Known to friends as Sister, this book chronicles one woman's remarkable life and ground-breaking career. In doing so it paints a unique portrait of American high society and recounts the transformation of an art form.
Dorothy May Kinnicutt was born into a patrician New York family in 1910, and her privileged early life was one of the right schools, yacht clubs, coming-out parties, and the Social Register. Compelled to work during the lean years of the Depression, Sister combined her innate design ability and her high-echelon social connections to create an extraordinarily successful interior decorating business.
Her firm, Parish-Hadley, served a list of clients that comprised the creme de la creme of American aristocracy, among them Rockefellers, Astors, and Whitneys. For these ' clients, she was an indispensable presence, both in their salons and in designing them. Sister's style, influenced by her family's sum-mer house in Maine, came to be known as "American country." Its reflection of her deeply felt Yankee roots influenced an entire generation of American decorators.
Illustrated in b/w throughout.