Stately HomageRachel 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; makeup, Fulvia Farolfi for Chanel. Set design, Mary Howard.

Fashion Editor: Phyllis Posnick. Decorating Editor: Carolina Irving.

o s t o f u s inhabit an e n v i r o n -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 more 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 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,

Rachel Weisz acts out her fantasy life as a 19th-century salonnière, with an

interior to match. By Eve MacSweeney.

Photographed by Annie Leibovitz

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period romanceWeisz’s and Wang’s inspirations

A majestic bed as a centerpiece for living and entertaining appeals to Weisz, who is fascinated by the lives of such courtesans of nineteenth-century Paris as Céleste Mogador, a dancer who finished up as a countess, and Cora Pearl, the British-born beauty said to be a model for Zola’s Nana. “It was an interesting way that women got power at a time when they didn’t have any,” she says. “I think a lot of them were incredibly intelligent—it can’t just have been about how good they were at sex! I’ve always been obsessed with the French salons in these boudoirs, where Baudelaire came, and Prince Napoleon came, and they let down their guard and had real conversations about things. I love the idea of a very private space that’s also ready for entertaining, where anything could happen.”

To fit her role as a salonnière, Vera dresses Rachel in a ravishing purple satin strapless dress with a train dripping with purple roses and an artfully crushed bodice line, likened by Weisz to a Georgia O’Keeffe flower, that gives it an unexpect-ed twist. “Rachel can wear any color well, including neutrals,” says the designer. But it has to be said that the jewel tones of her spring collection look particularly stun-ning against Weisz’s white skin and dark hair and brows. “Vera, can you make me a life to go with this dress—at least for a day?” she jokes during a fitting.

It just so happens that Wang is in the process of moving from an apartment fur-nished in the Empire style to a new, mini-mal interior. So she lends Weisz her tufted sofa strewn with pillows in Carolina Irving fabrics and antique textiles, nineteenth- century étagères, and gilded carriage clock for the “set” assembled in the Os-borne, a building on New York’s Fifty-seventh Street. A room is colonized in a grand apartment formerly occupied by Fernando Sanchez, the late couture-loungewear designer and friend and confidant of Yves Saint Laurent’s. (As 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-cate layering of textures, centered on a lit à la Polonaise conjured from a large framed bed from Anthropologie draped with Michael Smith–designed fabric lined in Wang’s washed pea-green silk (fresh from

Siren CallSargent’s sultry Lady Agnew of Locknaw, 1892–93.

new waveWeisz’s artworks, by Raymond Pettibon and, foreground, Louise Bourgeois.

art ClaSSWilliam Merritt Chase’s A Memory: In the Italian

Villa, c. 1910, courtesy of Christie’s. Louis XV–style fauteuil from Todd Alexander Romano, NYC,

upholstered in Thomas O’Brien’s Moriyama from Lee Jofa. Nineteenth-century table from David Duncan

Antiques. William Yeoward Crystal’s Pippa vase. In this story: flowers, Lewis Miller for LMD Floral, NYC.

Sittings Editor: Hamish Bowles.

neSting inStinCtBirdcage from Todd Alexander Romano. Portrait

plaque from Lars Bolander, NYC. Blue-and-white vase from John Rosselli & Associates, NYC. Faux column

canvas panels from Amy Perlin Antiques, NYC.

Sweet DreamSAntique Fez and 18th-century French

embroidery pillows, Virginia Di Sciascio Antique Textiles, NYC. Bed linens by

Volga Linen. Mirror and pictures from Amy Perlin Antiques; Dalva Brothers,

NYC; Sentimento Antiques, NYC.

Parlor gameSMassed china and chintz crowd Polly Devlin’s Dublin house.

aStor PlaCeAlbert Hadley’s

dazzling library for

Brooke Astor.

