Art @ Top Hat

Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, Carleton Varney moved to New York City shortly after graduating from Oberlin College, in Ohio, to continue his studies at New York University, where he obtained a masters degree in education.

He soon came into his own as a decorator at the prestigious firm of Dorothy Draper & Company Inc., under the guidance of and mentorship of the famous Mrs. Draper herself.  Since the mid-1960s, when he took over the company (he became president in 1964), Varney has kept it operating as one of the oldest continuing decorating firms in the United States.  

The author of more than twenty best-selling decorating books - starting with You and Your Apartment (Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), continuing through In the Pink: Dorothy Draper, America's Most Fabulous Decorator (Pointed Leaf Press, 2006), and including two novels, Kiss the Hibiscus Good Night (Carol Publishing Group, 1992) and The Decorator (Shannongrove Press, 1999) - Varney is also a well-known syndicated newspaper columnist.  His column, Your Family Decorator, which appears in the Palm Beach Daily News once a week, is popular and influential.

Mr. Varney and his work have been the subject of more than fifty articles in Architectural Digest, one of the most celebrated magazines in the field of interior design.  An indefatigable world traveler, Varney spends time in his various homes, which include a farm in upstate New York, a flat in London's Mayfair, a hilltop house on the island of St. Croix, and an eighteenth-century estate in Ireland's County Limerick.