Bohemian Soul | Valorie Hart and Sara Essex Bradley
Intro: Welcome to the one and only interior design book podcast, Decorating by the Book, hosted by Suzy Chase from her dining room table in New York City. Join Suzy for conversations about the latest and greatest interior design books with the authors who wrote them.
Valorie Hart: Hi, I'm Valorie Hart.
Sara Essex Bradley: And I'm Sara Essex Bradley.
Valorie Hart: And our book is Bohemian Soul.
Suzy Chase: This is a thrill for me because I know basically nothing about the decorative style of New Orleans. With a flare for finery reminiscent of the 18th-century French and Spanish influence from which it came, New Orleans decorative styles are, without a doubt, some of the most notable, emulated and coveted features in architectural and interior design today. So Valorie, when did you and Sara start working together?
Valorie Hart: We started working together in 2008 when Sara was sent to my house to photograph it for something called the Shotgun House tour. My house was on the tour and we just clicked. I thought she was totally cool and I loved her work, and we started doing projects together for our local Shelter magazine. She doing the photographs, both of us scouting houses, me styling, writing, so we were like a cute little production team. So we've been working together ever since, and this is our second book together. We did a book together called House Proud about 11 years ago.
Suzy Chase: Tell me about your shotgun house.
Valorie Hart: The folklore is, it's a house that has room after room after room with no hallway. No center hall, no side hall. And so the folklore was that if you open the front door and open the back door and shot a gun, the bullet would go clear through, hence shotgun house.
Suzy Chase: I'm curious about the subtitle, the Vanishing Interiors of New Orleans. So why is it vanishing and what exactly is vanishing?
Valorie Hart: You want to take that one, Sara?
Sara Essex Bradley: Sure. So New Orleans has a very distinctive architectural style, and I grew up here. So growing up, everybody lives in old houses, and mostly these houses were renovated to the extent that the interiors were not changed around at all. They were just painted, wallpaper, that kind of thing. When Katrina happened, a lot of houses changed hands, a lot of houses needed to be completely redone, so a lot of houses started changing. So we started to seek out homes that hadn't changed, that still represented the owners' unique and original sense of style, and still had that sense of New Orleans of the old and not the new.
Valorie Hart: So after Katrina, with these houses being renovated, gutted, whatever, there's historical rules and regulations here that prohibit you from changing the exterior, but anything goes on the interior, so these things were being wiped away. These things that were basically what makes New Orleans New Orleans, and I called it design gentrification. And we got open floor plans, the gray box, and it just changed. And new people who moved in wanted that look and that lifestyle, and we just said, "Wow, all of the things that we love about New Orleans interiors, it's going by the wayside." And so we wanted to start documenting what was left and archive it, and have it around so people could still remember and hopefully be inspired to do it again, to have that beautiful, joyful, exuberant style that is New Orleans.
Suzy Chase: In your introduction, Valorie, you touch on the idea of these wonderful homes being fully extinct. Is that a real possibility?
Valorie Hart: Yes, because people sell, and new owners usually redo it not in the style that these people have lived in, or they die, so things happen. We started shooting the book before COVID, so some years have passed from then until now to completion and the book in people's hands. There's about six of the houses that are in the book that are already gone. The owners have moved on. So we're very happy that they're in the book and they're there for all time, but the city has changed and taxes and insurance are crazy, and some people are just forced to go elsewhere.
Sara Essex Bradley: I would like to add that barring some natural disaster, which is a possibility that actually absolutely flattens New Orleans, I don't think we can be an alarmist and say it could become totally extinct. I think as long as there are these old homes in New Orleans, it's going to attract the kind of people who want to live in this way and cultivate the older style of living, the older style of decorating. I think New Orleans is a magnet for that kind of thing, but it's certainly not as ubiquitous as it used to be before the last 20 years. People are, like she said, coming in and redoing a lot more things than people used to, but I do believe that as long as we have the architecture here, we will continue to have some beautiful Bohemian-style homes.
