NEW YORK — “It’s so expensive to be rich,” Susan Gutfreund famously said in the days when Wall Street was big and her husband, John, ruled the roost. But the Eighties are over, and these days she’s a working stiff like the rest of them — although her work is likely to involve 18th-century furniture in her new role as society decorator. And, as she’s discovered, perhaps being rich isn’t so expensive: Gutfreund is an avid fan of plebeian emporiums such as Crate & Barrel and Home Depot. In fact, the model room she’s putting together for the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club 34th Annual Decorator Show House this spring is chock full of cut-rate finds.
“Isn’t this chair elegant?” she proclaims, sweeping her arm toward a sleek woven rattan chair in the corner. “It’s the Calypso chair. You can use it anywhere.” Even better, it’s just $399 from Crate & Barrel. There’s more where that came from: The plush sofas in the luxe sitting room she’s created are in fact the Ashton model from the catalogue. Of course, Gutfreund customized them a touch, having a craftsman sew slipcovers from Susani Turkish linen, which conceal the original stock fabric. Mixed in among the “important” 18th-century marble-topped consoles and Regency bergeres are two massive steel and copper coffee tables and the Oleander bowl — the same kind, as Gutfreund proudly admits, she gave to old friend Karl Lagerfeld and which he then featured in a photo shoot. That elaborate number sells for a mere $149 from the chain’s Home Accents range.
“I really love the high-low,” explains the stylishly appointed doyenne, clad in a black Chanel jacket and with flawless makeup and impeccably coiffed blonde hair. “This is meant to represent the well-lived life.” Around her, workmen scramble to install a massive, gilded mantel for the press preview, which took place Thursday night. Gutfreund herself has been doing some scrambling, since her allotted room at 4 East 75th Street — already challenging due to its lack of windows (it’s a former carriage house) — really became a decorating Everest when a huge leak damaged the ceiling. That problem was surmounted by installing a false wall six feet into the room as a crafty solution. Since the dimensions of the space were altered considerably and all the workmen were delayed, last Sunday Gutfreund found herself on a ladder, painting the walls.
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“John was holding the ladder for me,” she laughs. “I went to dinner with terra-cotta paint all over me, but I just covered it up with a Chanel jacket and sat on my hands, hoping they wouldn’t notice. Oh, the glamorous life of a decorator!”
Her husband, the former chieftain of Salomon Brothers, has found more recent employment as his loving wife’s errand boy and general helping hand. Gutfreund has kept him busy, running back and forth to Home Depot and the like. “He’s my handyman,” she jokes. “He loves Home Depot. He loves all the things you can discover there.”
In fact, the false windows she had constructed in the winkingly titled “Room With a View,” feature bamboo blinds from the store, though Gutfreund had to pull a few strings to have them done on time. “I needed to get them custom-sized quickly, and a dear friend once said, don’t deal with a one-feathered Indian in an emergency,” she recalls. So she went right to the top, calling Home Depot founder Ken Langone to have them rushed. “Within three minutes someone called me. The blinds just make the room,” she says triumphantly.
Over the two Old Master portraits hanging on the hand-painted jute-covered walls are lights, also from Home Depot, which Gutfreund says she uses in her own home. “They’re nineteen dollars. If they break, you just buy new ones,” she says. “We use Home Depot things all the time. Ikea, too — we have one near our home in the country. I love the things there.”
She finds inspiration everywhere, especially among her coterie of bold-faced friends and, well, those who have come before her. “I’m going to do a still life of Chinese porcelain in front of the fireplace,” she says. “Pauline de Rothschild did it in her home, and I’ve always wanted to do it but none of my clients have been brave enough. I’m such a fire fiend that I use all my fireplaces.”
Also displayed are her friends’ work. “I want everything to be very personalized,” she says, such as her friends’ books “and Cindy Adams’ little dog toys in the doghouse.” In the background, on a wide-screen TV, scenes play from “The Golden Bowl,” a movie in which Gutfreund has a cameo as an extra. “It was hours and hours of waiting around and then if you wink you miss me,” she jokes. “But I really think the settings [in the film] go with the room.”
Underfoot lies an 18th-century Axminster carpet, and a 7-foot hand-carved 19th-century library table from Hopetoun House is centered under a bare fixture that awaits its chandelier. “I’m praying that it gets out of Customs in time,” says Gutfreund. “I can’t have a naked lightbulb — if it doesn’t get here, I’m going to hang from it myself. At least people will have something to look at.”
Gutfreund shrugs off her Chanel jacket and prepares to get back to work. “Karl used to say of Goethe, ‘Success is measured by how many failures you have faced and still maintain your enthusiasm.'” Peering around her room, still in a state of disarray, she smiles cheerily. It’s nothing that she hasn’t faced before and so, Gutfreund takes a good look at the work cut out for her, laughs and happily digs right in.