Suzie Frankfurt

Suzie Frankfurt (née Allen; August 21, 1931 – January 7, 2005) was an American interior designer and socialite. Her work helped define an elegant, historically informed aesthetic in late 20th-century American interior design.

Frankfurt gained early recognition for redesigning the lobby of Young & Rubicam and became a celebrated decorator of Russian and Biedermeier antiques, popularizing 18th and 19th-century Russian furniture among affluent clients. Her clientele included Robert Redford and Robert Mapplethorpe, and her own Manhattan townhouse interiors were featured in Home & Garden and Architectural Digest. A friend and one-time collaborator of Pop artist Andy Warhol, she co-authored the tongue-in-cheek cookbook Wild Raspberries (1959) with him.

Suzanne Allen was born on August 21, 1931, in Los Angeles, the daughter of Eva and Isidore Allen, who owned a linen distribution company.^[1] Through a cousin who married a son of industrialist Norton Simon, she became part of a well-connected extended family that included actress Jennifer Jones, Simon's wife, and Simon's sister, Marcia Weisman, a prominent art collector.^[1]

She graduated with honors from Stanford University in Stanford, California, before moving to New York.^[1]

Frankfurt began her professional life in New York with the help of her cousin-in-law, Norton Simon. In 1955, she joined the research department at the advertising agency Young & Rubicam, where she was assigned the task of redecorating the company's lobby and executive conference rooms in 1967.^[1][2]

Although she initially decorated only occasionally for friends, by the late 1970s Frankfurt had become a prominent interior designer, known for her distinctive use of vintage Russian furniture, Biedermeier antiques, and traditional European styles.^[2][3] "I like anything that's a little out of the ordinary," she said. "That's why I'll place an eighteenth-century marriage chest from Damascus under an eighteenth-century mirror, top it with a thirteenth-century Tibetan Buddha — and then flank the whole effect with two Japanese military chests."^[3]

Her clients included actor Robert Redford, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, and producer Lester Persky, and Sotheby's furniture expert Thierry Millerand.^[1][4][5] David L. Paul, a Florida bank chairman who was convicted of fraud in 1993, was accused of having paid Frankfurt approximately $389,000 in bank funds to decorate his home.^[6][1]

Frankfurt was a close friend of Paige Rense, the editor-in-chief of Architectural Digest, and interviewed her at her New York townhouse for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine in 1977.^[7]

In 1956, Frankfurt married Young & Rubicam art director Stephen Frankfurt; the couple had two children and divorced in 1968.^[1] Her son Jaime Frankfurt is an art dealer, and her second son Peter Frankfurt is in the film business.^[8]

In 1959, while pregnant with her second son, Frankfurt saw an exhibition of Andy Warhol's watercolors at Serendipity in New York.^[8] Captivated by his work, she arranged to meet him for lunch at the Palm Court of the Plaza Hotel, with her husband, Stephen Frankfurt, serving as an intermediary. This encounter began a close friendship between Frankfurt and Warhol.^[8] "The only reason Andy liked me was because I was raised in Malibu with movie stars like Myrna Loy all around. I liked Andy because I'd always felt my whole life that I was an outsider. It may not be the fact, but it's how I feel. For some strange reason, I felt that I fit in with him," she later recalled.^[8]

Together, they later created the illustrated cookbook Wild Raspberries, with Frankfurt contributing the recipes and Warhol the illustrations, offering a playful satire of contemporary French cookbooks.^[9] Warhol's mother Julia Warhola did the calligraphy for the book.^[9] In 1997, Little, Brown & Company's Bulfinch Press reissued the book.^[8]

In the 1960s, Frankfurt distanced herself from Warhol because she couldn't "cope with the Factory scene. It was too horrible for me. I was trying to be an Upper East Side wife." She didn't see Warhol again until he was shot in 1968.^[8] Her association with Warhol continued until his death in 1987, with his diaries recording numerous mentions of Frankfurt. These included her and Warhol’s boyfriend Jed Johnson preparing his Montauk property Eothen for prospective renters in 1977, Frankfurt introducing fashion designer Gianni Versace to Warhol in 1979, Warhol attending her baptism when she converted to Roman Catholicism in 1978, and throwing a birthday lunch for her in 1980.^[10][11][4]

In 1974, Frankfurt’s parents died within 10 days of one another. She later recalled coping through heavy drinking and prescription drug use, saying, "I consoled myself in my garden with lots of gin and Valium."^[8] She subsequently entered Silver Hill Hospital, a private treatment facility in New Canaan, Connecticut, to detox from Valium. After her release, her drinking continued until 1976, when she was hospitalized following a fall at home that resulted in a broken collarbone. Reflecting on that period, Frankfurt joked that she could "write a book called Tipsy in the House." In 1997, she said she had been sober for 10 years, calling her sobriety "my greatest achievement, other than my sons."^[8]

