Last week, the industry was saddened to learn the news that Carleton Varney had passed away on July 14 at the age of 85. The prolific Palm Beach (by way of Lynn, Massachusetts, then New York City) interior decorator and author fondly known by the moniker “Mr. Color” was indeed propelled by a passion for pattern and unabashed hues throughout his 60-plus-year career—just like his mentor, Dorothy Draper. Varney started working for the strong-willed pioneering Draper as a draftsman in 1958. By 1966, the Oberlin College and New York University graduate, not yet 30 years old, had become the president of Dorothy Draper & Company, a post he held until his death.
Varney infused hotels and residences around the world with a signature joyful aesthetic, from Palm Beach classic The Breakers to the Jimmy Carter–era White House to The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia—arguably his most famous project. A self-confessed type A personality, Varney also designed collections for Royal Copenhagen China, Kindle Grand Rapids, and Frontgate, among others; cofounded textile house Carleton V Ltd.; penned a syndicated decorating column for more than four decades and wrote nearly 40 books. His most recent, The Draper Touch: The High Life and High Style of Dorothy Draper, has already attracted quite a bit of fanfare since its release earlier this month.
Varney’s interiors were no stranger to the pages of AD, including the 1963-featured Dromoland Castle Hotel in County Clare, Ireland, the former ancestral home of the O’Brien family, Barons of Inchiquin, that he adorned with florals, clubby leather chairs of his own design, and a lush drawing room carpet precisely matching blades of grass. Later, there were glimpses inside the late Broadway star Ethel Merman’s Manhattan apartment, which welcomed guests with a year-round tinsel tree, as well as an Aspen retreat that Varney decked out with a palette of turquoise, red carnelian, and jasper, drawing from Native American beadwork.
A deeper dive into the archive reveals not only Varney’s vast range but his wit and graciousness. Here are some of the designs, advice, and candid musings that the icon has generously shared with AD on myriad occasions.
New York Decorator’s Own Family Apartment
Featured July/August 1974
Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the library, the dining room’s mirrored console enveloped in navy blue leather, and a romantic canopied bed all made a splash in the eight-room Manhattan apartment Varney dreamed up for his budding family. Located in a Stanford White building on Madison Avenue, the space exemplified Varney’s optimistic design philosophy: “There is so much ugliness in the world… I think if I can inspire people to look at their environment and help them make it better, prettier, then I’ve succeeded.”
Architectural Digest Visits: Joan Crawford
Featured March/April 1976
Varney counted actress Joan Crawford among his motley friends, and when the diva asked him to help bring her new Manhattan apartment to life, he respectfully preserved the spirit of fellow designer William Haines, who had long collaborated with Crawford and gave her former Upper East Side duplex the California Modern treatment. Likening himself to a cosmetician, Varney deftly melded a Haines-picked living room sofa and agate marble coffee table, for example, with his own selections, such as a yellow Parsons dining table and an apple green and white fabric emblazoned with Chinese characters. “I changed the dress of the furniture, rather than the pieces themselves,” he explained.
Designer’s Travel Notes: Visiting Iran With Carleton Varney
Featured September/October 1976
Three years before the fall of the Shah, Varney was in Iran overseeing Zamorad Farazade, a condominium project just outside Tehran. In between site visits, he thoroughly explored the capital, recommending such essentials as a wander through the bazaar to ogle striking jewelry. “The Iranians’ prize stones are absolutely flawless and smooth. The deeper the color, the better,” he shared.
Featured January/February 1977
The palatial Greenbrier had reached a bleak turning point when, in 1946, Dorothy Draper was tasked with restoring it from a World War II–era army hospital to its original, fit-for-a-president 1913 splendor. Varney, who frequently refreshed the property showcasing a black-and-white checkerboard floor in the lobby and a Victorian writing room sheathed in Draper’s Fudge Apron fabric, had a prescient take on the evolving notion of the hotel. “There’s a kind of frenzy to our everyday existence. Even when people go away for a rest it’s usually just for a few days, a weekend—certainly not the whole summer with fourteen trunks, the way people once did. The hotel in the future will be more than ever a refuge, a place of escape,” he predicted.
Summer Memories: The Old Grand Hotel Glows on Mackinac Island
Featured August 1981
“People are searching for quality. They want butlers, mint juleps, and afternoon tea,” Varney observed. “The world has gotten into the habit of piling concrete on sand and calling it a resort these days, and people are tired of that.” So was Varney. For the Grand Hotel on Michigan’s Mackinac Island, then, he envisioned a different approach, revisiting his own delightful summer memories of growing up in Nahant, Massachusetts, to inject the late 19th-century beauty with modernity. Past the lobby’s welcoming English needlepoint-style carpet, his use of vibrant colors—daffodil yellow, sky blue, deep green—complemented cheerful geranium motifs.
Designer’s Travel Notes: Carleton Varney in the Virgin Islands
Featured November 1981
The peripatetic, yacht-loving Varney had a soft spot for the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, where he had a maisonette on St. Croix and savored the likes of Peter Island and the swank resorts Caneel Bay and Little Dix Bay (now a Rosewood property). Although Varney is synonymous with brazen hues, he noted how island life actually encouraged him to embrace a more mellow route. “In the tropics, everything I do is lower in tone than my interiors in town are because the environment is so colorful,” he said, singling out an affinity for textured terra-cotta flooring and linen on projects that reference the Caribbean.
Featured March 1986
Inside Merry Hill, a 17-room mansion not far from The Greenbrier surrounded by the Allegheny Mountains, Varney invigorated his clients’ expansive collection of antiques with warm, harmonious fabrics, like the striped velvet covering a fireside chair in the library. When describing the homeowners’ openness and confidence, he turned his attention to a little-talked-about aspect of the design process: “They’re very much at ease with themselves. Most clients aren’t; they’re afraid that by the time we’re finished, they won’t want what they thought they wanted.”
Dublin Discoveries: Carleton Varney Explores the Irish Capital
Featured October 1999
On his first trip to Dromoland Castle, Varney fell in love with Ireland, eventually buying property in County Limerick. He also became a fan of Dublin, considering it a small London, and gave AD the scoop on his favorite antique shops in the city for snagging silver, Irish Georgian clocks, and Staffordshire figurines. One go-to, the Original Architectural Salvage Company, appealed to him specifically “because I want hardware that has been touched,” Varney said. “I want something living, not something new,” an ethos that has permeated his oeuvre.
Designers’ Own Homes: Carleton Varney
Featured September 2001
Green shutters popping against white clapboard and the porch’s red rocking chairs are the first signs that Varney’s Hudson Valley abode was far from a simple country retreat. The structure, dating from 1790, was rejuvenated with blue chinoiserie-printed fabric in the library, a 19th-century Georgian dining table, and a living room dressed in strié wall coverings and plank flooring salvaged from Constitution Wharf in Boston. Varney’s description of the bedroom is particularly vivid. “The bed I designed reminds me of a traditional one you might find in, say, Charleston. I sit on the Windsor chair at the English partners desk and write my column, ‘Your Family Decorator,’” he divulged.
The Professionals: Carleton Varney
Featured November 2003
Two powerful women, Dorothy Draper and Joan Crawford, had a profound influence on Varney. While Draper strengthened his craft, and Crawford reminded him that “there is a certain amount of show business in what I do,” it is a transporting childhood ritual that might have had the most significant visual impact on Varney’s future: “I would go on Saturdays with my sister to the Paramount Theater in Lynn, Massachusetts. That was the most wonderful environment. The blue lights and the organ music and the big stage—it was like a temple.”
