October 31, 2025

Design Inspo from the 2025 Kips Bay Show House in NY

Touring a designer show house is always enlightening—both to discover things you love and to learn what you don’t like in a room’s design. The latter can be equally valuable! The 2025 Kips Bay Show House in Manhattan was delayed until October (it’s usually in May), due to the difficulty in finding a suitable property. A show house must be: 1) huge; 2) on the market or about to be listed; and 3) have owners amenable to a couple dozen designers creating wildly different rooms, including hallways, stairways, bathrooms and closets! Furnishings can be removed, but paint and paper generally stay with the house.

Photo courtesy of Elle Decor

This year was the 50th anniversary of the Kips Bay Show House. The 21 chosen interior designers transformed this 9,000 square foot Greenwich Village town house, built in 1847. Just 26 feet wide, it even has an original Otis elevator from the Gilded Age, still in working order! There are seven wood-burning fireplaces, eight bedrooms, nine bathrooms, and many rooms have 13-foot ceilings.

Calico’s Jan Jessup visited the five-story show house with camera in hand, along with friends from WithIt, a professional networking group for women (and men) in the home furnishings industry. Here is what caught her eye, with a special focus on decorative fabrics and fabrication:

WINDOW TREATMENTS! BEAUTIFUL BEDS!

Alexa Hampton for Mark Hampton, LLC

An Oscar de la Renta dress, printed with orchids, inspired Alexa Hampton to create this garden bower bedroom. The antique canopy bed belonged to her parents for 40 years—but originally was owned by the Duchess of Marlborough in England!

Close-ups of the interior of the bed show the contrast print fabric that lines the bed hangings and the top of the canopy.

Alexa chats with furniture and lighting designer Nathaniel Pearson and former employees.

Close-ups of the drapery panels showing fan pleats, contrast print lining, and fuchsia fabric banding.

Alessandra Branca

“The New Drawing Room” is designer Alessandra Branca’s upscale version of a multi-use room, with drapery panels made from Fortuny fabrics.

Alessandra’s high-low mix includes a sofa slipcover made from a cotton pinstripe and woven wood shades.

Wood paneling and paintings in this room are all custom hand-painted Gracie wallpaper—a trompe l’oeil triumph!

Ben Pentreath Studio

This eclectic drawing room featured a newly issued William Morris wallpaper that married all the art and British antiques.

A side chair covered in moss-green velvet with red welting. Art is hung salon style to accentuate 13-foot ceilings.

Corey Damon Jenkins

Designer Corey Damen Jenkins added paneling, moldings, and friezes. The ceiling design is an enlargement of the floral wallpaper!

Teal silk draperies hang from a valance with box pleats, banded in peach silk.

The “Le Roi Soleil” Chandelier by Baccarat features crystals forming the shades and arms.

Pavarini Design

Charles and Randall Pavarini waving from their created Zoom Room, optimized for online video meetings.

ROMAN SHADES & RIPPLEFOLD DRAPERIES

In “The Kitchen at Kips” by Christopher Peacock, Roman shades hang inside handsome moldings.

The same fabric used for both Roman shades and Ripplefold drapery panels for consistency.

What is Ripplefold? It’s a special tape with embedded snaps stitched to the inside top of the drapery panel. The snaps attach to pendant carriers in the rod to create a more contemporary, curvaceous fullness. Many types of rods can work with Ripplefold panels: smooth wood, fluted wood, metal finishes and more. Calico can create Ripplefold window treatments just like these.