Photographed by François Halard

who dressed Weisz in oyster-colored silk satin with a jeweled neckline for last year’s Oscar ceremony (she was present-ing an award after her win the previous year for The Constant Gardener), is a great match for the actress’s sensibilities. “I think of Vera as very romantic and very modern,” says Weisz of the designer, who in turn finds that Weisz “strikes a rare combination of being feminine but very now,” qualities that lend themselves to Wang’s signature glamour with an edge. Weisz’s ability to span looks and eras also contributes to her range as an actress: She was a resplendent Queen Isabella of Spain in Aronofsky’s 2006 movie The Fountain but is decidedly con-temporary in her latest outings: Adam Brooks’s romantic comedy Definitely, Maybe and Rian Johnson’s upcoming The Brothers Bloom, with Mark Ruffalo, Adrien Brody, and Rinko Kikuchi.

The British often grow up in versions of shabby Victoriana, complete with handed-down family furniture, but Weisz was raised in the London neighborhood of Hampstead Garden Suburb in a 1911 house decorated in the Danish-modern style. Hence, of course, she yearns for the lived-in look of English and Irish country houses, like those belonging to the writer Polly Devlin, which she visited often as a child. “I love a bit of a crumbling wall,” she says with a laugh, “and seats that look like they’ve been sat in a lot. Darren says I have old-lady taste.” Besides the fictional settings for the characters of Henry James and Edith Wharton, with their indoor ferns and society portraits, historical interiors she admires include Elsie de Wolfe’s cozy bathroom at the Villa Trianon, its walls papered in a floral print and hung salon-style with Chinese paintings; the duchess of Devonshire’s comfortable grandeur at Chatsworth; and a bedroom with a four-poster swathed in long cream brocade curtains in Michael Casey’s eighteenth-century Dublin town house, its walls distressed and hung with a brace of family portraits.

granD mannerSargent’s Acheson Sisters, 1902, surveys the convivial scene in the Blue Drawing Room at Chatsworth.

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her spring runway) and gathered into a crown of ostrich feathers. Surely the best-dressed bed in town, it is topped with an antique Turkish silk velvet ikat and pillows covered in Fez embroideries and vintage prints. “I can’t bear things that match,” Weisz specifies. Moroccan carpets are laid on the floors, and the walls are soft-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. Several postcards of Tina Modotti photographs are also tucked into the frame of the mantel mirror.

ense clusters of roses, vivid poppies, a card table, and George Smith’s version of a nineteenth-century round conversational sofa all con-

tribute to the air of intimate enjoyment. “It’s very hip and grand and bohemian and chic—it sums up Rachel in a nut-shell,” suggests Carrier. Weisz, when she sees the result, is delighted. “I could just move in!” she says. Now all that remains is to decide whom she would invite to her salon. “Hmmm,” she ponders. “Well, I’d love Louise Bourgeois to come, but ap-parently she doesn’t go out.” (Bourgeois is in her 90s.) “[Author] Dave Eggers sounds like he’d be interesting; Tracy Letts, who’s written a play on Broad-way, August: Osage County; that really rude blond-haired English chef, Gordon Ramsay. That would mix it up a bit.” She contemplates Barack and Hillary, then starts to get nervous. “Actually, unlike the courtesans, power doesn’t interest me personally. Oh, dear, I’m overthinking this . . . I know! Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. I realize that the people I really want to meet are rock stars!”

The guest list becomes a preoccupa-tion. She tinkers with it by E-mail over several days, adding the artist Marina Abramovic, designer Karl Lagerfeld, performance artist Karen Finley, and photographer William Eggleston. “A lot of performers,” she concludes. In retro-spect, she decides, “I don’t want it all to rest on conversation. I would maybe get people to act out little scenarios. I think charades is definitely the way to go.”

And we know who’d be really good at that. @

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age of oPulenCeAnthropologie’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 Vera Wang. Amethyst and peridot pillows in Lee Jofa’s Empress silk velvet. Antique velvet ikat from Virginia Di

Sciascio Antique Textiles. Louis XV–style chair from David Duncan Antiques. Genovese rock-crystal chandelier

from Amy Perlin Antiques. Louis XVI–style bench from Chelsea Editions, NYC. Conversational sofa by George

Smith, upholstered in Schumacher’s Gweneth linen. Rare books from Nick Harvill Libraries, West Hollywood;

Charlotte Moss, NYC. Details, see In This Issue.

Go to Most Wanted at vogue.com to see more “Belle of the Boudoir.” 000

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