marc charbonnet

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Location

NY, NY,

Bio

Marc Charbonnet was born into an ancient 18th century French-American Louisiana family with a lot of silver and no one to polish it. That bit of dirty laundry means what it means to people who care, of which Marc is not one. One of six children, he found escape in his sister's doll collection. Later he discovered mentors in the eccentricities of his mother's friend Paulette, and the stories of his father's grand and imperious friend Mr. Rolf, whose tipsy first wife was debutant of the year and would often send whole dinners violently crashing to the floor with her forearm when a waiter's service displeased her. Attending Catholic school left Marc with a enlightened opinion on the unfortunate decline of nuns' fashions throughout the years: "From gliding across floors like angelic swans, holding their long veils with lithe hands during the gusty New Orleans afternoons, eventually reduced to wearing cheap street cloths, sneakers and junk earrings, proudly rolling through hot city avenues looking like lesbian muskrats." Not that there's anything wrong with lesbian muskrats. As a child he was told these ladies were "the brides of Christ," and now they resemble the roller coaster operators at the amusement park his family used to visit during summer weekends. Summers were otherwise spent in pools, riding horseback, and sliding down the rail of the tall, wide staircase that lead to the front door of the Charbonnet home. Keeping to himself, with the exception of a minority of colorful, like-minded locals, he grew into a deep appreciation for the truly beautiful: objects, stories, songs, furniture, clothes, boys and girls. Tired of drama, he left for New York City on July 4th, 1987, Marc's day of independence. A blessed iconoclast, Marc fell into potluck rather than a pot of gold. After his success in New York as an interior designer, Joseph Holtzman asked Marc to appear in his notorious shelter magazine Nest. Responding to renowned photographer Alexis Hay's demands to take his home portrait up a notch, Marc posed on a recliner wearing his black velvet bishop's robe with a ruby, sapphire and emerald-encrusted cross pendulously hanging just above the top of the slit robe, revealed his nude, gorgeous gams, crossed and crowned on each foot with his exact replicas of Dorothy's ruby red slippers from The Wizard of Oz (not to mention he's nestling inside his 1,000-plus doll collection room — an obsessive habit aided more by his experimenting with Prozac than by his sister's childhood influence). Marc was selected as one of Architectural Digest's "Top 100 World Designers" for three consecutive years. He has designed Fifth and Park Avenue homes, country homes, corporate headquarters and houses in his hometown of New Orleans, as well as restoring Judy Garland's childhood home at the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Marc runs his own interior design business in New York, where he lives with his three boys, Benny, Magi and Gomez (his beloved Chihuahuas). Lunch is his favorite sport. Marc states, "I owe 75 percent of my success to thank you notes and dirty jokes."