LITTLE ROCK — Oh, the closet of our dreams.
Shoes lined up on racks. Clothes sorted by color and season. Coordinating jewelry accessible and untangled. Belts and scarves visible.
The reality for many is a pile of dirty laundry, clothes tightly stuffed onto hanging bars. Shoes strewn - maybe even missing a mate. (It’s probably under the laundry pile.)
But in Wendy LaFrance’s home, her closet is the closet of our dreams. It has been described as a wedding cake. Yes, a wedding cake.
And it’s easy to see why. Ten creamy white individual closet/cabinets are showcased in the room. Each closet is adorned with hand-molded trim. The walls are papered in iridescent silver foil wallpaper, specifically selected to mimic the ornate mirror over her vanity table.
After a very unscientific poll of decorators and closet snoopers, LaFrance’s closet was deemed the most luxurious in Little Rock.
“At our last two parties, we had 10 to 15 requests to see the closet,” she says.
To be fair, LaFrance’s entire Edgehill home is luxurious. And she didn’t just claim the good closet and make her husband, Stephen, take the one in the guest bedroom. He has his own sitting-room-turned-closet on the opposite end of the master bedroom. His closet is fitted with masculine-looking dark woods and special pull-out cabinets for ties and belts. Her daughter, Katie, actually has the largest closet in the house, a little girl’s fantasy complete with a vanity table and flat screen television. Katie becomes a teenager Sept. 29.
But back to Wendy’s closet.
Designer Kevin Walsh of Bear-Hill Interiors worked with LaFrance to create the look. In all, it took more than a year to design, build and install the closet. (Bear-Hill orchestrated the four-year remodeling of the entire 1927-era home.)
To create the closet, LaFrance sacrificed a large guest bedroom that was adjacent the master bedroom.
Because of her last name, LaFrance says, she loves French influences. “I love that style,” she says. “I asked Kevin to give me a room that I would always enjoy.”
The room features three large windows and two floor-to-ceiling arched shelving units that can accommodate most of her 100 pairs of shoes.
“So many people have hobbies, and I play tennis, but clothes are my thing,” she says. “I absolutely love them.”
Like the rest of the house, the closet has 10-foot ceilings. Walsh made the most of the space by installing cabinets above the closets, including a cabinet designed to hold clutch purses. LaFrance uses a ladder to reach those items.
The closet/cabinets are organized by clothing type and color. For example, more than 20 pairs of black pants hang in the lower section. Another closet holds LaFrance’s vast collection of jeans.
While LaFrance has a housekeeper, she doesn’t let her put away her clothes. Instead, the housekeeper hangs clean clothes on a rack and LaFrance puts them away.
“I have so many black pairs of pants, if I didn’t put them up, I would spend a few hours looking for the pair I want,” LaFrance says.
A lower, glass-front cabinet displays LaFrance’s collection of new and vintage Louis Vuitton luggage.
A custom-made vanity table sits in one corner of the room. Walsh created the table to accommodate a tall Chanel chair that Stephen LaFrance bought for her birthday. Wendy saw the chair at a Chanel boutique in Dallas and had to have it. But it wasn’t for sale. Somehow, Stephen managed to acquire one in time for her birthday.
The marble top of the vanity table holds LaFrance’s collections of Chanel products. She loves the brand so much that she named her dog Chanel. Below the table top, industrial-strength Velcro is used to attach a fabric curtain. Behind the curtain, LaFrance keeps all of her makeup and hair-styling tools.
Across the room, a jewelry hutch holds LaFrance’s bracelets, earrings and rings. She set aside a section of one of her closets to hang belt racks that hold necklaces. She bought the belt racks at the Container Store.
Walsh doesn’t remember the final price tag of the LaFrance closet, but says a top-notch, custom-designed closet can cost as much as $50,000 to $100,000.
If she had to do it all over, LaFrance says she would have set aside space for a sitting area. But if it had seating, who would ever come out of the closet?
HomeStyle, Pages 37 on 09/22/2012