French stylist, interior designer, journalist, editor, and book author, Marie-Paule Pelle has lived an incredible life. The daughter of a journalist, she set out to do the same back in the 1960's. Among her first assignments was the task of meeting movie stars as they stepped off their planes at Orly; this is how she first met Sophia Loren, William Holden, and Elsa Martinelli. Soon she was working at Elle, Marie Claire Maison, Decoration Internationale, among others. By the late 1980's Conde Nast made her an offer she couldn't refuse, and off to New York she went.
She lived in New York for seven years, working at American Vogue, House & Garden, Vanity Fair and Conde Nast Traveler. She added a chic sensibility that was hard to resist. Her New York apartment was photographed; she made a splash by designing the café and other spaces at the new Henri Bendel location on 5th Avenue. She also managed to write a best-selling, and now classic, book: Valentino: Thirty Years of Magic (Abbeyville Press, 1990).
Her country home in France, is full of items and memories collected over a life-time:
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| A note from Jackie Kennedy Onassis, back in Jackie's Doubleday years. |
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| In this small bathroom, the toilet cover is rather spectacular! |
Today she still works, styling for fashion houses or interior design projects and/or publications and the occasional exhibition. In Paris, she often uses the Carrefour Café, on rue Monsieur Le Prince, as her meeting space, she calls it "chez Paulette":
Charming and a pleasure to learn about, thank you Jeffrey Harris!
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