale debut, a comfortable marriage and an entry in the Social Register. Mica Ertegun, her partner in the design company MAC II, said that Mrs. Chessy Rayner consistently populated the social pages with her unique fashion style as well as her successful New York-based interior design firm MAC II.Chessy Rayner, a decorator, fashion icon, editor and author of ''New York: Trends and Traditions,'' a recently published book about significant Manhattan interiors, died on Thursday night at Sloan-Kettering Medical Center in New York. The Chessy Rayner Papers include magazine and newspaper articles, and individual photographs and albums documenting the life of Chesbrough (Chessy) Hill Rayner (1931-1998) from her 1952 wedding to her death in 1998. Holdings include women’s, men’s, and children’s clothing, accessories, and related objects such as patterns, fashion publications and ephemera, audio-visual material.Įof B image Archives.jpg Types of collections included in EAD site Repository contact email for EAD site: Repository description for EAD siteįounded in 1937, the Elizabeth Sage Historic Costume Collection is one of the oldest and largest university collections of costume and dress, consisting of a museum-quality permanent collection intended for preservation, research, and exhibition, and a hands-on study collection used in fashion design studios and classrooms. Primary contact: Kelly Richardson Repository ID for DLP: sagecollection Repository name for EAD site: The Elizabeth Sage Historic Costume Collection, IU Bloomington Sage Collection EAD Repository Repository details
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