Discover bold colors and statement-making design elements beyond the traditional exterior
“Let’s play design.” That’s the mantra of Ghislaine Viñas, the Manhattan-based designer whose urbane lightheartedness is on full display in the Charleston home of her friends and longtime clients Phoebe and David Mendez. Viñas’s playfulness, and that of her clients, ricochets around the home as buoyant color and frisky shapes make a bold statement from the moment you enter.
Delight and joy are the motifs here, with a few midcentury undertones and plenty of contemporary verve, but you’d never guess that from the street. On the exterior, this modest 19th-century frame house looks as if it would readily fall in line with the surrounding homes that march along Rutledge Avenue near Colonial Lake. But one peek into the foyer at the rounded undulation of Viñas’s “Again and Again” floating console, with its ripples of sexy frivolity, and you realize you’ve stepped through a portal of whimsy. Above the console, an abstract painting by Marissa Vogl found at Meyer Vogl Gallery blazes in green, magenta, and orange Technicolor—a vivid explosion of color against an all-white foyer. A Droog “85 lamps” chandelier of bulbs clumped like an inverted bouquet of flowers dangles overhead. Game on.
“There’s no rule that you have to have a traditional style in a traditional house,” says Viñas. “This interior reflects Phoebe and David, what they love and where they’ve been. That feeling when you walk into the house that you don’t know what’s coming, only that it’s so fresh and has an attitude of its own—that 100 percent reflects the homeowners.”
(Left to right) The harlequin-patterned walk hints at the sophisticated whimsy inside. An abstract by Marissa Vogl inspired the color story. The mahogany newel post, shaped like a lighthouse, harkens to the city’s port heritage, while the front door, painted a deep Dutch black, connects visually to the kitchen beyond.
It’s true—the Mendezes didn’t know what to expect when they decided to move downtown from the Isle of Palms, only that they wanted a more walkable urban environment. But that move was just the final hop in a hopscotch that brought them first from New York City, where they’d lived for a decade and began their family, to South Carolina, where Phoebe, a Camden native, has roots, and David, who grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, went to college. The two met at Clemson. “We joke that he has a Southern green card,” says Phoebe. “He came down here at age 18 and fell in love with the South.” Work took them to Manhattan, where Viñas, their Dutch-born, South African neighbor, decorated their Tribeca loft, but they kept a foothold in the Charleston area, buying an Isle of Palms vacation home in 2003—which became another Viñas decorating collaboration.
While they loved living in Tribeca and the energy of New York, once their children—daughter Ellerbe, now 20, and son Sebastian, age 17—were in school on the Upper East Side, the slog became too much. “We were looking at either relocating to the Upper East Side or making the move to Charleston,” says Phoebe. They decided to shift to their vacation home “until we figured out where we wanted to be.” Inertia played a hand; life got busy, and they ended up staying on the island until, a decade later during COVID, someone approached with a purchase offer they couldn’t refuse.
In the mix, the family had spent a pivotal year in the picturesque town of Haarlem outside of Amsterdam. “We fell in love with European living. We were all together in a 1,300-square-foot cottage. The Dutch are masters at efficient use of space,” notes Phoebe. “We loved being able to walk or bike everywhere. David brought our Christmas tree home on a bike that year!” So when they suddenly needed to relocate again, they decided to give downtown Charleston a try. “Having experienced a small, urban environment, we realized we didn’t really need, or want, things like a huge garage,” says David.
(Left) A vintage Angelo Leili pendant sets a contemporary tone for the sophisticated, mod living room, where a Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams sofa, Kelly green Arflex chairs, and Viñas’s award-winning custom rug chime in with color and curve. (Right) The sleek space features monochrome Porcelanosa countertops from ARC Interiors, black INAX “Yuki Border” porcelain tiles on the walls, and a Castor “Recycled Tube Light” linear chandelier.
“We wanted to simplify, to get out of a car,” adds Phoebe. “Once we moved downtown, we loved it. We were like, ‘Why didn’t we do this earlier?’”
The Mendezes initially rented on the peninsula but soon found this home and immediately fell in love. “There wasn’t a light on inside the day we saw it, but it was still bright and flooded with daylight. We could see it had so much potential, especially outside.” Translation: there was space for a small pool and gardens (David’s passion) and importantly, room for a small basketball court, which made their varsity hoops-player son happy. They loved that the historic character of the house—its original stained-glass window, fireplaces, and solid mahogany banister, for example—was very much intact, and thanks to a renovation by the previous owners, the heavy lifting—the electrical, plumbing, HVAC—had been done. The couple had a full kitchen redesign in mind and wanted to extend the living space outdoors with a porch expansion, but otherwise, the main desire was to put their own stamp on the interior.
“Our goal was to stay true to the integrity of the house but give it our style, which is playful and a bit of surprise,” says Phoebe. And there was never any question who they’d ask to help them. “We need to ‘Ghislaine it.’ We gave her a verb,” says Phoebe. “The fact that Ghislaine is Dutch and so international meant she knew the exact right paint for our Netherlands-inspired, high-gloss, black front door, and how to make it so you could look through that front door window and see through to this uber contemporary, black kitchen but still understand this house is Southern and historic.”
“When Ghislaine asked what I wanted our bedroom to feel like, I simply said, ‘a resort,’” notes Phoebe, who loves the peaceful creams and soft whites. A collage of woven medallions from Mexico add texture, while a bench from their time in San Miguel de Allende serves as a window seat.
Nor was there a question who they would ask to mastermind the renovation. The home they’d been renting was owned by Harrison Malpass of HHM Builders. “The beauty of living in his space was that we really knew his work,” Phoebe laughs, plus, she adds, the footprint of his kitchen and living area was much like this house, so they knew he could do what they envisioned, especially in terms of efficiency with storage and functionality. “It was a dream collaboration,” says Phoebe.
In addition to their stint abroad, the Mendez family spent the summer of 2021 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, exploring David’s family’s roots. Mexican ceramics and textiles, art and artifacts from their travels, are showcased throughout the house. In the starkly elegant white-and-black dining room, an image from Doug Menuez’s “Heaven, Earth, Tequila” series hangs over the fireplace, while Viñas’s African textile-inspired “ShweShwe” wallpaper shape-shifts across the ceiling, an example of what she calls her “go big or go home” approach. “Scale can be such a fun thing to work with, and they were game,” the designer says.
Taylor Fehmel of Remark Landscape Architecture masterminded a new garden, with room for a pool and outdoor dining. “We love that our indoor and outdoor spaces now feel so connected,” says Phoebe.
In colorful contrast, the adjoining living room, with its curvy sofa and avant-garde Bauhaus chairs, echoes the perky greens and blues of the stairwell’s stained-glass window and the Vogl painting in the entry. A three-dimensional tree of life, another San Miguel nod, branches out over the mantel. Upstairs, in the TV/library/guest room, Viñas “went deep with a mustardy ochre color that makes it feel womb-like.” She’s unabashed, and the Mendezes love it.
“More than anything, this house is a character, a personality; it is already what it is,” says Viñas, who was excited to work on a historical Charleston project. “There are so many layers, so much storytelling in an old house, and you leave that be. I love that, and I love that Phoebe wanted the interior to be fresh and white, creating a contrast with the weathered floors and that beautiful staircase we didn’t touch,” says the designer, who was meticulous with furniture placement and use of space.
“There’s nothing extraneous,” she adds. “That gives a sense of modernity, but also invites you to really focus on the art that brings joy, or what I call the aesthetics of happiness.”
