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Pop Rocks

Eight years ago, Jennifer Farr Drolet was selling billboard advertising. The Connecticut native was living in Manhattan, spending her spare time in the city’s garment district, thumbing over fabrics. As the story often goes in interior decorating, Drolet assisted friends whose praise and appreciation eventually led her to quit the billboard business, supplement her natural knack with a few courses at the Parsons School of Design and begin decorating full-time. Now, after completing her most personal project—her home in Weston, where she and her family moved three years ago—visitors are struck with a collage of lush fabrics, animal prints and arresting colors that likely rival any larger-than-life ad on the side of the highway.

The house is not huge, just 2,100 square feet. “And it’s pretty dark,” Jennifer says. But the large windows, original to the 1930 house, as well as a glassed-in front porch and open back deck keep it from feeling closed in. “It had all the charm of an old house, a lot of privacy and three fireplaces,” Jennifer says. If the heavens have anything to do with bringing house hunters and their perfect dwelling together, Drolet and her husband Bill, may have experienced that serendipitous intervention. “We bought the house in winter, after it had snowed, and it looked breathtaking. Across from our bed is a wall of windows that looks out over the trees covered in white,” she says.



The couple did very little in the way of home improvements. The previous owner, a contractor, left exquisite, dark hardwood floors and combined two smaller bedrooms into a larger master one (the original master bedroom now belongs to the couple’s daughter, three-year-old Kennedy). He also tipped them off to an oversize antique mirror that had been in the basement since he first bought the house. “Who knows how long it had been there?,” Jennifer says, who, sensing a prod toward her love of bargains and flair for the dramatic, turned the old mirror into a seductive headboard in her guest bedroom.

Most of the changes are purely cosmetic—harmonious shades of primary colors and sumptuous textures befitting a cozy house. Drolet doesn’t shy away from anything that might seem over-the-top to a play-it-safe type (purple velvet, used sparingly on side chairs in the living room, animal prints of all breeds). Nor is she shy in talking about her style. “I have a traditional taste with pop and flair. I like richness, texture and drama. I like everything to say something.”

Her dining and guest rooms are a matching shade of Ralph Lauren Stadium Red, like purposeful swaths of lipstick on a glamorous starlet who knows how to attract attention but not hog it. Drolet’s animal prints are accessories—throw pillows, rugs—not scene-stealers, and their presence in almost every room (there’s even a zebra-striped pillow in Kennedy’s bedroom) creates a continuity that makes them seem understated rather than wild.



Then there are the animals themselves: A horse sculpture watching over (what else?) a giraffe-print Louis-style chair on the porch, a stately greyhound guarding the stairwell and a silver canine duo mid-prance on the top of the dining room table. “I didn’t intend for it to be a trend,” Jennifer admits. “They were all on-the-spot purchases. I come home with something, and my husband asks where it’s going, and I say, ‘I don’t know, I just liked it.’”

Indeed, many of the fabrics in her house were chosen with no master plan in mind. The purple velvet? “I just saw it and thought it was so beautiful.” The royal blue Scalamandré print that brightens up the back of her dining room chairs? “I saw it five years ago, loved it and then bought it a few years later because it was being discontinued.” The chocolate brown velvet on her living room sofa may have been the most envious find—at $7 a yard in Manhattan’s garment district. “It’s held up really well, but knowing what I know now, I would never do that again,” she says.

The thing is, you don’t quite believe that, coming from a woman whose indefatigable browsing has turned up so many well-priced finds that mingle comfortably in her house.

Drolet truly does the legwork, or, shall we say, fingerwork. Many of her furnishings, including a few rugs, found online, and the Warhol-esque print of Kennedy that marries the jewel-toned colors throughout the living and dining rooms was customized by Drolet at the website allPopart.com. She placed every crystal on her dining room chandelier (another online purchase) herself—and had the sore neck to prove it.

In a sea of homeowners who rarely stray from neutral, where change can be had with the simple flick of a throw pillow, Drolet is refreshingly confident in her bold choices. “I don’t worry I’m going to get sick of things,” she says. “My taste is eclectic, but it’s consistent. I’m not scared.”

Resources
allPopart.com, 877-728-9278; allPopart.com
Drolet Interiors, Weston, 917-886-8810; JenniferFarr1@yahoo.com