“I Hate Clutter”: The Chic, Cultivated Interiors of Mica Ertegun, As Seen in Vogue

“In general I have little feeling for possessions, hate little objects everywhere and fussiness,” interior designer and socialite Mica Ertegun told Vogue in 1969. It was a sentiment she’d echo again and again to the magazine throughout the decades: “I hate clutter,” she told writer Brooke Hayward, who visited her and Ahmet Ertegun’s Southampton home in 1991. “I d rather have two big things instead of a million small objects.”

A stylish commitment to a warm sort of sparseness was a central tenet of Ertegun’s, who died on December 2, 2023, at age 97. Immediately, the tributes poured in from the decorating community at large. (“Refinement and elegance exuded,” Mark D. Sikes, the White House’s East Wing interior designer, wrote on Instagram.) Meanwhile, the New York Times published an extensive obituary.

The posthumous odes were well deserved: Ertegun, who founded the interior design firm Mac II along with Chessy Rayner in 1967, quickly became the favorite decorator of New York’s fashion set due to her impeccable taste and impressive network. (Her husband, Ahmet, co-founded Atlantic Records. Together, their acquaintances included the top rock stars, fashion insiders, and artists of the day.) In 1969, the duo redesigned the fifth floor at Saks Fifth Avenue. That same year, Ertegun’s Manhattan townhouse appeared in Vogue. In the article, titled “Space Venture,” writer Polly Devlin marveled at the curved staircase and white walls, which allowed artwork by the likes of Ellsworth Kelly and Mark Rothko to take center stage. At a time when floral chintz reigned supreme, such starkness was groundbreaking. The couple, she remarked, had turned a “traditional East Side brownstone into one of the few relevantly modern houses in Manhattan, a house with the feeling of a space venture.”

Vogue ran MAC II’s work again in 1972, after they designed a home for Bill Blass. “There aren’t any two girls in New York with more on the ball, more of a flair for food, for clothes, for living, than Mica and Chessy,” he said of the pair. His living room included an antique Japanese screen hanging on a white wall above a leather banquette with pillow sable heads mounted on silver pedestals and a parsons table. It was elegant and cultivated—two adjectives that would be used to describe Ertegun’s career going forward. (Many of clients would ended up being ardent art collectors, as her reserve allowed paintings to become focal interests.)

That’s not to say her taste was static or stuck. Ertegun not only immersed herself in other cultures and lifestyles, but allowed them to shape her: “If I look back at my first house in New York, it was totally white. I did it in the ’60s, when everybody used glass tables and chrome. I ve lived around since then and traveled a lot, and my ‘style,’ or whatever it is I like, has evolved,” Mica told Vogue in 1991 of her decision to embrace colorful classism for her Southampton home. “The way I live has been influenced by my marriage to Ahmet, who is a very independent spirit. He’s not at all a conformist. And that can be enlightening and liberating. I would be bored to death if I lived with someone conventional—I couldn’t anymore, not after being trained in this school.”

Below, revisit Mica Ertegun’s interior designs as seen in Vogue, including her own Manhattan townhouse and Bill Blass s penthouse.