Step Inside the Most Iconic Celebrity and Designer Homes House Beautiful Has Ever Featured

9 min read

Over our 130 years in print, we’ve featured some memorable homes. When House Beautiful first launched in 1896, our team had a clear vision for the magazine’s legacy: Don’t simply report on trends—set them. That commitment to championing what’s next eventually inspired our popular (and still-running) Next Wave awards nearly a century later.

But long before then, the magazine’s pages were already filled with high-profile homes and singular spaces that pushed design forward. From Oscar de la Renta’s Dominican Republic retreat and Bette Midler’s Hawaiian dream home to Katharine Hepburn’s charming coastal abode, our archives are a treasure trove of unforgettable design. In honor of our 130th anniversary, we’re taking a trip down memory lane—and deep into those archives—to revisit the gorgeous, iconic, and eclectic homes that graced our pages through the years.

Georgia O’Keeffe

New Mexico (April 1963)

The window of O’Keeffe’s work station overlooked the barren desert.

Like her art, an air of pared-to-the-bone reality encompassed the home’s design, which opened with a weathered wooden door.

Artist Georgia O’Keeffe opened her doors to House Beautiful’s Laura Gilpin for a feature in April 1963. Gilpin invited readers inside O’Keeffe’s adobe home in Abiquiu, New Mexico, a serene retreat defined by simplicity, sentiment, and the stark beauty of the surrounding desert. In her musings, Gilpin noted O’Keeffe’s striking use of spacing, the estate’s cottonwood-lined valley, and the softness of the adobe floors beneath her feet.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

New York City (November 1971)

A moody palette defined the space, accented by cool marble fireplaces.

The former first lady’s dining room featured a mix of patterns, most notably fish-head plaid.

House Beautiful dove into the rich, sentimental textiles that lined the walls, floor, and furniture in Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis’s apartment. The former first lady lived in a posh Upper East Side apartment overlooking Central Park and positively drenched in art. The textile pieces that gave the home an elevated, bespoke feel were sourced through Tillett and Design Works of Bedford-Stuyvesant, a nonprofit organization. Natalie Schram explored Jackie O’s bold threaded, woven, and stitched pieces that adorned her dining and living rooms for a 1971 issue.

Marina Bulgari

Italy (January 1975)

Rustic features, like exposed red brick walls, were a staple in the apartment’s design and greatly influenced its new-age feel.

Bulgari’s apartment was an ode to its geometrical features, with swooping arches and vaulted ceilings running throughout.

In 1975, our senior editor, Susan Grant Lewin, visited the Rome apartment of jewelry heiress Marina Bulgari. Designed by one of Italy’s most notable architects of the time, Gae Aulenti, the complex was surrounded by medieval history. Bulgari’s apartment was a testament to 20th-century design, boasting exposed red brick walls and an expansive skylight. The most unique feature? Four windows positioned at the cardinal directions of the compass, a nod to the building’s past life as a watchtower.

Cecil Beaton

England (June 1979)

Our writer, Lucy Yeomans, described the glass-walled sunroom as the heart of Beaton’s home.

The green-hued, book-filled library was accented with touches of red velvet for a dose of contrast.

The manicured gardens of Cecil Beaton’s Reddish House graced the pages of our June 1979 issue. Beaton, regarded even then as a “national treasure,” owned an 18th-century gem in rural Wiltshire, where he staged some of his most iconic photographs, including portraits of Mick Jagger and Audrey Hepburn. The photographer and designer’s home became just as recognizable as his name, embodying the same beauty and finesse as his work. Interviewed by Patrick O’Higgins, Beaton’s dedication to his gardens, blooming with roses, poppies, and clematis, became a focus of the piece. In their conversation, Beaton remarked on his love for the hobby, stating, “My garden is the greatest joy of my life, after my friends. Both are worth living for.” The home’s interior is the height of cozy British charm, defined by toile de Jouy.

Farrah Fawcett

California (February 1981)

Farrah Fawcett brought the cottage aesthetic to life in her sunny ‘80s kitchen, finished in natural wood.

The most famous decor element in the home was undoubtedly Fawcett’s portrait by Andy Warhol.

