The Skinny on Skins

Cindy Allen -- Interior Design, 2/1/2007 12:00:00 AM

Squarely in the throes of assembling not only this issue but also Interior Design's 75th-anniversary March celebration, the most all-consuming portfolio I've ever had the "pleasure" to work on, I might be reasonably expected to have drained any cache that our editorial file cabinets might contain. But, miraculously, our inventory overfloweth. (Truly the gift that keeps on giving.) It's almost supernatural, as if Gandalf had scratched magic runes on the drawers. Instead, without any need for incantations—or even breaking a sweat—we're proud to present a pre-anniversary issue glorious in its own right.

If that strikes some as magniloquent, fine. How about describing February as an impeccable tableau of superlative interiors and inspirational architecture? I could pile up adjectives ad infinitum—that's how struck I am by the quality of the content. But let me stop and explain. What my pen is desperately trying to match with praise in prose is the foremost quality that every project in this winter ensemble delivers: the multilayering of skins, layers upon layers of materials and patterns.

Carl D'Aquino and Francine Monaco applied no fewer than 27 wallpapers above the Victorian paneling in the narrow stairwell of a New York brownstone, just like its fashionista owner would throw on a blouse, a skirt, and a scarf from different labels. High above Spain's arid central plain, Jesús Aparicio built a house of cyclopean concrete, embedding large rocks in the smooth-poured walls, then brush-hammering sections away to reveal areas of texture and color. And office-design guru Clive Wilkinson has been riding the surfboard theme for years. This time, though, for a beachside L.A. real-estate developer, that motif subtly merges with the wave itself.

CYA in March.

—Cindy