You don't know how painful it was for me to type that title. Yes, there are Southerners who may be deemed tacky, but on the whole I think we have pretty good taste. And despite the fact that I love "Designing Women", the show did seem to feature a lot of bad interiors courtesy of a group of Southern decorators, only helping to perpetuate this vicious stereotype. One Southerner who had great style and taste, at least to me, was Wallis, Duchess of Windsor. I won't deny that the woman had a really cracked moral compass, and I certainly can't hold her up as a beacon of virtue. But the woman did have style in droves.
Billy Baldwin didn't quite agree and in fact labeled Wallis' decorating as "tacky Southern taste". Now I wonder- do you think Baldwin truly believed this? Or was this sour grapes? I don't know, but I don't really agree with him. Except...for the bedroom at top. This pastel confection was Wallis' bedroom at The Mill, the country home of the Windsors. It's colorful and circus-like with those stripes and harlequin prints. I wouldn't call it Southern, but I'm afraid that I do find it a bit tacky.
So what do you think? Was Wallis' taste flawless and was the bedroom at The Mill simply an aberration? (I've included a few other images of the Windsor's home in Bois de Boulogne for comparison's sake.) Did she warrant the accolades that we have heaped on her? Or, horror of horrors, did she really exhibit tacky Southern taste? Let's discuss.
Wallis bedecked in Schiaparelli. She was no beauty, but that dress was divine.
The library at the Windsors' Paris home in Bois de Boulogne
The boudoir that separated the Windsors' bedrooms, Paris