"This intimate portrait of Mrs. Henry Parish II--known to friends as Sister--chronicles one woman's remarkable life and groundbreaking career. In doing so it paints a unique portrait of American high society and recounts the transformation of an art form. Dorothy May Kinnicutt was born into a patrician New York family in 1910, and her privileged early life was one of the right schools, yacht clubs, coming-out parties, and the Social Register. Compelled to work during the lean years of the Depression, Sister combined her innate design ability and her high-echelon social connections to create an extraordinarily successful interior decorating business. Her firm, Parish-Hadley, served a list of clients that comprised the crème de la crème of American aristocracy, among them Rockefellers, Astors, and Whitneys ... Drawing upon Sister Parish's own unpublished memoirs, as well as hundreds of interviews with world-renowned interior decorators and socialites, Bartlett and Crater take readers into the houses--and the lives--of the most famous and powerful people of this unforgettable woman's time."--Jacket.
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