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Fashion Maven Ken Downing Turns His Eye on Interiors: Special Collaboration Means Bright, Bold Personal Vignettes

BY // 04.03.18

Ken Downing has serious sartorial chops, and lately he’s been training his stylish eye on fashionable interiors. The longtime fashion director and senior VP of Neiman Marcus Group has just redecorated his tiny Art Deco-era pied à terre in New York, and he’s in the midst of restoring a multi-story 1916 mansion in Detroit that will have studios for artists (we’ll keep you posted when that beauty is finished).

And recently, as a part of its ongoing Designer Interpretations program, Arteriors tapped him to design vignettes in its flagship showroom in the Dallas Design District. The installation will stay up through May 4.

“He’s got such a great aesthetic,” says Mark Moussa, founder and creative director of Arteriors. “We let him have free reign.”

Anyone who knows Ken Downing knows that “free reign” means heaping on the layers of colors, patterns, textures, and smart bibelots. Every surface is covered, and that’s part of what makes it fun.

There are multicolor stripes, polka dots, zig-zags, and abstractions galore. “My mother taught me never to trust anyone with a blank wall,” Downing says, laughing.

His color combinations are more Paris than Pantone. “I was sitting on the plane to Paris putting these vignettes together in my mind, and I was feeling very mauve,” he says. “When I landed, everything in Paris was all about yellow and mauve — and so that gave me a push to go over the top.”

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The Vignette Life

Set against backdrops of chromium yellow, 1980s mauve, and Kelly Wearstler’s boldly abstract wallpapers, the vignettes feature Arteriors lighting and furniture, such as the woven jute and teak Jericho reclining chair, which was inspired by a chair Moussa bought at a Paris flea market and reinterpreted. The bright and bold art came from Galleri Urbane, and Downing even incorporated a colorful piece made by his 7-year-old goddaughter.

Mixed with the Arteriors accessories are Downing’s own books, exotic African masks and artifacts, and his father’s 1960s Murano glass pieces (they’re not for sale, but everyone has a price, so why not ask?). The carpets all came from Clifton Carpets & Home, including a joyful polkadot number in the center of the room. It all looks very Ken Downing.

“A room should feel personal,” Downing says. “When you walk into someone’s home, you get an immediate sense of who that person is. Everything is a vignette for me — life is a vignette!”

A curated room has lots of layers and collections, Downing says, and he took inspiration from Gertrude Stein, who collected art, read books, and had scintillating conversations with Picasso and Hemingway in sumptuously layered rooms in Paris during the 1920s and ’30s.

Create rooms with interesting things to look at and talk about, and there’s no need for television or texting, he assures. “Art should create conversation, furniture should be comfortable, and people should be talking about things,” says Downing, who has four homes but only one television, and it’s in his Dallas house.

“The pendulum in the digital world is swinging back — not that we are going to give up our cellphones, because we can’t. But wouldn’t it be nice to go home to an interior where you don’t have a phone in your hand or the television isn’t blaring?

“I just love a happy atmosphere.”

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