Valorie Hart: Yeah, you're right, Sara.
Suzy Chase: I just adore that this book is in a slick collection of interior design, decorated perfection. Could you please chat about the wide range of houses in this book and what was the criteria for inclusion?
Valorie Hart: Well, we didn't really have a criteria except that we knew some of these homeowners, who they were, or we knew of their houses and what we could expect. And we didn't have a checklist, like you had to have a voodoo doll in your bedroom. We knew these houses were beautiful and different, and that was, I guess, the criteria. And we didn't style these houses. These houses are shown as people really live, which is incredible. They have these lifestyles that incorporate such imagination and beauty and joy and freedom, and it's just no criteria, so to speak, I would say.
Sara Essex Bradley: It was a we knew it when we saw it thing, that yeah, this is a good one. And also, it's not like we're saying that this is the definitive collection of these houses. There's hundreds and hundreds more. This is just a slice. This is an archive of an example.
Valorie Hart: It's what we could get to, and we could do volume two, three, and four.
Sara Essex Bradley: It's like, if this interests you, then come to New Orleans and really check it out. There's even more. It's just what we were able to represent, and we think it's a pretty diverse group. They're not all super fine antique-laden Patrick Dunn type houses. Some of them are much more punk rock, rock and roll. Some of them are a little more arty. Some of them are a little more... How would you describe Diane's house?
Valorie Hart: Well, she called it Bohemian Lux. Some of them are a bit refined and some of them are a bit naughty. There's so much personality in each one of these homes and no two are alike, and there's nothing cookie cutter about them. And there's nothing from Wayfair in any of them, not to knock Wayfair, but you just go into these houses and Sara and I would often get tears in our eyes. We would just be so overcome by the beauty, and we had an emotional response to each one of these homes. And we would get so excited when we would be shooting, and I'd be so excited when I would be talking to the homeowners and trying to weave a story without writing Shelter magazine copy. I wanted to try to put the magic of the space into my words about these houses.
Suzy Chase: What does Bohemian Soul mean?
Valorie Hart: Basically, it's people who think and live somewhat outside of the box. That's the simplest way to put it. And this city has soul. You come here, it overtakes you, there's a spirit. It's just a magical place and it's bewitching. And some people come here for jazz fest or for some event, and they never leave. And people who do leave who are natives, they come back. This is just a magical place full of ghosts and mystery and soul. I don't know how else to put it.
Suzy Chase: So Sara, you grew up in New Orleans and you still live there. I'd love to hear your perspective as a local. How has it changed in your eyes?
Valorie Hart: Well, that is a great question in relation to this book. It really made me start thinking about it in a different way. These houses represent... It's the New Orleans that I grew up with. Growing up here, it always felt a little different than other cities I would go visit. The flow was a little different. It was more creative. It seemed more open-minded. It was more diverse. It even smelled different. There was a lot of segregation, block to block literally, but we still all lived jammed up together, rich and poor, Black and white. So lines got blurred and cultures spilled over. Everywhere else, it just seems so boring visually, culturally. But like I said before, a lot changed after Katrina. And we're called the big easy, but it ain't been easy here since then. It's a misnomer, especially to live here. Visiting, for sure. And as we said before, there's not quite the abundance of the old dilapidated houses and definitely nothing really available anymore on the cheap like it used to be because of all the gentrification and just general destruction from Katrina. And now there's also just a lot of hideous, rapid underregulated new development. Like most major cities, we have a housing shortage, so in the name of affordable housing, we're seeing some really awful projects go up in place of these older structures. So that's basically how it's changed, and I think that's why we were really attracted to continue to document what was still here before they all vanish.
Suzy Chase: And Valorie, you describe yourself as a New New. A New Yorker transplanted in New Orleans. So how long have you been in New Orleans and what prompted you to move out of the Big Apple?
