The Obamas, Shonda Rhimes, and Cindy Crawford All Love This Decorator—Here Are 6 of His Spaces

Over the decades, Michael S. Smith’s interiors have defined a certain corner of American luxury
Image may contain Living Room Room Indoors Shonda Rhimes Furniture Couch Lamp Table Lamp Human Person and Rug
Shonda Rhimes (wearing a sweater and shoes by Hermès, an Akris shirt, and Good American jeans) on a Jasper sofa in the living room. Vintage parchment-veneer cocktail table purchased at auction; painting by Hughie Lee-Smith. Fashion styling by Dana Asher Levine.Photo: Michael Mundy; Styling: Dorcia Kelley; © 2022 Estate of Hughie Lee-Smith / Licensed by VAGA at ARS, NY 

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AD100 Hall of Famer Michael S. Smith has proven himself time and again to be an essential figure within the American interior design landscape. If working for the likes of Cindy Crawford and Steven Spielberg wasn’t proof enough of his prominence, decorating the White House’s private quarters for the Obamas certainly cemented his place in history. Below we’ve selected six homes featured by AD that showcase the designer’s eye for unique antiques, dramatic wall coverings, and only the most commanding of carpets.  

Shonda Rhimes’s Manhattan apartment

Shonda Rhimes (wearing a sweater and shoes by Hermès, an Akris shirt, and Good American jeans) on a Jasper sofa in the living room. Vintage parchment-veneer cocktail table purchased at auction; painting by Hughie Lee-Smith. Fashion styling by Dana Asher Levine.

Photo: Michael Mundy; Styling: Dorcia Kelley; © 2022 Estate of Hughie Lee-Smith / Licensed by VAGA at ARS, NY 

For someone as busy as Shonda Rhimes, time and space are of the essence. The single mother of three strives to keep up with her children while simultaneously reigning supreme as one of Hollywood’s most successful and inspiring content creators. As the driving force behind television hits like Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, Scandal, and How to Get Away With Murder, and most recently Bridgerton and Inventing Anna, Rhimes has dreamed up dozens of dynamic, diverse, and multi-dimensional female characters, shifting the narratives of women and their place in the world. Her work tells stories about lives that are complex, complicated, and culture shifting—just like that of their author.

It can be a lot to keep in mind. So, more than anything, what this impresario needs most, quite simply, is time—time to write, create, and continue to build her successful Shondaland media empire—and a beautifully appointed room of her own in which to work. And that’s just what she set out to give herself in her brand-new New York City apartment. “This place is really about my work life,” says Rhimes of the residence on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. “But I came into it thinking, If I had no kids, no responsibilities, what kind of a space would I create? Obviously, we did incorporate things that were necessary for the kids—moms never get to think selfishly—but this was really exciting for me.” 

Rhimes enlisted AD100 designer Michael S. Smith—who also decorated a previous home for her in Los Angeles (AD, February 2019)—to help realize a vision of classical beauty with touches of romance and lots of colorful flights of fancy. “For us, blending ideas of a romantic East Side apartment, authors of the past, and a sense of history was interesting,” Smith explains of the decor, which is rooted in tradition yet enlivened with bursts of energy. Take, for example, the breathtakingly pretty living room. “We wrapped it in this beautiful Chinese-style wallpaper to make it a garden,” the designer says. —Emil Wilbekin

An overhauled New York City duplex

A garden scene wallpaper by Zuber wraps the master bedroom, where the custom-patinated bronze bed by Carole Gratale wears D. Porthault linens. Paintings by Jean Arp (left) and Georges Vantongerloo.

Photo: Michael Mundy; Styling: Carolina Irving; ARP © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; Beside Bed: Vantongerloo © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Prolitteris, Zurich

In these challenging times, long-term relationships are hard to sustain. Los Angeles–based AD100 designer Michael S. Smith—renowned for his work at the White House for Barack and Michelle Obama and for many other A-list clients—has enjoyed a solid one with a certain couple who have been his clients for 25 years. The apartment that this pair purchased several years ago has also been a lengthy undertaking.

The eight-bedroom duplex, atop an iconic 1920s Rosario Candela–designed building, was considered one of Manhattan’s ultimate trophy apartments. In fact, the residence had a big drawback—it was basically two separate apartments. Its previous owners, a business mogul and his wife, had bought the adjacent units in the late 1980s and combined them, but only in a rudimentary way. “They busted a hole in a wall, but the apartments were never properly integrated,” attests one of the new owners—the husband, a financier. —James Reginato

One Wisconsin waterfront house

In the sunroom, a bespoke table by Blatt Billiards is grouped with a suite of Bielecky Brothers chairs. The hanging lantern is by Jamb, and the seat cushions are covered in a Rose Tarlow Melrose House fabric.

Photo: Björn Wallander

The custom-made bed in one of the two downstairs chambers is by Jean de Merry, and the vintage Swedish flat-weave rug is from F. J. Hakimian.

Photo: Björn Wallander

January 2009, at one of the many glamorous Washington parties celebrating former president Obama’s inauguration, a woman from Chicago was introduced to Michael S. Smith. She told the designer—who had been tapped to make over the Obamas’ family quarters at the White House and would go on to update the Oval Office—that she had a “cupcake” of a project for him: sprucing up a former boathouse at her family’s Wisconsin estate on Geneva Lake. A vacation destination dating from the time of the Civil War, the lake and the nearby town of Lake Geneva have enticed baronial Chicagoans ever since the steel, lumber, and cattle industries minted major fortunes in the city. Indeed, the area came to be known as the Newport of the West on account of the diadem of palatial dwellings ringing its shores. Residents once arrived by train, then had their trunks loaded onto ferries that would usher them to their homes.

