Thoroughly Un-Modern Mario: The Prince of Chintz on Dust and Decorettes

Mr. Buatta shows off one of his interiors. (Mario Buatta: Fifty Years of American Interior Decoration/Rizzoli)

I like a place that looks lived inmagazines and books everywhere, pleasing decay, declares celebrated interior decorator Mario Buatta. Im kind of a hoarder. I love to have objects around me.

A champion of clutter, Mr. Buatta has spent his life gleefully rebelling against the aesthetic impulses that led to the fanatically clean house with all-white, modern interiors where he grew up on Staten Island.

Manor House Master Bedroom, Morristown, NJ. (Ernst Beadle)

Known as the prince of chintz for his devotion to that most cluttered of prints, Mr. Buatta built his 50-plus-year career on English country-style interiors that delight in old-fashioned abundance: cabbage rose-covered couches and canopy beds, paintings hung by sashes and bows, chinoiserie, big vases of flowers, brightly colored walls, bibelots and books. His rooms are vibrant, colorful and specific, a rejection of the tasteful dreariness of gray, white and beige interiors found in so many homes. The aesthetic appeals to both old money and new money that wants to look oldhe counts Barbara Walters, Jackie Onassis, Henry Kissinger and Mariah Carey among his clients.

The Observer recently spoke with Mr. Buatta, who last fall celebrated the publication of his first book, Mario Buatta, Fifty Years of American Interior Decoration, a 432-page overview of his work that he playfully dubs the Buattapedia. Alas, he declined to be interviewed in his apartment on East 80th Street. My apartment looks like a wreck! he exclaimed, citing clutter and dust that were excessive even for his tastes.

What are the first things you take into consideration when you start decorating a house for a client? You have to create a background for them, a stage for them to play out their lives. It should be a place that will flatter them. You want to make your rooms happy, and its good to have night colors and day colors. I could never live in an all-white house, because I was born in an all-white house.

What was the house you grew up in like? Very modern. My mother was a neurotic, and she hated dustI think of dust as a protective coating for my furniture! If you lit a cigarette, shed start cleaning out the already-clean ashtrays. She would vacuum herself out of the house. My father, who was a musician, would often come home late, and she could tell whether he was there or not by the footprints in the carpet.

You wont ever find too much white in a Buatta design. (Scott Frances/Architectural Digest Conde Nast Publications)

How did you develop such a different aesthetic? My aunt Maryher house was all English chintz, Duncan Fyfe, Chippendale-style furniture, chinoiserie. By age 11, I had bought my first antique, an English, 18th-century lap desk with a wood inlay and painting on the front. It was $12, and I bought it on the 50-cent-a-week layaway plan. I was not allowed to bring it into the house, because it was secondhand. I had to put it in the garage and spray it for three days. But by the time I moved out, I had my bedroom, the garage and the attic all filled up. I was always a collector.

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Thoroughly Un-Modern Mario: The Prince of Chintz on Dust and Decorettes