Actress Farrah Fawcett’s eclectic home was featured in our February 1981 issue. Mary Ellis Emmerling brought the cozy country cottage to life for readers by detailing the thoughtful elements and layers of emotion found in Fawcett and her Los Angeles–based designer Steve Chase’s choices. The piece explored the home room by room. In her writing, Emmerling noted the home’s rustic feel, an abundance of fireplaces, the sun-drenched kitchen, and, of course, Fawcett’s iconic portrait by Andy Warhol.

Hubert de Givenchy

France (July 1988)

The fabric used for this tablecloth is vintage, from the Givenchy design house.

The design schemes in the bedrooms mirrored the homes Givenchy grew up in, emulating his mother and aunt’s love for patterns and drapery.

For our July 1988 issue, House Beautiful editor Caroline Englefield took a trip to the banks of the Aigre River and back in time to the 16th-century Château du Jonchet, which was owned by the legendary designer Hubert de Givenchy, namesake of the modern-day high-fashion label. Touring the estate, she found a mix of contemporary and Renaissance flair, pattern-drenched rooms, bolts upon bolts of cotton, and a surprising commitment to comfort at Chez Givenchy.

Missoni Villa

Italy (April 1989)

The floor screen was a popular home feature in the ‘90s. The Missonis were ahead of the trends with their color-blocked rendition.

The Missoni family villa was as colorful as it was eclectic, mixing patterns, colors, and textures to achieve a whimsical yet elevated feel.

In 1989, Melanie Fleischmann took House Beautiful readers inside Villa Eva, just outside Milan. The home belonged to Angela and Marco Maccapani, heirs to the luxury fashion house Missoni, and its bold, pattern-packed interiors reflected the same vibrant, eclectic spirit that fueled the family brand’s success.

In the living room, a Zanotta Wave sofa made a sculptural statement, while flea-market yellow polka-dotted shakers brought a playful touch to the dining area. Dividing the two spaces was a towering, nearly neon multicolored screen by New York sculptor Dan Friedman. Gray stucco walls provided one of the home’s few neutral notes. As Fleischmann described it, the Maccapanis’ home was an ode to the power of creativity—and the beauty of embracing chaos.

Mimi Kemble

Florida (December 1989)

Kimble brought life to the small, once-dull kitchen through trompe l’oeil murals of farm animals and a sunny yellow backsplash.

Each room in the Kemble home was designed differently on purpose, connected partly by Kemble’s joyful palettes.

Before Palm Beach became a glitzy billionaire enclave, it was a rustic beach town—and home to Mimi Kemble, the founder and head designer of Kemble Interiors. In a 1989 issue of House Beautiful, Kemble recounted to writer Jane Margolies growing up next door to the gloomy, abandoned Old Bethesda church. Kemble spent her teenage years behind drawn drapes, attempting to block out the eerie energy of the deconsecrated building just outside her window.

Then, in 1974, she decided to give the church a second chance, transforming the former place of worship into an eclectic home filled with color, pattern, pets, and prints. Chintz and goose down became her secret weapons in banishing the building’s lingering sense of unease. Plywood shutters painted with hyacinths and morning glories protected the delicate original stained-glass windows, while trompe l’oeil rabbits, pigs, and chicks adorned the kitchen cabinets. Outside, a pink porch delivered a jolt of joy to the building.

Katharine Hepburn

Connecticut and New York City (February 1991)

Hepburn’s favorite chair was in her second-floor lounge, flanked by crystals, a cannonball, and petrified wood.

The corner of Hepburn’s bedroom was a collection of trinkets she’d collected over her life.

An effortless air of elegance and grounded sense of humanity defined Katharine Hepburn’s East Coast homes when Katherine Ellis covered them for House Beautiful in 1991. Despite her notable dedication to art, Hepburn’s homes were surprisingly casual, free of curtains and curation. Ellis describes the decor as “gentle clutter,” items collected over the star’s life and brimming with sentiment: oriental rugs, personal paintings—and of course, her four Oscars. Ellis described Hepburn as a “no-nonsense octogenarian,” who took many matters of the home into her own hands, gardening, chopping firewood, and commuting between her Manhattan townhouse and coastal Connecticut home all on her own.

