Before & After: The Truth, Ruth

The truth was, it was all awful:

"For the last several years, since the death of her husband, Dr. Ruth has been so self-conscious about the three-bedroom upper Manhattan apartment — where she has lived for over 50 years and where she raised two children — that she has rarely entertained... If you had walked into this apartment, you would have had me committed to Bellevue."

Gotta love Dr. Ruth -- she's hysterical, but I ran across the NYT article highlighting her recent apartment re-do with Nate Berkus and, WOW, I was shocked. What must have been going through Nate's head when he walked in, I don't know. But, what was great to read about was how accepting she was of the change. It's hard to go through that, and in a place that held so many memories too of times past.

The good news is that she went from this:

To this:

Amazing. I love it.

What makes it so great is how much they embraced the feminine (do I sound like a disciple of the good Doctor?) Nate brought in the pink and balanced it with the blues, and the positioning of the sofa in front of the bookcases is genius. It's such a huge transformation, but he was willing to go with it and as a designer, Nate didn't forget the things she really cared about, and in fact, he was able to bring them back to life for her.

Design well done.