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Wrong Note, Right Touch. One thing all decorators agree on. Their job is to express the client's personality, not their own. Methods vary for discovering just what that personality is. "I look in the woman's closet to see what color her clothes are," says Ellen McCluskey. Says David Bell: "I look at the color of their eyes." Both regard the husband's participation as essential. "After all, he has to live in it and pay for it," says Bell. Adds McCluskey: "I've often found that he's on a budget—and she isn't." Decorators disagree as to whether they should take clients along on shopping forays to the showrooms. Billy Baldwin, though he averages only 20 assignments a year, does so only reluctantly. Says he: "My job is to eliminate everything but the very best of what they might want." Miami Decorator Waldo Perez concurs: "They would go crazy. They would like too many things." Fellow Miami Decorator Henry End feels just the opposite. "I wear them out, and they give up trying to remember what was what," says End. "Then they tell me to choose what I think is best."
What if the client insists on selecting something in atrocious taste? Some decorators refuse to buy the offending object, though few go as far as Lady Bird Johnson's favorite designer, Washington's Genevieve Hendricks. When she is overruled, she likes to preserve her integrity by pinning a note to the underside of the disputed chair or sofa stating, "I, Genevieve Hendricks, do not approve this piece of furniture." Others are more tolerant. "I like eccentricities—if they are the eccentricities of the owner," says Billy Baldwin. "I approve of permitting the wrong note in a room in order to achieve a personal touch." One of the benefits of the contemporary mood for mixing and matching is that it allows personal touches to be at home. Often they are exactly what is needed to pull a room together and make it both alive and liveable.