© François Halard, from François Catroux (Rizzoli)
© François Halard, from François Catroux (Rizzoli)
© François Halard, from François Catroux (Rizzoli)
© François Halard, from François Catroux (Rizzoli)
© Marianne Haas, from François Catroux (Rizzoli)
© Marianne Haas, from François Catroux (Rizzoli)
© Marianne Haas
With a wife who was Yves Saint Laurent’s muse, a jet-set pack of friends including Cole Porter, Pamela Harriman and Andy Warhol and a client list with multiple generations of the world’s chicest families (the Santo Domingos, the Rothschilds), the only surprising thing about interior designer François Catroux is that he’s only just now getting a book dedicated to his incredible life and work. Here, we talk to the author, fellow interior designer David Netto, about Catroux’s decades-long career, his unique design philosophy and the modern lens through which he interprets old-school luxury. But Catroux wasn’t just a design expert; between nights spent under the Moroccan stars with Saint Laurent to days sailing the seas with Arabian royals, Catroux knew the secret to cultivating a life lived to the fullest.
I went to stay at Diane von Furstenberg’s apartment on the rue de Seine in 1987 as a guest of her daughter Tatiana, my buddy. I was 17. I had been around a bit, but had never seen anything like that. So beautiful it hurt to look at it.
I decided to do a book on him because…
I didn’t decide, he did. I was approached by Rizzoli [the publisher] after I wrote a big magazine story on him, and he had no interest in doing a book. Too busy, and no vanity, which most decorators have in plentiful supply. Took me two years to get him to say yes. I was convinced that his is the great untold story in design, so I kept at it. The originality, the range, the association with YSL, the 50-year career and no book… Who else has that?
My favorite Catroux interiors…
My favorite of the “antique” ones? The Santo Domingo Paris dining room. Of the moderns, which strangely are earlier, Jacques Sarlie’s black and beige apartment in Paris from 1974.
His style in five words…
It’s about clarity, a strong architectural point of view (this counts as one word), ordered compositions, sophistication and natural glamour.
A crib sheet to his design philosophy…
It changes, friend. I’m still working out when he defined his times or was influenced by them, because both things have happened — but he is responsive to context, gets into telling a story, and is driven by a connoisseurship of art and furniture. Oh, and he says if it was up to him he would do all his projects in just black and white.
Influences from Catroux’s style that we see in interior design today…
Much of the type of groovy modernism we associate with David Hicks originated, in a parallel way, with Catroux as well. Minimalist steel chimney pieces, for instance. The combination of 18th-Century furniture with stark modern architectural environments. A palette of light grays and whites we have seen in Philippe Starck’s work. Pieces which are now understood to be contemporary art by Ron Arad or Wendell Castle seen as that, and in rooms you can actually use, to name a few.
My favorite contemporary designers…
Stephen Sills, because I think he’s just the best we’ve got. He knows stuff nobody knows anymore, but his work is always innovative. Important. Jean-Louis Deniot and Bruce Budd, I admire very much. I always like to see what Roman & Williams are doing. A friend called Serge Becker, who owns and designs restaurants, is as gifted a designer as there is, but you can’t hire him. His talent is astonishing.
Home I dreaming of visiting…
Isak Dinesen’s house in Kenya.
What’s inspiring me these days…
That people seem to like my own understated and flexible style of decorating. I was worried for a time that my style wasn’t exaggerated enough for this era, particularly when it came to color. That I have no “signature style.” But I don’t worry about that any more. I just do it, and the response from magazines, Instagram and letters I get from young people with an innate eye for quality inspires me every day
Exhibits I am looking forward to this fall…
There’s a show in London on the art of vulgarity at the Barbican Art Gallery, which sounds interesting. I wish I could build a time machine and go backwards to the David Hockney show in San Francisco a few years ago.
Next spot on my travel agenda…
The Forum in Inglewood, CA, to take my daughter to a Gwen Stefani concert. Believe me, you can have exotic travels without ever leaving L.A. The Rockhouse in Negril for New Year’s, which is sort of a tradition
Book on my nightstand (other than my own)…
Old and new. Bob Colacello’s Holy Terror, which I open to any page and read until I fall asleep. New book about ISIS called Black Flags by Joby Warrick, who inscribed it very nicely to me as a fellow writer. The Irrational Journey by Pauline de Rothschild about her trip to Russia in the 1960s and — I am a Russophile — The Romanovs by Simon Sebag Montefiore, which is sensational. That’s eclectic enough for you, I think?