#lady mendl's

[emmastory]

one thing about me is that I fucking love afternoon tea. this time the tea enjoyers went to lady mendl's, which I had previously been to after dark but never in daylight!

[ribbitrrrbitxhs]

I’m gonna cry I’m so happy

Five courses of afternoon tea with some of the most wonderful people I know!

[reticulating-splines]

WIP - West 70th

1880s-1910s row of Upper West Side townhomes.

Been working on this row of late 19th c. brownstones on and off for the past year now, so needless to say when I heard about For Rent I was hype.

Download Here

This initially started because I was homesick for NYC during the pandemic. Specifically for the area of the upper west side my dorm was in while I was a student. I mainly blame this experience for my obsession with historical architecture - walking along central park west past the Dakota on the way to the subway, smoking on the stoops of the brownstones late at night, going to classes in the wedding cake that is the Ansonia - it was just everywhere, and so, so beautiful to look at.

Except a lot of it is faded glory - buildings subdivided, details chipped or covered in the thickest coats of grime or paint. So I wanted to replicate some of the old New York from around the turn of the century. The one I read about in the Luxe series and saw in the Samantha movie lol.

The basement or garden level of each four-story brownstone will be dedicated to the original purpose as the main workplace of the service staff. Unfortunately no room for the actual garden, so laundry lines and planters are on the roof. There are bedrooms and bathrooms for a cook and a housekeeper/butler, along with the staff dining and the kitchen. The butler's pantry is directly upstairs from the kitchen, and the top floor is almost exclusively made up of staff bedrooms and washrooms.

I usually do the service areas first because they're the most interesting, and there was nothing more interesting than a full edwardian brownstone kitchen. Lots of exposed piping, beadboard, subway tile, and shelves of clutter. Has a separate scullery, pantry, and stairs down to a basement storeroom to keep your best champs-le-sims nectar in. There's also a servant's bellboard in the kitchen and the staff dining room. It along with the "boiler" system are made with tool and CC-free.

The main entrance and parlor are doing their best to continue the gothic revival theme of the exterior. The library and dining room follow in the enfilade starting in the parlor. Since this first house is a corner lot, it has a bit more width and space than a true brownstone. The only actual brownstone I've been inside of is Lady Mendl's, so ofc I had to have an extensive tea setup. Def took a lot of inspo from these two pics alone for these rooms.

The main stairwell and picture gallery lead to three large bedrooms on the second floor, and then up to the children's room and nanny's bedroom on the third floor. I really like skylights. I learned the importance of decent lightwells in staving off depression one semester when my window looked out onto a brick wall

The master bedroom and the children's room above it both have their own private sitting rooms and bathrooms. All rooms have either fireplaces or cast iron radiators.

There's no way this is going to be finished by the time For Rent comes out, so im just going to release it in whatever state it's in when it does come out. The exteriors and interior room layout for all the townhomes will (hopefully) most likely be set by then anyway.

Now available for download!

Also the anniversary of Chez Cromwell is coming up! Ive been gone for the better part of the year due to starting a new job, but I havent been idle. C.Cromwell has been updated for infants and ceilings, which led to me redoing the exterior and almost every room, so a rerelease is coming v soon! Sneak peek below. Happy Thanksgiving!

[ash-elizabeth-art]

Lady Mendl's Tea Salon, NYC, 2024

[desimonewayland]

Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl

by Cecil Beaton bromide print, 1930s

National Portarit Gallery, London

[valkyries-things]

LADY ELSIE DE WOLFE // ACTRESS

“She was an American actress and interior decorator. She was one of the first interior designers, replacing dark and ornate Victorian decor with lighter, simpler styles and uncluttered room layouts. She had a marriage of convenience to English diplomat Sir Charles Mendl but her lifelong companion was Elisabeth Marbury, the pioneering American theatrical and literary agent. Lady Mendl was a prominent social figure, and she entertained in the most distinguished circles. According to The New Yorker, 'Interior design as a profession was invented by Elsie de Wolfe.”

[wh1zz3rbr0wn]

