Any design-minded soul who lived in or visited New York City during the 1990s remembers the
huge impact of ABC Carpet & Home when it first took off. Visiting this
retail giant in the Flatiron District was like entering another, previously
unimagined world. Shopping was never the same again.
Quietly creating floor after floor of designs during a heady period from 1990
to 1997 was visual director Rebecca Purcell, freshly arrived from Atlanta and a
series of store display jobs. "Back then, the aesthetic of everything having a
patina was new," she recalls. "It was exciting to have the opportunity to do
that on a big scale. Some people were shocked by it. The reaction made me
realize that something else was going on here beyond visuals."
Not merely an aesthetic, Rebecca’s approach to interiors is more of a philosophy. She calls it
"modernostalgia": nostalgic items mixed in an artistic fashion, with something
funky or macabre thrown in for fun. "I like looking at objects and seeing how I
could remake them using cardboard, glue, and thread. It ends up being something
that’s a great mix because it’s nothing you’ve exactly seen before, though it’s
evocative of vintage." An example hangs from a screen above—paper leaves cut to
mimic acanthus leaf finials on a four-poster bed.
top left: Four different textiles in shades of mushroom, pale green, and
pink cocoon a four-poster that Rebecca created from a wooden frame. "I wanted
the look of a sumptuously dressed 18th-century bed." Art hung directly over
fabric adds richness.
bottom left: Oval frames made from felt, glass beads, shell buttons, and
ribbons are "tiny conceits," as Rebecca puts it, that capture an antique mood.
Hatpins affix them to "gator board" foamcore disguised under silk, an old store
display trick.
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