A Closer Look: Inside Swan Babe Paley’s Iconic New York Apartments | Cultured Elegance

How can you clean all this material? She smoked……must’ve smelled heavily of cigarettes

Clutter fest. Interesting.

I never understood why papered or fabric walls matched with fabric chairs of equally busy looking patterns were considered art. The art work though, incredible.

As beautiful as babe was, she lacked mothering skills.

Beautifully done, but I can only imagine the smell in these apartments due to everyone smoking and the amount of fabric on the walls that would harbor all that smoke.

That whole interior is gaudy. Like wearing vertical stripes, horizontal stripes, checkers, florals, neons, and animal prints all at the same time. Although her personal style is timeless, her decor is woefully not

Gaudy and too garish. Yuck

It was over the top Elegance but probably considered fashionable for the wealthy at that time. You can see the cigarette smoke Haze hanging in the air. She was an exquisite beauty who, despite her wealth led a sad life

St.Regis was nicknamed St.Roaches by everyone who lived there. Giant cockroaches would fly around all over the place. I'm sure Babe Paley woke up every morning just covered with the pests!! 😂😂

What is so sad, is that Babe died fairly young of lung cancer. I can understand that the dangers of smoking weren’t well known, but there is no way smoking inside so much didn’t make everything in the apartment smell terrible. The draping would have been practically dripping in it. Guessing that if everyone is smoking, they all are so used to the smell, they don’t notice it. Gross.

Wow! Surely a bygone era but fun to review. Of course the principals of this video would look down upon the rest of us as "the great unwashed." One rule I have noted is how those stylish women always wore their pearl strands in odd numbers, and that seemed to work!

It was tacky and hideous. Even for the time. The only thing worse was the shag carpeting of the mid 1970's. The kind that looked like long yarn strings that had to be kept with a lawn rake. . In the words of the fabulous Billy Haines " Ignorance is excusable. Bad taste is not!".

Babe Paley ❤ I idolize her for being the most chic NY socialite EVER 🎉🎉🎉 Style. Sophistication. Skinny second wife with Vogue magazine credentials? Yass, bitch!!!😅

I find the decor ugly sorry. I couldn't handle the smell of nicotine all over the fabrics.

What an extraordinary lady!! 🫶🏻

I like her style of fashion, but don’t care for her style for decor. Doesn’t translate as the same person to me.

One can really forget the world outside when one enters those apartments.

There is a thing of having too much stuff,and they both smoked! I can only imagine 😮

The woman put up with an abuse, philandering excuse of a husband just to live here? Poor trade.

Welp those were certainly…choices

Her style is not my cup of tea. However what an extraordinarily beautiful woman! I’m sorry never thought Jackie O was even attractive to look at but this woman is drop dead gorgeous!

She was no oil painting - with her kind of money ducks can be called swans.

THEY WERE "ALL" WEALTHY, USELESS, SPOILED WOMEN. THAT'S WHAT THEY WERE BRED TO BE. GO AFTER THAT "BRASS RING HUSBAND" SO THEY COULD LIVE OFF THEM AND THEIR HARD WORK AND SUCCESS ! 😂

An Age of Conspicuous Consumption and Gawdy Sense of Decoration!

One hell of a FIRE HAZARD and so God awful dirty.

Too busy…nothing matches…glad I’m not filthy rich

No relaxation there. Way too much.

The art critic and Picasso biographer John Richardson said the Paley's were the only ones to get everything in their various homes exactly right - high praise indeed. All the same, one must ask what was the point when the people they wanted to impress were uniformly ghastly as Truman Capote eventually discovered, though he must have figured that out long before they showed him the proverbial and literal door.

Ewww Gawd....Where did she get those shoes???? And that DRESS!!!!

that apartment is hideously designed.

She looked like Rupert Everett

Love your series!

My favorite was the Chinese-influenced room taxi yellow-laquered walls. The other rooms were too dark and overstuffed for my taste. (Not that I have her taste level or sophistication but I have yet to find a problem with Jackie Kennedy Onassis's elegant rooms. The bedroom video you recently posted🌹)

I hated the clock. (Might as well put a lawn jockey to light the way to the powder room.) Many people seem to be focussing on the cigarette-smoked fabrics. Wouldn't the fact that they were mostly cotton and furniture covers mean they were easy to replace or clean?

Also, the smell bothers us today because it's so rare. Remember back then, folks chain-smoked or you were surrounded by smokers. Speaking from experience, you get used to it. Think of walking into a multi-cat home -- the cat owners don't seem to have the same reaction you do when you first walk through their front door (thank heavens we've moved past the clay kitty litter days) 😉

Ummm… I don’t like any of the rooms. Feels like things haphazardly thrown together just to show they had money.

Too cluttered for my taste.

WOW! that is not what I would have guessed her apartment would look like. I have to say that I'm not a fan of the box-pleated fabric covered walls (were they ever vacuumed?). I guess the overriding principal for the decor was inspired by Times Square - BUSY.

struck by how they hung paintings ON the curtains

Woooeee what a. Horrible cluttered house. I would have jumped out of the window. I prefer modern minimalism

I wouldn’t want to live there…. I’d rather be in my own little house. Suffocating and claustrophobic.

Beauty is DEFINITELY in the eye of the beholder. Yikes. I dont know who would think a chain smoking, alcoholic/drug addict adultress that was divorced numerous times, that was desperate to clime a social ladder, was "graceful" or "elegant." Her looks were only fair. Shes not hideous but at the same time she not all that pretty. Just because Capote held her up high (isnt he from the backwoods of Alabama or the swamps of Louisiana?) doesnt mean the rest of the world did. I can literally think of a hundred women who were naturally GORGEOUS that surpass her in so many ways. Along with the other "Swans," smoke was blown up her a** simply because of money (money she was married into, hunting wealth like a sport)

Il suffit de comparer avec l'appartement de Jackie Kennedy pour voir ce qu'est le chic véritable.

I enjoy your video… I did not enjoy her taste in decor

Wish there were more color photos

Me too

Over the top fussy.. I'd go mad

Me encanta es tan slfisticada genial

Fred Wehmer????

This women had taste beyond taste a beautiful lady to look at and even more striking is her taste she had the TASTE

Horrible! Sobrecargado de cosas!

I dated a smoker for awhile 40 years ago and kissing him was gross. I can’t help thinking of that when I see these elegant women who smoked so much.