Peter Pennoyer and Katie Ridder

New York City (October 1991)

“The couple’s flair for juxtaposing neutral and intense colors, strong and subtle patterns, is clear,” wrote Siroto.

The primary bedroom (top row) and guest bedroom featured treasured collected items and the couple’s own designs.

A story in our October 1991 issue featured the Upper West Side apartment of House Beautiful’s then-contributing editor Katie Ridder and her architect husband, Peter Pennoyer. (The couple met, per the story, when Ridder was reporting on one of Pennoyer’s projects.) Self-proclaimed classicists, Pennoyer and Ridder built the apartment around storied antiques, and did so with creative personality—writer Janet Siroto said that “Both are unable to return from even the grungiest of basement thrift shops without a treasure-in-the-making.”

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Thomas Jayne

New York City (April 1992)

Clockwise from top left: A secretary that belonged to Jayne’s great-grandparents; striped walls by Chuck Hettinger; club chairs by Kevin McNamara; a table of Jayne’s own design.

Jayne told HB that he finds old master prints by Dürer, Tiepolo, and Rembrandt at affordable prices when their subject is of a religious nature.

After a stint at Parish-Hadley, the young designer Thomas Jayne was hard at work decorating the governor’s mansion in Richmond, Virginia, when House Beautiful featured his Greenwich Village apartment in its April 1992 issue. Religious prints, reflecting his Episcopalian upbringing, cover the walls. Removing the old carpeting, he discovered the original 1929 cork flooring and buffed it to a “mellow, leatherlike shine,” wrote editor Dana Caponigro.

Manuel Canovas

Paris (June 1992)

“All my life, I have liked big motifs. They feel more elegant, more generous," Canovas told House Beautiful.

The walls and curtains of the bedroom are Pali, a cotton pattern of his own design inspired by a trip to California.

A two-story apartment in Paris, flooded with sunlight and opening to the Champ de Mars gardens near the Eiffel Tower, was the residence of textile designer Manuel Canovas and his family, featured in House Beautiful’s June 1992 issue. On a background of the yellows, soft reds, and blues of 18th-century France, he splashed oversized patterns—his controversial signature style. “We love to sit here,” he told HB. “I think it proves you should do what you like and not what’s expected.”

Bunny Williams

Connecticut (July 1994)

The kitchen garden, with its weathered wood fence, combines vegetables with wisteria and morning glories.

A guest bedroom features Clarence House fabric curtains and a view of the home’s formal garden with a rose-covered trellis.

“Weekend guests never want to leave the rambling old house in rural Connecticut where New York decorator Bunny Williams cultivates eternal summer,” wrote Christine Pittel in the July 1994 issue of House Beautiful. It’s a home the designer still owns and cherishes, but one that has surely evolved in the 30 years since the story was published. Back then, it was defined by her preferred “in-between colors”: a papery peachy-pink in the living room, a glazed blue-green in the library, plus umpteen old treasures and spoils from her favorite sport—antiquing.

Albert Hadley

New York City (November 1996)

Mark Sciarrillo’s hand-troweled, rough-textured walls provide a dignified backdrop for carefully selected furnishings.

A studio, library, and guest room all in one, this flexible space features an oversized cerulean cork board on one wall.

Albert Hadley maintained a modest three-room apartment on New York City’s Upper East Side, where he lived for 20 years. The space underwent an extensive renovation—one doorway, for instance, was moved just five inches to align perfectly with another—and frequent rounds of redecorating. When it appeared in our November 1996 issue, the result was quintessential Hadley: tailored classicism punctuated by hits of his favorite “four-alarm red.”

Thomas O’Brien

New York City (November 1998)

A desk, tucked into the corner of the creamy white living room, is O’Brien’s own Noble table design. (For parties, it was pushed together with another by the windows.)

A beige-and-khaki striped awning was selected for the terrace because “it goes with brick,” he told House Beautiful.

