Thomas Loof
When it comes to the New York design scene, Wendy Goodman is positively an institution. Landing her first job at Harper’s Bazaar as Anna Wintour’s assistant and working her way through various publications, including House & Garden, she eventually settled in as design editor at New York magazine. For over 30 years, she has delved inside homes of the rich, famous, and simply fabulous. Now, in May I Come In? Goodman shares some of her most memorable house profiles over the years, or as she puts it: “A love letter to every single person who let me come into their house and to every editor who said, ‘Yes, go try to see if you can do it.’”
Surprisingly, settling on the right type of book was difficult. “I wanted to write a design memoir, but never about myself. I wanted to write about the people who I have had the great fortune of celebrating.” “Celebrating” is Goodman’s term for reporting, as she made it a point to only feature homes she genuinely loved and was willing to go to bat for—at times even against her own editors—to ensure the story was told “in the right way.” But the material was rich: Goodman has featured the homes of Gloria Vanderbilt, Richard Avedon, Hervé Pierre, and Tony Duquette, to name a few. Not that it was always easy to convince people to let Goodman into their homes for publication. “Tony was extremely reluctant to let me cover his house, but I persisted and promised him I would do it exactly the way we had discussed—it was a battle, but I did it, and it turned out to be just amazing.”
Some of her other favorites? “Diana Vreeland’s ‘Garden in Hell’ living room is massively, massively seared into my brain,” Goodman said. “And Richard Avedon was a revelation to me. He did bulletin boards on all the walls and pinned things directly into his wall—there were no rules.”
In May I Come In? Goodman revisits these and over 70 other homes; the book also serves as a delightful who’s who across the fashion and art worlds. It will be available online and in stores September 24.
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