LOCAL COLOR

Turning her unerring eye to design, photo fashions a home for friends in the Hudson stylist Mieke ten Have Valley

- MICHAEL BOODRO

A photo stylist makes what looks good in three dimensions look even better in two.

Stylists don't simply work with a photographer to document a room, they try to capture its essence, doing whatever it takes to transform a space into captivating and memorable images. And few do that better than Mieke ten Have, who over the past decade and a half has worked with virtually every top interior designer and photographer.

Ten Have brought a fresh approach to the images she worked on, which are color-drenched and evocative, perhaps best exemplified in her unconventional use of flowers. So startling were her arrangements-loose, blowsy, full of grasses and greens-that early on one of her editors asked her if she had used dead flowers for a shoot. (Okay, that was me).

COCO AND TIM QUINLAN WITH SON THEO AND HAZY, THE FAMILY DOG, ON THEIR PROPERTY IN UPSTATE NEW YORK. RIGHT THE LIVING ROOM WALLS ARE SWATHED IN EVERARD DAMASK BY ADELPHI PAPER HANGINGS, AND THE RUG IS BY LA MANUFACTURE COGOLIN. UPHOLSTERED FURNITURE INCLUDES A MIX OF CUSTOM AND VINTAGE PIECES; COFFEE TABLE BY PETER GHYCZY FROM MONTAGE.

After successful stints at Domino, Vogue, and Elle Decor (two stretches each at the latter two), rising through the editorial ranks from covering the market to scouting and producing home shoots, she went out on her own in 2017. “The staff at Architectural Digest was especially supportive,” she remembers.

“They hired me to style projects and then gave me my big break when they published my weekend house” (AD, June 2019). Her acclaim has been such that her first book, Interiors Styled by Mieke ten Have, was recently published by Vendome.