me ranting on the marvin triolgy i unironically love the marvin trilogy so much?? in trousers makes no sense. esp the end song/ begginning depends on what like version ur listening too. i heard this theory that in trousers is actually marvin being hypnotised by mendle in therapy and it would make sense!! like it'd explain the inaccuracies between it and falsettos. Like Trina having two kids, as mentioned in your lips and me, 'the oldest drink wine the baby's wailing', while in falsettos Jason is the only child known. And in you gotta die sometime when whizzer says i dont smoke but in whizzer going down marvin says 'he takes me in his arms and he lights *another* cigarette.' Then i love how they re used im breaking down from in trousers and using it in the 2016 revival of it. imo it fits better in falsettos because you go more in depth about both trina and whizzer charaters. In trousers musicals actually is so bloody good??? like every song is great, my favourite song is marvin's giddy seizures. It highlights marvin's suicidal attempts and how it doesn't get noticed unless he acts out., then the whole thing just sounds so good. i wish the lesbians got more screen time though because theyre so radicial. every scene they're in they just light the stage up. I love how all the charaters are wrote. I would like to know if in high school ladies at 5 o'clock/ the r--e of mrs goldurg. are we meant to take that literally? im assuming we are because marvin says something along the lines of for my 14th birthday i was hoping you could show me the wonders of the bed. i think we would be, and if we are what the fuck? like i know marvin is an incredibly abusive person before about time but jesus christ. i didnt expect that. now i do adore that marvin's abusive behaviours are acknowledged and reprimanded unlike another musical that attempts to do something alike to falsettos, rent, where all characters have abusive behaviours. i wont dwell on the failures of rent too much because this isn't about rent. I have saw that 2004 college production amd i find it hilarious that in the thrill of first love that marvin drops whizzer, i hope that was scripted because that seems like such a Marvin behaviour. at the same time it would also be funny if it wasnt. either way i like it. anyway in marvin at the physiatrist, in the og off brodway cast, mendle says its queer mr marvin which is so funny to me. on the topic of the og off brodway cast, i find it fun how chip zien played both marvin and mendle in in trousers and march of the falsettos/falsettoland. marvin in in trousers and mendle in MotF/falsettoland respectably. I genuinely adore everything about falsettos. the openeing number is such a good opening song, i dont think ive heard a better one. Then my father's a homo always makes me laugh and i just love how jason doesn't hate his father for being gay, its how his homosexuality tore the family apart. Then this had better come to a stop is such agood number. i love how in the og of brodway run of it the late again sounds like yapping. then the way that trina and whizzer sort of bond over marvin's abusive tendencies is heartbreaking. A tight knit family reprise is a great song again. then the chess game, marvin my guy you know you agreed to let whizzer win cmon now. i never wanted to love you is heartbreaking. and the games i play makes me violently sob. march of the falsettos made no sense to me until i realised that it was a song to remind you that acts of affection are NOT masculine at all. i honestly dont get why act one didnt end with i never wanted to love you, but father to son is heartwarming compared to the previous songs. i love the second act so much. marvin has done everything to change himself yet the love of his life is stripped away from him. it is like a reminder that due to his past actions he can never like fully be a good person. he changed. he did im not putting that down, but his actions can always haunt him.

[amateurbourguignon]

La comtesse Madeleine de Montgomery, la princesse Hedwige de Bourbon-Parme et la duchesse de Grammont entourant Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe) au bal donnée par cette dernière dans sa propriété de Versailles. 1938.

[9atherin9]

"Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl (b. December 20, 1865) was photographed by Cecil Beaton in the late 1930s wearing an Elsa Schiaparelli 'Apollo of Versailles' velvet cape from the Zodiac collection of winter 1938–39. The cape is in the @metmuseum"

black velvet evening cape by schiaparelli, 1938

[norashelley]

Princess Vasili Romanoff, Mary Pickford, Valentin Parera and his wife, Grace Moore, and Lady Mendl, at Mary's party at Pickfair for Lady Mendl.

[princess-stabbity]

it bums me out that most covers of “anything goes” use alternate lyrics, bc i love how incomprehensible most of the song is to current audiences

[365daysoflesbians]

DECEMBER 20: Elsie de Wolfe (1859-1950)

The famous socialite and interior decorator, Elsie de Wolfe, was born on this day in 1859. Elsie is most well-known for her 1913 book The House in Good Taste; In a review of the book’s enormous influence, The New Yorker would eventually write that ”interior design as a profession was invented by Elsie de Wolfe.”

An older Elsie de Wolfe photographed amongst the extravagance of her Paris apartment (x).

Ella Anderson de Wolfe was born on December 20, 1859 in New York City. Her father was a Canadian-born doctor who provided a comfortable life for his family, but in a look back at her childhood, Elsie would say that she went through life as “a rebel in an ugly world.” When she was young, Elsie began a career as an actress. She appeared in a few plays and one act comedies but enjoyed no real success. It was while travelling with the Empire Stock Company and assisting in the art of staging plays that she found herself interested in interior design.

The passion for design and aesthetics was already there, but it took pulling some string to get Elsie de Wolfe’s name on the map. Once Elsie began foraying into the uncharted territory of interior design as a career, it was her partner Elisabeth Marbury who secured her such prestigious clients as Amy Vanderbilt, Henry Clay Frick, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Although Elsie was simply known as an actress of mediocre fame in the 1890s, Elisabeth was a wildly successful literary agent who had managed the likes of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. The two had first met at a party and soon entered into a Boston Marriage; it was her partnership with Elisabeth and the design of their multiple New York Homes that truly made Elsie’s reputation.