Built in the 1920s, the structure entrusted to Smith resembles one of the old steamers run aground, with Art Moderne curves and a chimney reminiscent of a smokestack. (The boat slips were sealed up by a previous owner, who transformed the area into a living space.) Locals know the edifice by its nickname, the No-Go, a ship that refuses to budge. “I used to joke to my client about how great it would be,” Smith says, “if we could take it to the Caribbean in winter and the Mediterranean in summer.”

Conceived in stark contrast to the property’s main residence, a Spanish Colonial Revival house just up the hill, the fanciful structure could almost be mistaken for a folly. In fact, it’s an integral part of life at the estate: Smith’s client determined that the building should be both a guesthouse and, as she notes, “an intensely sophisticated man cave,” where her husband and his friends could play poker, sip scotch, and smoke cigars late into the night. —Rob Haskell

Michael S. Smith’s own New York penthouse

Smith and [architect Oscar] Shamamian updated the living room’s glazing with custom-made steel doors and windows by Optimum. The bureau plat and 18th-century chair are both auction finds.

Photo: Björn Wallander

Some people employ a broker to find their dream apartment, others search the internet. But Los Angeles–based designer Michael S. Smith discovered his Manhattan pied-à-terre—a duplex penthouse off Madison Avenue—by looking out a window. He was working nearby and noticed a terrace of elegant proportions that skirted the top floors of a prewar building. “It had such a beautiful perspective,” he says of the apartment. “City views that unfold gently, on four sides, with town house rooftops in the foreground and glass towers in the distance.”

On a summer afternoon nearly five years later, Smith is admiring the lushness of that terrace from a Jansen sofa in the adjacent living room. He and his partner, TV executive James Costos, enjoy the contrast of this consummately old-world aerie and their spacious modern house in Holmby Hills. “LA is a dinner-party town,” Smith says. “New York is a dinner-reservation town. We love hosting cocktail parties here—you get that crazy wall-to-wall people, Breakfast at Tiffany’s vibe between six and eight, and then you’re done.”

When the penthouse came on the market, Smith “leapt at the chance to buy it,” he says, “thinking naively that I could just do a little freshening up and move in. But it needed everything. New beams, windows, electrical systems, floors, exterior stucco. And there was way too much ‘back of the house’”—maze-like service rooms—“so it turned into a total gut. We’re still fine-tuning the central air. Aren’t you a bit hot?” —Judith Thurman

The Obamas’ White House Home 

Considering the epochal achievements of the Obama administration—the Affordable Care Act, the legalization of same-sex marriage, the Recovery Act, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and so much more—it seems trivial to append a footnote that reads, “The former president and first lady had a pretty chic dining room too.” But the fact is, they did. And for anyone who appreciates the power of design, Michelle and Barack Obama’s emendations to the White House spoke volumes about the sea change in American culture the two have championed for. Adorned with an unprecedented array of 20th- and 21st-century artworks, their private quarters remained an oasis of civility and, yes, refined taste in a political arena so often bereft of both.

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“Because of Michael Smith, the private residence of the White House has not only reflected our taste, but also upheld the proud history of this building. Above all, it has truly felt like a home for our family,” Michelle Obama said in praise of the Los Angeles–based decorator, who collaborated closely with the first family during their tenure in Washington, DC. Smith returned the compliment by describing his work as a response to the first lady’s progressive spirit: “Mrs. Obama often talks about bringing new voices into the national conversation, and that idea informed many of the decisions we made,” he said. “We selected artists and designers who would never have appeared in the White House before.” —Mayer Rus

Ali Wentworth and George Stephanopoulos’s NYC abode

Charlie, left, and Daisy on chairs by David Iatesta in the breakfast area. The hanging lantern is by Vaughan.

Photo: Scott Frances

Speaking before thousands doesn’t cause me an ounce of anxiety. But moving? I’m on the floor, panic-stricken. Two years ago my husband, George Stephanopoulos, and I had finally settled into the Colonial Revival house in Washington, DC, that we’d bought in 2005. There was no more trim to paint, and we had enough throw pillows to cushion all of Uzbekistan. Having just signed a book deal with HarperCollins [Ali in Wonderland is in stores now], I was spending my days in sweatpants, eating Milk Duds in my home office. Then George got the call confirming that he would be taking over as coanchor of Good Morning America, which meant I would have to quickly relocate him, our daughters Elliott and Harper, and myself to New York City. I didn’t leave my bed for days, except to get more Milk Duds.

I come from a long line of strong women—my grandmother built a boat out of yak hides and crossed China’s Yellow River—so surely I could move my family, two dachshunds included, to Manhattan. No more than a tiny percentage of our possessions would fit into a New York apartment, but that was just as well: The only things worth saving, I decided, were photographs, some cherished works of art, and maybe a hot plate. Excited at the prospect of a clean slate, I wondered how we could evolve beyond our humble domicile toward a more sophisticated home.

Enter decorator Michael S. Smith. I had always worshipped his designs and studied his monographs as though they were religious manuscripts. A mutual friend had introduced us when Michael was in DC outfitting the Obama White House, and we became instant confidants, sharing sandwiches as I tagged along with him to antiques shops. —Ali Wentworth