Valorie Hart: I was married to a man from Buenos Aires, and we had a tango career together teaching and dancing tango all over the world. And we came here in 1999 to New Orleans to teach a workshop. And we were living in California at the time, and I didn't like it. I'm just a typical New Yorker, and I did not like California, so we were always looking for another city to relocate to. And when we came to New Orleans, I looked at my husband Alberto, and I said, "This is a great place for aging bohemians like us." That's when I came to New Orleans in 1999. I had 20 wonderful years here with him. When I lived in New York, I came upon a book called Elegance and Decadence around 1994 by Richard Sexton. And that book just ignited my imagination. I said, "Whoa, this place is New Orleans." I had never seen interiors like this except in Europe. I want to know more about this place. And little did I know that I would end up living here. And Richard's book was like a bible to me. And I like to think that Bohemian Soul is a continuation of the work that he did in that and that we're like the grateful son or daughter of Elegance and Decadence. So my friend Deborah Shriver, who wrote the foreword to our first book, she coined the term New New because she came from New York and bought a house right after Katrina in New Orleans, in the French Quarter, and she's still living here. So she calls us New News, and that's how it came about.
Suzy Chase: The first home in the book is Le Chateau de Hopkins. Andrew Lamar Hopkins is a self-described bon vivant, antiques dealer, artist, drag queen, old soul and lover of beauty. He's also a chef. Read the pages of this book and you'll just want to know him and be his friend. The way he fills the walls with portraits, which all look like they may be early 19th-century or before, is spectacular and so homey. The photos you took, Sara, are especially beguiling because it gives us a moment to really inspect a corner or nook of a room and take it all in. I would love for you to talk about the process of lighting and getting these spectacular photos.
Sara Essex Bradley: I didn't do any prep for each house. Normally, when I would do a shoot for a client or a magazine, you go in, you scout it, you figure out what lighting you want to bring, you figure out your angles, you figure out your styling, et cetera. For these, most of them was walking in without having been in there before, or maybe if I've been in, it was briefly, not thinking on the mindset of shooting it. So I really just shot it very just organically. I responded to the rooms as I did them. Lighting was minimal. I really worked with all the natural light that was available and sometimes occasionally bringing in a little fill light or something, but it was a really different kind of a shoot. I did not have an assistant. The best shoots were ones where Valorie was there with me, and I think it was on most of them. And she would be with the homeowner, getting them chatting, telling stories. So they would be walking around telling stories, and I would be moving around from room to room, hearing these stories. I would let that guide me as to what I was going to shoot. And we just had the launch party a couple of days ago, and some of the homeowners actually tear up when they looked at the photos, because they were like, "I didn't know my house looked like this. I didn't know my house looked so grand." And I would just say, "That's how it looks to me." Each room, each house, I just responded to the way it made me feel, and I tried to portray that in the images and not make them look too perfect, keep them really loose, which was hard. I had to pull back on retouching and lighting and stuff, and I left lamps on, which I never do, but you walk in these houses and they have their lamps on and it creates a certain look, so I worked with that as well. So it was freeing. It was very liberating to shoot this way.
Suzy Chase: And Valorie, can you just chat a little bit about Andrew Lamar Hopkins?
