Vincent Fourcade

Vincent Gabriel Fourcade (February 27, 1934 – December 23, 1992) was a French American interior designer and the business and life partner of Robert Denning. "Outrageous luxury is what our clients want," he once said."Robert Denning Dies at 78; Champion of Lavish Décor", by Mitchell Owens, Sep. 4, 2005, New York Times obituary

Family and youth

"Born...to a family of distinguished French aesthetes, the designer spent many of his formative years in a twenty-bedroom house replete with made-to-order Majorelle furnishings." "Vincent Fourcade - CELEBRATING THE PLEASURES OF MAGNIFICENT EXCESS", by Mitchell Owens, Architectural Digest, January 2000, v. 57 #1, p. 169 – one of twenty five persons named by the magazine "Interior Design Legends". "I learned my trade by going out every evening as a young man," he told art historian Rosamond Bernier. "I went to every pretty house in France and Italy and other places too, and I remembered them all, even down to what was on each little table."

New York City

A handsome eligible batchelor, he was never without invitations on this side of the Atlantic either. He tried a career in banking, the business of his father and grandfather in Paris. He met Robert Denning in 1959. Denning a protégé of Edgar de Evia, had acquired an eye for design and effect from working with the photographer on sets for many fabric and furniture accounts, and with whom he shared one of the most magnificent Manhattan apartments on the top three floors of the Rhinelander Mansion. It would be here that early clients such as Lillian (Bostwick) and Ogden Phipps would be entertained as de Evia was spending more and more time on his estate in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Denning & Fourcade

Slowly the pair became known for an extreme of luxury compared to le goût Rothschild. An early party that they styled included covering the floor with a hundred old raccoon coats. In 1960 they formed the firm of Denning & Fourcade, Inc. which would for over forty-five years set a standard for a list of clients that read like a social registry.

Homes

Living with AIDS

Early in the 1980s Fourcade contracted AIDS. He kept his looks and strength through most of that decade as Denning and he would divide their time between New York and Paris, crossing the Atlantic on the Concorde. His older brother Xavier Fourcade, the internationally known contemporary art dealer, died of the disease in 1987 at St. Lukes's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City.

By 1990 the disease would take control his life and early in 1992 Denning & Fourcade would with a nurse take the Concorde one last time to Paris where he would live his remaining days in their apartmentVincent Fourcade, 58, Decorator Known for His Ornate Interiors by Carol Vogel, December 25, 1992, New York Times obituary at 16 rue de Chazelles, just up the street from the studio of the sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi who is best known for the Statue of Liberty.

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