de Wolfe, Elsie (1865-1950)

US interior decorator. She was commissioned to work on New York's Colony Club, the Frick mansion, and the houses of the wealthy. She restored her own Villa Trianon in France and, after World War II, moved to Los Angeles.

She was born in New York City and began a career in acting before becoming the USA's first professional woman decorator. It was the transformation of her own house from gloomy, cluttered Victorianism to light, airy neoclassicism that led to her being offered freelance work. A self-promoting eccentric, she claimed to have introduced blue-tinted hair, white upholstery, and leopard chintzes.