Valorie Hart: I found Andrew on Instagram, and he's got a great Instagram. You must follow him. And he always would put little vignettes of his home. And I was like, this guy's interesting. So I had another friend, an artist named Louis St. Louis, who has since passed away, and he was having an art opening here in New Orleans. And so I thought, well, let me invite Andrew. I'd like to know this guy. Who is he? So the party was called Neon Glitter. And so Andrew showed up. I had never met him, and I knew what he looked like, but he's this very tall, good-looking Black man. And he was dressed in black pants and a black shirt, and he had totally covered his face with silver glitter. And he wore a broach, an 18th-century broach with a lady painting in it. And I was like, oh my God, this is my soul brother. I just love him so much. So when we got to chatting and I knew we were doing the book, and I said to him, "Andrew, where do you live?" And he told me. And I said, "Can I come over and look at your house? Because I'm doing this book." And he goes, "Oh, of course. Of course, darling. Come on, honey, come on over." So I went to his house and it was literally a crumbling apartment in a fourplex in the Treme, and there were stacks of women's clothing in the corners that turned out to be Desiree, his alter ego, her wardrobe, and all these antiques and just two rooms. And the building was just falling the pieces. And I fell in love. And he says to me, "Well, may I offer you some champagne or tea and light refreshments?" And it was just perfect. And he had little vignettes and a place to sit on a settee to perch and talk and chat. And of course, we just got along marvelously and I set up a shoot with Sara to do his place. So that's how Andrew happened. And he's quite famous. He's now on the cover of Garden and Gun Magazine. He's rolling and he's just going along and his artwork is in great demand, and he's a bon vivant, and he's just the most delightful person that you could ever want to meet.
Suzy Chase: So then we see Serafin House, owned by Beatrice and Cody Rose. The sitting room with the most spectacular chandelier, marble floor, and crumbling walls just naturally fits together. It works. So you first heard about Serafin house from a tango student of yours, Valorie, and I would love to hear that story.
Valorie Hart: Well, when Alberto passed away, I was trying to keep classes going and posting social dances that are called Milongas. And one of my students kept saying, "Valorie, we have a ballroom in our house, and you're welcome to use it for classes or for any longer, whatever you want." And I was like, "Oh, yeah, sure, sure, sure." In my shotgun house, I had one room dedicated to dance, and maybe you could fit two couples in it. And I'm thinking, everybody has a dance room in their house. And I just dismissed the invitation and they kept asking me and asking me, and it got embarrassing. So I said, "All right. All right. I'll come over this afternoon and look at it." And when I walked into that house, I cried. I couldn't believe it, because the house was renovated with the infrastructure being perfect, but all the walls were left crumbling with plaster, peeling paint, plaster medallions, and then these incredible light fixtures put in there. And indeed, there was a ballroom, this double parlor with 20-foot-high ceilings and these incredible chandeliers that were from Restoration Hardware, the sphere with the crystal chandelier in them, but the giant size, and perfect reclaimed wood floors. And I was like, oh my goodness. It reminded me of Buenos Aires a hundred years ago, the center hall had gaslights in the interior of the house. Spectacular. So I started doing a tango event there called Speakeasy Tango, and I did it for three years. And I knew someday that this house had to be in the book. It was at the top of the list.
Suzy Chase: In terms of crumbling, award-winning food writer Dr. Jessica B. Harris, whom I love, says in her home, "The wall texture is 25 years of climate and gleeful neglect." What a vibe. It's a lovely contrast with her gorgeous curtains. Can you please talk about her place?
Sara Essex Bradley: I just wanted to say one thing about her place and that peeling paint. I loved it. It had such a three-dimensional architecture to it, almost, just the paint coming off the walls. It was a piece of art itself. You could put a frame around it. And I got a little obsessive. I took multiple pictures of just that peeling paint. It was just yummy. It was a really interesting house to shoot.
Valorie Hart: And in contrast, it had that beautiful Greek key border that was hand painted, and the contrast of that border and that paint was amazing. But Jessica Harris, she and I grew up at the same time in New York in the same neighborhood, so even though we lived parallel lives, there were a lot of similarities, and I just loved that book. So when I had the opportunity to shoot her house in New Orleans, I was just thrilled. And it's magical. And again, we didn't really do anything to it. It's how she lives. And she has several places. She lives in New York. She goes to France. She has a place on Martha's Vineyard. So she comes to New Orleans, she's in and out. She's another New New, so the place had an effect of stopping in time. It's like somebody just left that house with a book open or a pot of coffee on the stove and walked out, and you didn't know if they were going to walk in or when they were going to walk in. It was magical. And we're talking about peeling paint here and there, but you have to see this book.
