Vincent Fourcade - An Interior Designer from New York

New York based Vincent Gabriel Fourcade was an interior designer with an aristocratic view of life, an approach which he seemed to rejoice in. According to him "Outrageous luxury is what our clients want." "Outrageous luxury" is exactly what Vincent sought to give his customers during his career, spanning 35 years. With Robert Denning, he established Robert Denning & Vincent Fourcade, Inc. The style of this duo, frequently copied across the globe, was termed the Style Rothschild.

The handsome and witty French interior designer Fourcade was born into a family of eminent French aesthetes in 1934. His father, Jean Fourcade was an industrialist and banker. Like his father and grandfather, he too took up a banking career but quit it when he was 24 to design lush party décors. His meeting with Robert Denning in 1959 was the beginning of a successful interior design partnership that would last till his death. Fourcade may not have had much training but the visits that he made early in his life to delicately pleasing houses in Italy and France and the memories of those visits were what helped him to study his trade.

An early interior design work of the Fourcade-Denning duo was the dressing of the Seventh Regimant Armory, located in New York. They arranged sofas one after another, enveloped the floors with raccoons that they had made using old coats, borrowed French furniture, and used Fortuny fabrics to cover the walls. This design combination became a trademark of theirs. In 1960, they formed Denning & Fourcade, a firm that remained famous for more than forty years for the opulent interiors it created. One of the projects of the Denning & Fourcade firm was décor designing for a coming out party for Cynthia Phipps in Oslyn, L.I.

The colour red was a common feature of Fourcade's interiors; fur bed throws and balloon shades were paramount. Often, his work incorporated papal fabrics, lavish accessories such as fringed silk lampshades, Napolean III carpets, and massive scale of antiques signed by prominent cabinetmakers. His work had details and ideas from sources such as Karl Friedrich Schinkel's architecture and houses in South Carolina.

Fourcade had a talent for the grand-luxe. A typical example is also his most controversial conception - the apartment for fashion designer Carolyne Roehm and financier husband Henry Kravis. On the sets of the 1990 movie "The Bonfire of the Vanities", this apartment was humorously imitated. Fourcade's sophisticated clients included Oscar de la Renta, Michel David-Weill and Susanna Angelli.

Foucarde contracted the HIV virus in the early 1980s and AIDS finally claimed his life in 1992. He passed away on the 23rd of December.