Whether it’s in viewing a room or an object she’s caringly crafted, you can feel the joy in anything Charlotte Moss has designed. The latest example by the Richmond, Virginia-born, New York City-based interior designer is her new and 11th book, titled Home: A Celebration (Rizzoli). A colorful tome composed of heartfelt vignettes on the meaning, definition, and interpretation of home, it contains everything from poems to anecdotes to art pieces by famous writers, cooks, activists, artists, and fellow designers centered around the topic.
Moss, who’s been an American interior designer and author for more than three decades, has designed her own homes and townhouses in Greenwich Village, the Upper East Side, the Hamptons, and Aspen, as well as created and curated projects from Denver to Palm Springs to the Bahamas for others. She’s also owned and operated several Manhattan design shops and boutiques, collaborated with countless brands, and created her own fabrics, furniture lines, art pieces, home accessories, and more.
When your gift of talent and your choice of career is to transform one space after the next into what feels like an intimate and inspired home, the topic of her book is a natural one. And for a philanthropist like Moss, so is the cause: Feeling the desire to reach out and help during the peak of the pandemic, when so many families were struggling, the designer compiled and edited the book to benefit No Kid Hungry, Share Our Strength’s campaign to end childhood hunger in the US. “Each contributor to this volume—artist, poet, photographer, historian, novelist, actor, and activist—has shared with us an interpretation of home, its meaning and importance in an individual life,” she writes. “Collectively they represent the best of the American spirit. I hope that by their example they will empower and energize people everywhere to give something of themselves, to sacrifice something in order to help others.”
Inside Home, contributions include John Derian’s reflections on his Provincetown house, built for a former 1789 sea captain; chef Dan Barber on the cow-flecked fields and red dairy barn that inspire him daily; and Gloria Steinem on the freedom to leave and return to where you came from, never having to definitively choose between nesting and flight. Here, Moss shares her own insights on the topic, including her most prized possessions from her travels, the continent that’s inspired her designs again and again, and the hotels that, to her, really could feel like home.
You’ve been designing interiors for more than four decades. How has your own sense of style evolved over the years and has it been informed by traveling?
The degree to which our eyes are filled with the images and memories sparked by travel is incalculable. Our subconscious records and catalogs all that the eye sees. Later, at some point, and unknowingly those architectural details, garden layouts, colors in the paintings at an exhibition, or flowers in a robust border have a way of seeping back into our conversations and our creative endeavors. So YES, traveling has been my greatest source of post-grad education.
You’ve traveled the world extensively. Where do you keep returning for inspiration?
Europe for me is constantly calling. My love of history, design, the decorative arts and architecture are all fueled there.
