Adam Lippes Has an Eye for Interiors

Should Adam Lippes ever grow tired of fashion (God forbid!), he’d have an excellent career in interior design. Anyone who has been to his New York town house, which he furnished himself with a refined mix of 20th-century antiques and contemporary art, can attest to that. “It’s a passion of mine,” says Lippes, who often weaves an element of interior design into his fashion collections. For fall, it was hand-painted wall coverings from de Gournay. “Everything they do is ­extraordinary—and prohibitively expensive,” he says of the English company, which created the chinoiserie backdrops for the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s “China: Through the Looking Glass” exhibition last year. After exploring its archives, Lippes decided on de Gournay’s L’Eden pattern, a lush tropical landscape he used for everyday pieces like a bomber jacket, an oversize sweatshirt, and a burnout-velvet dress. “It was a youthful, modern idea—and a bit of an unusual collaboration for us,” says de Gournay’s Hannah Gurney, whose father, Claud Cecil Gurney, founded the company nearly 30 years ago. “But it’s good to surprise people.” For the collection’s presentation during New York Fashion Week, Lippes kitted out his place with de ­Gournay folding screens and served mini-quiches on the company’s porcelain plates. “It was a major de Gournay moment,” he recalls with a smile. “I wish I could have kept it all.”

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