House & Garden: October 2023
Original Article | Written by Charlotte McCaughan-Hawes | Photography: Read McKendree
An American house centred around a shared love of fabrics.
Having spent Christmas in a near-empty home, the owners of this Kansas City Georgian-style house called in Stephanie Woodmansee to decorate it and the result is a joyful, pattern-filled wonder.
It's a classic movie plot: boy meets girl at high school, boy and girl start dating, move away to the big city (New York, in this case) to get started on adult life before eventually circling back to where they're from to settle down and raise a family. It's a classic for a reason and in the case of Elle and Greyson Clymer, their story follows a similar path, leading them back – “12 years later (after having bounced around in six apartments, a wedding, getting a dog, starting a business and having two children)” – to Kansas City and this impressive, Georgian-style house.
Moving from an apartment to a large suburban house is a daunting decorating prospect, so, once Elle and Greyson had appointed an architect and contractor, she reached out to a dear friend for help with the interiors: Stephanie Woodmansee of Henry & Co – the interior design business which Elle founded with Stephanie in 2013 and which Stephanie has carried on by herself since Elle moved to this house in Kansas City. “Elle and I had worked so closely together for so long,” explains Stephanie, “so it was pretty exciting when I got the call and she wanted me back on board.” What followed was, in Stephanie's words, “an 18 month renovation with many surprises along the way”.
These were not bad, structural surprises – the house was built in 1916 and had good bones – but rather delightful things to stumble upon such as “original pocket doors hidden in a wall separating the living room from the now library, and beautiful original marble tiled floors hidden under wall to wall carpeting”. There was the small matter of renovating the entire kitchen, primary bedroom suite and redoing all the plumbing and electrics in the house, but then it was onto the decoration and Elle and Stephanie did not hold back.
The house is a wonderland of patterns, fabrics and colour, tempered by a few neutral spaces, while others go all out. “You can tell we clearly love pattern,” laughs Stephanie. “There are so many amazing textiles out there and how many times do you get to decorate your home? My perspective is that life is short, so use as many fabrics as you can.” That perspective is on full display here, from the moment you enter the house. The hallway walls are lined with Schumacher's ‘Brentwood Stripe’, while the sunroom mixes Lee Jofa's iconic ‘Hollyhock’ on the walls with a sofa covered in Quadrille's ‘Arbre de Matisse’, bone inlay chair covered in a remnant of a Muriel Brandolini fabric and no less that seven different fabrics across the varying cushions – though one is covered in the fabric version of the wallpaper.
Bringing that many prints into a house and making it work is impressive, but somehow, Stephanie has also managed to make the house feel restful too. This in part has been achieved by furnishing the house with antiques. “Elle had so many treasures from her grandmothers,” explains Stephanie, “along with finds from flea markets and antique visits so we had a lot of things to start to create the character of each room. As we began to introduce antiques and find discontinued fabrics on Etsy or Ebay, it helped establish a foundation.”
It has also helped to establish a feeling of a house that is very loved, very personal and most of all, lived in. Amongst all these incredible fabrics, there is a true sense of home and comfort. “Stephanie has a way of turning my somewhat crazy, somewhat horrible ideas into something brilliant,” jokes Elle, continuing, “doing design work is way more fun with her. She is full of amazing ideas, and our ability to collaborate is something I value very much.”
It is clear how personal this project is to both parties; of course, for Elle, it's home but it was also another chance to work with her former business partner. While for Stephanie, having a “dear friend” as a client made it all the more special. They're not done yet, however. Elle has tapped Stephanie to decorate her East Hamptons house next but, as Stephanie says, the work in Kansas is never truly finished: "we are still constantly replacing things, updating things, and repairing things to the “old girl”, but we feel she deserves it."
