<p><em>To create the&nbsp;ultimate Left Bank pied-&agrave;-terre, American socialite Katherine Bryan turns to the Italian design firm Studio Peregalli, which conjures all the romance and understated grandeur of bygone Paris.</em></p>

- Dana Thomas

WHEN AMERICAN SOCIALITE KATHERINE BRYAN and her husband, Damon Mezzacappa, gave up their New York City home to live in Palm Beach, he found he was missing what she calls “a metropolitan experience.” While on holiday in France, he said, “We love Paris. Why don’t we just buy an apartment there?” Bryan, a psychologist who honed a sharp eye for architectural gems while working for Sotheby’s real estate in New York, set off to the Left Bank and found a dilapidated 18th-century, first-floor apartment that had once been a part of an hôtel particulier. It was steps from the Musée Rodin and bathed in light, and Bryan could see the potential. “I wasn’t sure Damon would agree,” she recalls. “But he said, ‘If that’s the one you want, get it.’ ”

During her three marriages—to writer George Gurley, financier and telecommunications executive Shelby Bryan, and her longtime friend, the widowed Mezzacappa—Bryan moved “many times,” she said, and she became so adept at decorating homes, usually with the aid of Mark Hampton, that she occasionally guided friends with their places. For the Left Bank flat, however, she knew she needed help. She had read about Studio Peregalli, the Milan-based design team of Roberto Peregalli and Laura Sartori Rimini, who were known for Renzo Mongiardino–inspired decor and top-to-bottom renovations of grand homes, and thought they might be the perfect fit. “I knew I didn’t want to be minimalistic in t

This story is from the June 2017 edition of Elle Decor.

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