Elsie with her partner of over 40 years, Elisabeth “Bessie” Marbury, in 1923 (x).

In 1926, Elsie was married to a diplomat by the name of Sir Charles Mendl and became the Lady Mendl. However, the marriage was only formed out of convenience for both parties and Elsie remained true to Elisabeth until her death. For the rest of their lives, the women moved through high society as the artsy lesbian power couple of New York City. One friend even described them as “"the willowy De Wolfe and the masculine Marbury... cutting a wide path through Manhattan society.” Elsie would be named the best-dressed woman in the world by Paris magazines in 1935 and be immortalized in the lyrics of multiple Cole Porter songs before her death on July 12, 1950 at the age of 90. Elisabeth has preceded her, passing away in 1933.

-LC

[billionairebabes]

Afternoon tea in New York - Lady Mendl's Tea Salon 🫖

This was a nice way to catch up with my girls without doing the usual brunch, lunch or dinner date. It was 4-5 courses so I was surprisingly full in the end. Those open faced salmon sandwiches were >>>>

[chaoticdesertdweller]

House of Chanel fall/winter 1938–39

Culture: French

Medium: silk, plastic, suede, glass

Credit Line: Gift of Mrs. Harrison Williams, Lady Mendl, and Mrs. Ector Munn, 1946

"The decoration of sequined fireworks on this evening dress, which was worn by Countess Madeleine de Montgomery to Lady Mendl's seventy-fifth birthday party in 1939, is a fitting climax to le beau monde of the 1930s. When Adolf Hitler declared that Germany was at war with Poland in September 1939, the glamorous era of the 1930s came to a close. The fireworks motif, executed in brilliantly colored sequins, takes on additional symbolic meaning since the dress was created and worn immediately prior to the start of World War II. The dress was part of a collection assembled and brought to New York by the donors and their friends and displayed in an exhibition to benefit the French war charities in 1940."

[pseudoculture]

Good luck, kid.

En el post de hoy, hablamos de The Grand Budapest Hotel. ¿Por dónde empezar? Primero que nada, la estética de esta obra de arte es sublime. Segundo, sus personajes, SAOIRSE RONAN, RALPH FIENNES, WILLEM DAFOE (no necesito decir nada más).

La historia comienza con una niña leyendo un libro sentada en una tumba. El autor nos relata cómo llegó a conocer la verdad detrás del una vez glorioso Gran Hotel Budapest, viva imagen de un hotel que, en pleno auge y esplendor, sufrió las consecuencias de la guerra. Ubicado en la República de Zubrowka, el edificio ahora en ruinas, fue hogar del mejor concierge de la historia: M. Gustave H. Conocido gracias a su excelente gusto por old rich blonde ladies y hacer posible lo imposible. Su sucesor Zero Moustafa, confiesa al escritor las hazañas vividas junto a su jefe y al amor de su vida, Agatha —pastelera de Mendl's— luego del robo de una gran obra de arte: "Boy with Apple". Sin embargo, el hotel es ahora la única conexión de Zero con lo que fueron los mejores años de su vida.

Dedicada al escritor Stefan Zweig y basada mayormente en su obra (la cuál ahora me veo afortunadamente obligada a leer), la película te hará reír, o llorar, o reír y llorar, o reír y llorar y sonreír a más no poder debido a su superioridad estética en todos los sentidos.

¿Qué esperas para adentrarte en el mundo de Wes Anderson y enamorarte del cine?

PD: si querés sentir que vivís dentro de El Gran Hotel Budapest, descargate esta playlist y mirá el mundo con nuevos ojos: https://open.spotify.com/album/6IV7472Hni7A1ENilCManS

PD 2: TODAS SUS PELIS SON UNA GENIALIDAD. PERIOD.

PD 3: OJALÁ ZUBROWKA FUERA REAL.

[lost-in-woodlawn]

Happy Pride Weekend!

Elisabeth “Bessy” Marbury rests in Woodlawn’s Prospect plot.  She is pictured above with her closest friend and devoted companion, Elsie de Wolfe (Miss Marbury is the one on the left, sitting down.)  The two lived together for decades, even after Elsie married Sir Charles Mendl and became Lady Mendl (said to be only a marriage of convenience.)  They were referred to by some gossips as “The Bachelors.”

It was to Elsie that Marbury dedicated her memoir, My Crystal Ball.  They remained together until Marbury's death in 1933.

Marbury was a woman ahead of her time, becoming a literary and theatrical agent in the early part of the 20th century. She handled the careers of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw among others.  Her wiki page gives a good bit of information on her personal life and career:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Marbury

Here are two photographs from Marbury’s memoir that I like a lot.  The first shows her in her Knights of Columbus uniform from when she was involved in post-World War I relief work in France (a duty which she took a great deal of pride in), and the second photo is Elisabeth at 10 years of age looking amusingly like Wednesday Addams from The Addams Family!