Go To Design School With Carleton Varney… At The Greenbrier, How About at the Ritz?

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This has to be the greatest thing since, well, designs by Dorothy Draper: Interior designer Carleton Varney, who designed several units here in Dallas, including The Residences at the Ritz Carlton and also at The Stoneleigh Hotel, has also designed furniture, lighting, dinnerware and linens; he has two lines of fabrics, as well as a CD (“Carleton Varney, Music With Style”).

His client roster includes the likes of former President Jimmy Carter, Errol Flynn, the late Joan Crawford, and he’s very close to the Hunt family as well as Allie Beth Allman’s Kyle Crews. He sells wares on HSN, where he is never without his signature scarf-worn-as-tie, and his sparkling, wonderful personality. I am also crazy about his son Nicholas Varney’s jewelry line which is sold at Neimans. But get this: Carlton’s going back to teaching. That’s right, Carlton was a teacher before becoming a designer. Now he’s a design teacher!

The Dorothy Draper School of Decorating at the Greenbrier, a grand resort in West Virginia that Ms. Draper redecorated in the 1940s, and that Carlton re-vamped in July of 2010, will hold four sessions of the weeklong school, each with 20 hours of class time. Topics will include “Giving Your Room Personality,” “Color and Fabric Backgrounds That Work” and “Creating the Wow Factor.” The cost is $5000 and already I’ve sent an email off to Kyle Crews: we need to bring Carlton to Dallas for something very similar at the Ritz!

Residences at the Ritz Carlton

What do you think? If not the Ritz, then I’m packing my bags for The Greenbrier. We attended the opening of the new underground Greenbrier Casino and rubbed shoulders with Brooke Shields, Debbie Reynolds, all of Carlton’s friends. It was heavenly.

The Stoneleigh

The Stoneleigh

Candy Evans, founder and publisher of CandysDirt.com, is one of the nation’s leading real estate reporters.

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