Antiques dealer, furniture and fabric designer, retailer, author, decorator. Rose Tarlow’s résumé may be long and varied, but her interior design philosophy is succinct: “Fresh, clean, contemporary furniture and art mixed with wonderful old pieces—and a very definite edge of eccentricity.” Tarlow’s design career started small, with the opening of her shop, Rose Tarlow Antiques, in 1975. Today her Los Angeles—based company, Rose Tarlow—Melrose House, is renowned for its reproduction—or, in many cases, adaptation—of antiques, as well as its more modern designs. Fourteen showrooms across the United States carry the Rose Tarlow—Melrose House Collection—furniture, wallcoverings, fabrics and accessories tinged with French, English and Asian influences.

As with all of her endeavors, Tarlow takes on interior design projects, which include work for David Geffen and Eli Broad, with much forethought. She is driven not only by her sharp eye but also by her sense that homes are deeply personal. Rooms “may be perfectly designed,” she writes in her 2001 book, The Private House , “yet if they fail to reflect the personalities of the people who live in them, the very essence of intimacy is missing, and this absence is disturbingly visible.” Tarlow, guided first and foremost by her own keen sensibility, is wary of trends. “Everything goes in cycles,” she says, “and so it is with interiors.” What haven’t we seen yet in design? “Something new.”

Rose Tarlow

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