“In his own heavenly high-rise apartment,” wrote Carol Prisant in our November 1998 issue, “New York designer Thomas O'Brien practices just what he preaches: a kind of modern, millennial faith in aesthetic restraint and redemptive rehabilitation.” The living room’s soaring 18-foot ceilings reminded the designer of a chapel, and he covered the walls in a creamy white paint that skewed gray in the rain and glowed at night.

Victoria Hagan

Long Island, New York (June 1999)

Clockwise from top: the front hall; the living room; Hagan’s twin sons in the home where they spent summers and weekends growing up.

In the bedroom, a Clarence House grape-leaf pattern gives the shams a bit of verve and connects all the white surfaces to the wood antiques.

Styled after the classic shingled farmhouses of the region, the Hamptons home of designer Victoria Hagan and her husband, publisher Michael Berman, was built new in 1997 by the architect Darren Helgeson and promptly furnished, photographed, and featured in the June 1999 issue of House Beautiful. Eight shades of white paint give it Hagan’s characteristically polished glow, while the furnishings are a true mix. "There are no rules that govern what I put in a room. I rely totally on instinct," Hagan told House Beautiful.

Bette Midler

California (August 1999)

Bette Midler’s Laguna Beach home was a Hawaiian oasis, boasting classic patterns and palettes influenced by the archipelago’s culture.

The home’s overall aesthetic was light and airy, with beachy light wood and white painted beams running throughout.

The house Bette Midler bought in “five minutes” took center stage in House Beautiful’s August 1999 issue. The Laguna Beach cottage caught the four-time Golden Globe winner’s eye while she was filming Beaches. Perched on a picturesque oceanside cliff, the Gothic home echoed with the sounds of the sea and featured a romantic, crumbling stone tower, where a three-story spiral staircase wound its way down to the sand.

Writer Christine Pittel captured Midler’s vision of California living, which drew heavily on her childhood in Hawaii. Working with Los Angeles designer Jarrett Hedborg, Midler filled the home with Hawaiian-inspired touches: furniture upholstered in the same blue-and-white plaid palaka cloth traditionally worn by the workers in pineapple groves, hibiscus-flower drapes framing the windows, and marlins stenciled across the walls by artist Nancy Kintisch. Kintisch also created one of the home’s most distinctive details—a hula-girl mosaic in the entryway. With its playful details, oceanfront setting, and river rock-lined fireplace, the home “embodied Midler’s carefree spirit,” as Pittel put it.

John Rosselli

New Jersey (September 1999)

Rosselli is a passionate collector of blue-and-white porcelain, on display throughout.

In the dining room, large pieces of porcelain are arrayed on a long Kentucky sideboard.

As co-owner of Treillage, the storied garden shop, John Rosselli traveled the world in search of antiques (with his future wife and the shop’s co-owner, Bunny Williams). These were then marketed to his own clients or brought back to the trio of farm buildings Rosselli inherited from his family. “After a decade in the small-scale rooms of the 1880s Italianate brick house where he grew up, he began remodeling the poultry barn for guests and soon realized that he preferred the high-ceilinged new spaces for his characteristically large-scale furniture,” wrote Elizabeth H. Hunter in the September 1999 issue of House Beautiful. “So Rosselli put his guests in the brick building, and the henhouse became his own resplendent three-room retreat.”

Oscar de la Renta

Dominican Republic (June 2002)

De la Renta founded the Casa de Campo resort in the name of embracing the island’s natural beauty. His interior choices reflected that, using natural fibers, woven textures, and a neutral palette to mirror the landscape.

A large part of the property was dedicated to building a garden. Paved paths, natural coral pieces, and tall hedges defined the outdoor decor schemes.

Our June 2002 issue whisked readers to the coast of the Dominican Republic and inside fashion legend Oscar de la Renta’s private island retreat. Then-editor Senga Mortimer explored de la Renta’s deep affection for the coral-fringed coastline, his gratitude for the extraordinary life he had built, and the humble beginnings that shaped him. Mortimer also highlighted the designer’s penchant for symmetry and his wife’s influence on the interiors, evident in the home’s Georgian furniture and island-inspired palette. Throughout the tropical oasis, a coral-stone pool cabana, overstuffed sofas, and quintessential ’90s chintz struck an elegant balance between old-world refinement and laid-back island living.

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