Decorator Alexa Hampton Will Discuss Her Journey Through Design at Antiques at the GardensBy Madoline Markham Koonce
Alexa Hampton grew up as a tourist of beautiful interiors, and she remains one today.
In short, her life’s journey has been absorbing and creating home designs. She writes about her journey in the 2023 book “Design, Style & Influence” and will discuss it in her Oct. 6 keynote talk at Birmingham Botanical Gardens’ Antiques at the Gardens.
The story of her life of design is at once a personal one – growing up the daughter of noted decorator Mark Hampton and taking over his firm after his death, when she was only 27 years old – and one that will be familiar to designers of about her age with “seismic shifts in the zeitgeist of design that include major sales or publications that hit us all like a ton of bricks,” Hampton noted.
The book is a hardback full of vivid photos of her own design work and the work of designers who influenced her style, while also including what she calls “love letters” to designers such as Bill Blass and Hubert de Givenchy. The photos of their interiors are a vital part to Hampton’s own design narrative, which has evolved as she’s worked since the 1990s on urban apartments, town and country residences, and even private airplanes and yachts from her home in New York City to Hangzhou, China.
Take, for example, an image of fashion designer Bill Blass’ home that features large bookshelves, collections of art and even helmets you also see in photos of Hampton’s own rooms in the book.
“Watching him inhabit that house was so spectacular,” Hampton said. “His pitch perfect sense of style blew me away, and his art collections blew me away. I definitely date my strange love of helmets to him. It almost felt like an experience of a museum interior. Any piece you look at has sculptural value and elevates and edifies the objects so they are more than the sum of their parts.”
Hampton’s book also chronicles the evolution of the decoration of her own apartment in the Upper East Side of Manhattan over many decades, from living with a roommate to early married years to raising three children, all in the same prewar building. While Hampton notes her style is “ever changing and ever evolving with the accrual of information and inspiration,” all of its iterations show her classical elegance, with collections artfully on display and books on shelves.
“Growing up in (my parents’) house, we had books in every room, so it only made sense that I would want to re-create that same level of comfort that being surrounded by books provided me, only in my own room,” she writes of the first apartment she and her husband shared. “Books are the soul of humanity and to live without them is tantamount to living in a mausoleum, methinks.”
The current incarnation of Hampton’s living room is telling of how her style has evolved to incorporate more fun flourish mixed in with formal classical elements, as you can see in a purple bergere chair and in coral and red tassels on the base of the linen sofa.
“It is a happy place for me, with this wild color palette that I’ve only allowed myself to dive into as I have hit my 50s,” Hampton said. “It feels like a good representation of where my heart lies in my own home. If you sat on the edge of that sofa, that is both my husband’s and my favorite perch.”
Lifetime Collections
In this space, the exuberant color of fabrics is paired with her classical collections that are “what makes the space sing for me,” she writes.
A Massimo Listri photograph of Vatican’s Sala delle Muse in the Museo Pio Clementino hangs above the sofa, complementing the Italian landscapes, friezes, busts and sculptures in the room.
Likewise, you can’t look at Alexa Hampton interiors without noting their collections.
“I think that collections are the result of an interesting story, of something sparking your attention,” she said. “One of the most important elements of assembling a collection is the time component. You can’t just walk into a place and buy seven, even if you want to. It has to be a dedication and commitment, slow over time, for it to have that meaning for you.
“When you go to your grave, any collection you have, whether it’s of value empirically or if it’s only of value to you, is the result of your life’s work.”
For Hampton, her approach to collections as a curator is not unlike how she approaches another of her life’s work, licensing design projects: as an artist.
“I ask what I really wish that I had that I don’t have or what inspires me,” she said.
Most recently, she has been working on custom wallpaper lines with Gracie Wallpaper.
“It’s been a joy to work on, with artists creating what you had hoped for,” she said.
You also can find her design imprint on collections with Woodard Furniture, Generation Lighting, The Shade Store, Kravet, and Visual Comfort & Co. (which is sponsoring her talk at Antiques at the Gardens), among others.
From product lines to her own apartment, anywhere you see the design and style of Hampton, you’re sure to see what influenced her in each and every moment as a tourist of interiors.
English (US)