Style Compass: Muriel Brandolini
By Annie Kelly

Muriel Brandolini knows what she wants. As a decorator she has a strong personal vision that is the driving force for all her work. She is passionate about her design work and cares deeply about her clients, but her refusal to compromise is always explicit when she embarks on a new project. Brandolini’s interiors are full of many-layered cultural references: “I grew up in a beautiful colonial house in Vietnam,” explains the decorator. “Then after my Vietnamese father died, I moved with my French/Venezuelan mother and my three sisters to the Caribbean.”
When Brandolini arrived in New York in 1979, she began as a fashion stylist for magazines like Italian Vogue, and the legendary photographer David Seidner, whose iconic work was a big influence on fashion photography in the 1980s.
But it wasn’t until she started work on her own house that Brandolini was motivated by her enthusiasm for art, fabrics and furnishings to open her own decorating firm in 1995. She was successful very quickly, attracting clients like Christopher and Pia Getty, Annette and Matt Lauer, Prince and Princess Pavlos of Greece, and furniture dealer Liz O’Brien, who all loved her use of color and bold patterns. Wendy Goodman, writing for New Yorkmagazine at one time, called her style “high-bohemian chic,” but lately Brandolini is heading toward her own version of Modernism, informed by her interest in modern art and design.
One of her greatest talents is an extraordinary color sense —Brandolini uses strong, vivid color with a sure hand, but when the mood strikes, she will mix pastels in a unique, fresh way, with contemporary pieces from all over the world. “I believe that most colors go together,” she explains, but somehow her choices fall together in unexpectedly sophisticated combinations. Her interiors reflect her mixed heritage: “My color sense is inspired by Vietnam,” she explains, “by the kitsch of the 19th-century temples, the colorful food, and the beautiful lotus flower. It is my eccentricity that is Venezuelan.” There is the hint of Napoleon III from her French ancestry, and her Vietnamese heritage has also inspired the Asian motifs throughout her work, which often link the various decorating elements together.
Then there is Italy. Brandolini met her Italian husband, Nuno, in New York, where she has established a home with their two children (as well as a beach house at Hampton Bays on Long Island.) With hints of Milan and the echo of Memphis furniture adding to the round-the-world eclecticism of her work, it is safe to say that Brandolini is a true cosmopolitan.
Occasionally Brandolini upholsters her clients’ walls with fabrics from her vivid and colorful fabric line designed for Holland & Sherry. With modern, geometric patterns and Asian-inspired florals, it is hard to imagine a room that couldn’t benefit from their stylish chic. But then, she will throw something unexpected into the mix — words added in embroidered beads for example — to demonstrate her sure hand with texture, as well as pattern. “The embroidered beads in wording is my romantic side. They are usually song lyrics...a memory of dreams inspired by these words.”
A strong element of Brandolini’s design is also her use of lighting. She treats ceiling lights as sculptures for each room —gathering them in clusters, or using them to provide scale. In her dressing room, at the beach, where you would ordinarily expect recessed lighting, Brandolini has hung large bell-shaped glass lamps, giving this practical room a sense of theatrical drama.
Brandolini designs in a diverse and eclectic style, but makes the mix coherent with balance and proportion. Her rooms explode with ideas, but on closer inspection you will notice the matching lamps and chairs that balance each space. Then she adds strong sculptural accents, like bookcases, and lighting, sometimes commissioned especially for the project. Some of her favorite designers are Jasper Conran and Martin Szekely from France — especially for his metal tables — as well as cut-sushi style sofas by Pierre Charpin.

FASHION Back to Courreges.
FABRICS To print Nathaniel Kramer's images of trees on fabric. I am so in love I could cover the walls and ceiling of an entire room with it and become surrounded by nature.
ENTERTAINING With the current economic climate...a simple Pomodoro pasta with a little sprinkling of luxury: Italian imported Parmesan cheese.
COLOR Pearl grey, mauve: soft and sad to fit the mood but so romantic; and they are perfect complements to all skin tones.
TRAVEL Vietnam, Vietnam and even more Vietnam.
GARDENING or FLORAL My dream is to own a garden designed by Miranda Brooks.
ART or DESIGN My mood is Constructivism.
BOOK I never read.
MUSEUM Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
RESTAURANT Kinugawa in Paris.
HOTEL All depends on the country...an island shack or the Ritz in Paris.

GIFT A photo album personalized for the receiver.
SHOP The museum shop at Beaubourg.