Frankfurt's five-story townhouse at 163 East 80th Street on Manhattan's Upper East Side, which she decorated herself, reflected her passion for collecting and eclectic display. Her friend Paige Rense called it "an intensely autobiographical house. Literally dozens of early Andy Warhol drawings testify to a long friendship with the artist, while boiseries from Italy and Spain reflect a passion for travel."^[3] In the entrance hall, an 18th-century Chinese ancestor portrait overlooked a Burmese Buddha and a pair of mother-of-pearl–inlaid armchairs.^[3] The ornate pattern of a Damascene inlaid marriage chest echoed the lacy bronze banister, originally salvaged from Hetty Green's New York bank.^[3] Sculpted heads from various cultures were displayed on an 18th-century Portuguese gilded table. In the parlor, Art Deco chairs and a glass-and-steel table contrasted with Brazilian votive heads, an Egyptian-style daybed, and a 21st-Dynasty sarcophagus.^[3] The dining room was illuminated by an antique chandelier hung with Baccarat crystal drops.^[3] Frankfurt furnished the space with a collection of Thonet chairs, complemented by two 18th-century paintings and a 19th-century clock.^[3] Upstairs, Warhol's 1950s shoe illustrations added a playful note to the hallway.^[3]

Frankfurt was known for hosting celebrity-filled cocktail parties, and the townhouse became notable for both its art collection and its interiors. In 1974, she held a widely noted 3-day garage sale, which she called a "Garbage a la Rummage."^[12][13] The items included paintings, Lydia Pinkham bottles, a Louis XVI terracotta garden figure, a 45-star American flag, a Tiffany inkwell, a 19th-century pine armoire, a lavender-glass Coca-Cola bottle, a slant-top student's desk, and a milk glass rolling pin.^[12] She sold an apothecary chest, a Baccarat ice bucket, and a thimble-shaped shot glass to entertainer Peter Allen for $500.^[13] In what she called the "bargain basement," Frankfurt also sold clothing and accessories from her wardrobe, including dresses and coats by Saint Laurent, Courrèges, Cardin, Sonia Rykiel, and Halston, as well as shoes, handbags, scarves, and lingerie; a crocodile Hermès bag originally priced at $1,500 was purchased by a friend for $500.^[13] The sale also featured a half dozen fur coats, including a Lutetia mink from Bendel's in mint condition that sold for $1,800.^[13]

In 1977, she opened her home for public tours to benefit the Industrial Home for the Blind in New York.^[14]

Frankfurt regarded her five-story Georgian townhouse on East 73rd Street, just off Park Avenue, as her greatest creative achievement, calling it her own "Russia."^[15] Featured in the September 1985 issue of House & Garden, the home was described as combining the "strangeness and sometimes austere formality" of Russian interiors with Italian "grace and elegance," producing a setting whose references were "strong and dramatic."^[16] In the salon, parquet ceilings modeled on Russian floor patterns and walls glazed green after the former Mikhailovsky Palace in Leningrad framed an 18th-century Russian inlaid sewing table, Russian chairs from around 1820, and andirons by William H. Jackson.^[16] The dining room paired early 19th-century Austrian Biedermeier cabinets with Italian Empire furnishings beneath a Belle Époque chandelier. In the bedroom, a French flower chandelier hung over an 18th-century Sicilian center table, alongside Italian Directoire chairs and antique textiles, reflecting Frankfurt's historically informed and highly personal approach to decoration.^[16]

By 1990, Frankfurt felt that her time in New York had come to an end and subsequently sold her townhouse to Edgar Bronfman Jr.^[15] She and her two Bernese mountain dogs moved to the Berkshires in Massachusetts, where she bought a 1780 farmhouse.^[15] Her home was featured in the September 1996 issue of Architectural Digest.^[15] The farmhouse retained its original pine floors, a wood-paneled living room, five bedrooms, and six fireplaces. Frankfurt decorated the interior in her signature style, using warm colors, oversized furniture, and personal touches such as her portrait by Warhol above the fireplace and a large hand sculpture on a coffee table. Externally, the house was a white, Southern-style structure surrounded by stone walls.^[15]

Frankfurt died on January 7, 2005, due to complications from a brain tumor in the Hebrew Home for the Aged in the Bronx, New York.^[17] She was survived by her two sons and four grandchildren.^[1]