Suzy Chase: There's something very English country house about the peeling paint.
Valorie Hart: Well, yes, or French chateau. When I lived in New York and one of my tenements, I think it was on McDougal Street, I started to strip a wall to clean it off, and I liked all the distress on it, and I just threw up a coat of satin polyurethane to stabilize it. So I've been loving peeling paint and distressed walls forever. So to me, her interior was nothing shocking. It just seemed so right, so perfect. And you just want to have those walls. They're just incredible.
Sara Essex Bradley: What's funny is that I was shooting the wall. The peeling paint, the plaster, the faded plaster, it becomes more of a wall texture. It almost starts to look like a wallpaper or something. And I was shooting a house yesterday, and it was a brand new renovation. It was an old New Orleans house, a beautiful home, but it was a beautiful expensive renovation. But in the dining room, they hired an artist to come and paint the walls to look like it was faded plaster. So it still-
Valorie Hart: There you go.
Suzy Chase: Wow. How did that look?
Valorie Hart: It looked beautiful. It was beige. It wasn't too crazy, but it was just a very subtle, different shades of beige that looked like old plaster that had been shellacked basically. It looked beautiful.
Suzy Chase: Another one of my favorite rooms in the book is antiques dealer Kerry Moody's colonial-feeling living room with the Wedgewood blue mantle. Please tell us about Kerry and chat about that painting that's hanging above the fireplace and the significance of it.
Sara Essex Bradley: He's a stylist and antiques dealer who works at the old famous culinary antique store Lucullus that was in the French Quarter forever, and now it's just outside of the French Quarter. But he is the consummate southern gentleman. He is the sweetest man, and he's the best host. So when we get there for the photo shoot, he has croissant and he has cafe-au-lait on his stove for us, and we proceed to shoot. And Valorie and him are walking around and talking, and anything we need, he provides for us. He's so gracious. I came back later to get the exterior at the right time of day, and he had laid out in the front beautiful champagne glasses, French belle epoque champagne glasses, and a beautiful bucket with champagne. I shot the exterior with that outside, and then of course we drank the champagne. And so he's just the loveliest man. The painting, correct me if I'm wrong, Valorie, it's a free person of color, which is in New Orleans, there were a class of Black people. Free people of color is what they were called. They were former slaves that had bought their freedom. And they were also the Creole class of New Orleans, and they had their own power and they had money, and they were a very influential class of people. Anyway, he has the portrait. It's of a free man of color, and it's in a place of honor over the mantle, and it's Carrie's way... I don't think he knows who it is, but it's his way of restoring that person to a place of honor in the proper home that he might've lived in. Am I right about that, Valorie?
Valorie Hart: Yes, you are. And that brings up another point. One of the threads that goes through all of these houses is that people collect antiques, whether they're inherited or whether they're purchased. And it adds a kind of soul to a place. And you can either have a story that you know, or you can have an imagined story like this portrait of Kerry’s over his fireplace. And his whole feeling of that cottage is Creole-style and bringing back a kind of 18th century, 19th century feeling of New Orleans of Creoles at the height of their success. So it's quite beautiful, but it doesn't feel like a museum. It's not precious. You could definitely live in it. And that's another thing. All of these interiors are as these people live, and there's nothing precious, there's nothing off-putting about them. You could live in them, and they do live in them.
Sara Essex Bradley: Kerry, yes.
Valorie Hart: He is a master of color. And again, he goes back to the historic color palette that the Creoles used and the color palette that's very much New Orleans, that's suited to the light here. There's just something about the way the light hits color here, that's Caribbean fabulous. Doesn't work everywhere. In New York, these colors don't work because it's a northern light. And so he really carefully chooses the palette in his house. And so you've got that beautiful mantle, and then you have a window in one of the rooms where there's these shutters that are trompe l'oeil, that are painted in these beautiful tones of [inaudible 00:26:09] and gray against this beautiful, muted, lemony yellow wall that looks like Venetian plaster in a way. He's just a genius and very unassuming, and just a beautiful human being, and we adore him. I guess you can tell that.
