Celebrated home stylist headlines regional event
Photo by Frank Frances
Interior designer Mieke ten Have is a strong proponent and personal practitioner of rearranging rooms. “I think if you never move anything, you stop seeing things,” she says. “The nice thing about rearranging is it makes you see things new again.”
ten Have has been immersed in beauty and style since childhood — in her parents’ Manhattan apartment and in her grandmother’s elegant home bursting with fine antiques and fascinating collections. She was just ten years old when her grandmother – standing in her Federal-style dining room — posed a question that would prove prophetic to ten Have’s life’s work. “What would you like from this room?” ten Have knew her grandmother meant her to choose a thing — and in fact she replied, ‘The curtains’ — but she also understood it as ‘What do you want to feel from this room?’”
ten Have has spent her professional career telling the story of interior space, beginning at domino magazine, and through stints at Vogue as Home Editor and at Elle Décor as Design Editor at Large. “In those jobs, I wore numerous hats — design writing, producing product columns, covering the market in Milan and Paris, and at High Point [North Carolina] and other American shows,” she tells Carolina Home + Garden. “Later, my job was to find houses to feature, go to the home, produce the story, and shoot it with the photographer.”
Eight years ago, she segued to working directly with architects and interior designers, acting as creative director to produce content for use on their respective magazines, websites, and social-media pages. She also art directed ad campaigns with home brands and continued editorial work for Architectural Digest, Veranda, and other major design publications.
Decidedly not a minimalist, ten Have is known for her love of rich colors, intricate patterns, and lush texture — or, more specifically, for her impeccable knack of making it all play well together. Last fall, the history-loving designer, who often makes references to her Dutch heritage, published her first book, Interiors Styled by Mieke ten Have (Vendome Press).
In part one, through stories and photos of rooms she has styled for clients, she shares four principles of her design ethos – Color Theory, Pattern Play, Wild and Tame, and Flowers for Living.
“Working in a visual medium, it can be hard to explain or distill why you do certain things,” she says. “I wanted the book to be inspiring and serviceable to readers. How to interact with textiles, patterns, and color and fuse disparate elements in a space.”
ten Have likes to begin with a fabric — it could be as simple as a cushion cover — that is dense, decorative, colorful, and interesting. “It’s a good way to think about the rest of the space. Find one thing you really, really love and use that as sort of your guidepost for everything that follows. Having that first lynchpin is incredibly important.”
Part two captures her own Dutchess County, New York country home — The Barn — through the seasons, with stunning, dimensional, atmospheric images by photographer Frank Frances. Frequently, the exterior landscape becomes an element of the interior, whether through arrangements of foraged greenery and wildflowers or the juxtaposition of wallpaper and the view through a window.
“Houses are living things,” ten Have asserts. “They are always reflecting where we are in our lives.”
Mieke ten Have (mieketenhave.com) is the featured speaker at Celebrating Hydrangeas: The Joy Garden Tour Garden Symposium and Luncheon happening in the town of Cashiers on Wednesday, July 16, at 11am. Events run through Saturday, July 19; see villagegreencashiers.com for updates.