Jacques Garcia Decorating in the French Style

Jacques Garcia is one of the most fashionable interior designers in France today. Parisians flock to the tables of the exclusive Hotel Costes he designed near the place Vendome, and the famous tea room Laduree on the Champs Elysees to dine and be seen in his elegant and atmospheric fin-de-siecle salons. Garcia counts among his private clients royalty, actors, politicians and businessmen from New York to Beirut, but he is just as much at home refurbishing museums (musee Carnavalet, musee de la Vie Romantique) and palace hotels and casinos in Deauville or Baden-Baden. Neoclassicism, orientalism and Empire Revival are his decorative landmarks. In deliberate opposition to the post-modern spaces designed by wunderkind Philippe Starck in the early 90s, Garcia is passionate about the past, but his is not a dry historicism. He is a master at mixing texture, pattern and color. His re-created rooms seem to bear the traces of generations, but are in fact the product of his inspired and irreverent imagination and attention to detail. The magnificent, ongoing restauration and decoration of his Normandy chateau, Champs de Bataille, attracts visitors from the world over and is a monument to his art and creativity. Stunningly illustrated, this sumptuous volume will appeal to anyone interested in interior decoration and provides a privileged look into the exclusive world of French elegance and style.