Suzy Chase: Now to my segment called Home, where I ask you to describe one memory of your childhood home, and please start by telling us where it was. And Sara, you can go first.
Sara Essex Bradley: Well, I grew up in uptown New Orleans. That's what the neighborhood is called. And uptown is one of the older neighborhoods, so it's full of all these old homes. And I lived with my mother, a single mother, and we lived in a series of apartments, three or four of them throughout my childhood. And the one thing they had in common, other than being old, renovated apartments with the old wooden floors, high ceilings, no central AC, usually a floor furnace. That was the heat. We'd move our little window units from apartment to apartment. But the one consistency was the furniture and the style and the decoration, and my mother was a lover of antique furniture, heirlooms, homemade things, collectible silly things. So the one consistent thing from apartment to apartment was it always felt like home because we had the same things. And they were a collection of family heirlooms and then things that she bought with my father when they were married. But she always styled them in a very unique and beautiful way. She's an original Bohemian soul, and I now have a lot of her stuff. And what I don't have, she still has. So she's been consistent, but she was probably the biggest influence on me as far as developing my sense of appreciation for all things, older, quirky, weird, heirloom, that kind of thing.
Suzy Chase: And how about you, Valorie?
Valorie Hart: My family, too, lived in a series of apartments in New York, and my mother and father were very much a working class family. Not a lot of money, but my mom loved to decorate. And she would often say when she was feeling down and come from a large family, a lot of kids, and she would say, "Kids, kids, I'm feeling kind of blue today. Let's rearrange the furniture." So we would rearrange the furniture and my father would come home and walk in the door and he would say, "Oh my goodness. Whose house is this? It can't be mine. It's far too beautiful." And we'd all laugh and hang on and say, "Daddy, daddy, come in. It's our house." But my mom didn't collect antiques or anything like that, but she loved color. One time she painted one wall lavender and she got a can of spray-paint. It was the new invention then. And she had capri pants on and some cute little top and probably a cigarette dangling from her mouth. And she was painting polka dots on the lavender wall, and she would bend and spray, bend and spray. And she told us, "This is called an accent wall." So again, she gave me my love of decorating and decorating with no money, making something out of nothing, smoke and mirrors. And the other person who really, really stuck with me was my grandmother because she had a different style. It was all furniture from the thirties and forties, and she wore navy blue dresses with white polka dots and red lipstick. And I still wear red lipstick to this day because of my grandmother. But that gave me my love for vintage things and old things that I have carried with me all my life. And my first apartments were just furnished from the street and from junk stores and old vintage things, and those two women were my touchstones.
Suzy Chase: It's all about smoke and mirrors and accent walls.
Valorie Hart: Absolutely. And red lipstick.
Suzy Chase: Yes. Where can we find you both on the web and social media?
Sara Essex Bradley: Well, I have a website, saraessexbradley.com. There's no H in Sara. But obviously these days, the most active presence would be Instagram @SaraEssexBradley. And we also have a Bohemian Soul book Instagram account.
Suzy Chase: And what's the Bohemian Soul Instagram?
Sara Essex Bradley: It's @BohemianSoulBook all one word.
Suzy Chase: Okay. And Valorie?
Valorie Hart: I'm @VisualVamp on Instagram. I used to write a blog starting back in 2008 called The Visual Vamp, and that name has just stayed with me all these years. So it's @VisualVamp, one word.
Suzy Chase: This book is a valentine to a New Orleans that is disappearing, a last call to remember, appreciate and repeat and revive its great Bohemian soul. Thanks so much, Valorie and Sara, for coming on Decorating by the Book podcast.
Sara Essex Bradley: Thank you for having us.
Valorie Hart: Bye-bye.
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