Enter photographer Nick Mele’s Palm Beach House

A self-portrait of Nick in his living room with a monkey

Mele has made a name for himself with his highly stylized approach to interior and lifestyle photography, often playing with traditional images of East Coast domestic leisure by infusing them with irreverent, borderline absurdist ideas. It’s as if he’s gently (or isn’t it?) satirizing the world he came from, with a Slim Aarons-like eye for composition and approach to society, and a Wes Anderson-esque sensibility and sense of humor.

A Summer in Newport

Living in Palm Beach

It’s not often that a designer relies so heavily on a single fabric and wallpaper collection when designing a home, but Rollins stresses that these fabrics work particularly well together thanks to their pattern and size coordination, as well as consistent color intensity. The collection, which is largely based on archive designs in new colorways, including several iconic reintroductions of patterns from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, is a strong statement that the brand believes maximalism isn’t cooling down anytime soon.

For his part, Mele confirms that he is a maximalist at heart. “I can’t stand white walls. I love patterns upon patterns and bold color choices. I like chinoiserie, chintz, and pincushions with pithy sayings on them. I come from a family full of Southern charm and Yankee frugality, and I appreciate homes with history and decor with a story. For me, the genius is in the details,” he says.

Given his penchant for maximalist design and his decidedly playful approach to life, Mele found Brunschwig’s La Menagerie collection to be the perfect foundation for his own home.

The textiles “feel traditional and fresh at the same time. I also love how playful they are. They have a whimsy to them that fits really well with our overall aesthetic,” says Nick. “Plus, by layering them all on top of each other, we can hide all of our imperfections.”

In a way, the layering of patterns and colors is an expression of the Mele family’s personality. “I love when a home is an extension of its owners and their personality shines through the design. I try to give my photos a very distinctive style and feel,” says Mele. “If you don’t stand out, you’ll get lost. I wanted our home to stand out. I wanted it to be both memorable and distinctly us, and I think we achieved that.”

Read on to learn more about how Rollins brought the mantra “more is more, less is boring” to life in the Mele household.

Kitchen

The kitchen’s fresh apple green palette was inspired by “Les Touches Reversed in Leaf,” a classic Brunschwig & Fils pattern that the textile house reintroduced with the La Menagerie collection in seven new color combinations with colored backgrounds and neutral, stylized dots (the inversion of its original incarnation, launched in 1965).

Rollins covered the kitchen walls with this pattern, whose nostalgic nods in a vibrant hue perfectly match the Meles’ aesthetic and lifestyle. Les Touches is “the ultimate classic and fits perfectly into almost any scheme. It’s neutral without being a nothing,” says Rollins.

Get the look:

Fabric “Les Touches” by Brunschwig & Fils

breakfast room

Apple green in the kitchen and breakfast room was the basis for the color palette in the rest of the house. “When rooms flow into one another, it’s always a puzzle for a designer to balance color, scale, pattern and texture,” says Rollins. “I wanted this room to have a color thread to the other rooms, but not compete with or dominate the other patterns. Plus, I find that the best color choices for the kitchen are always the colors of food!”

Get the look:

Tiered rattan lampshade

Custom made cordless woven bamboo window blind

Living room

Nick’s wife Molly poses with a camel

Rollins’ mastery of pattern-mixing is particularly evident in the living room, where she paired Brunschwig et Fils’ new Riviere print (blue), a large-scale hand-painted pattern inspired by an archival hand-blocked L’Indienne textile, with Shalimar wallpaper (red/blue), a print depicting elaborate scenes of Indian maharajahs and their courtiers that the textile house first released in the 1970s. A small-scale leopard-print rug by Stanton (Felix in True Leopard) balances the scale of the upholstery and drapery with the intricate detail of the wallpaper.

The key to layering patterns is to vary the scale within a color family, Rollins says. “This collection offers a wide variety of patterns and scale mixes, but there is a consistent color saturation and tones, which made my job a lot easier,” she says.

Get the look:

Shalimar fabric by Brunschwig & Fils

Ceramic table lamps

Now 25% off

Fabric “Riviere” by Brunschwig & Fils

dining room

The Meles’ dining room beautifully reflects their penchant for nostalgia, albeit from a contemporary perspective. Rollins furnished the space mostly with antiques and vintage pieces, including a faux bamboo chandelier from Show Pony in West Palm Beach and a dining table and chairs from Molly’s childhood home.

To add a modern twist to the heirloom dining room set, Rollins draped the dining table with a custom skirt in Brunschwig et Fil’s Kanchou, a print based on an antique Chinese wallpaper panel featuring cockatoos, flowering vines and dogwood branches that was first introduced over 20 years ago. She also upholstered the Queen Anne chairs in Les Touches Reverse in Leaf, picking up the green pattern from the adjacent kitchen.

Get the look:

Fabric Kanchou by Brunschwig & Fils

Tole Pagoda Style Chandelier by Vaughan

Now 50% off

Grass fabric wallpaper

Now 27% off

Living room

In the family room, Rollins was inspired to use global design references to create a fantastical retreat for the Meles and their two children—starting with Brunschwig et Fil’s Beauport Promenade in Garden wallcovering. Based on a wallpaper that hangs in the historic Strawberry Hill Room of the Sleeper-McCann House in Gloucester, MA, the print features an exotic parade of Asian elephants, royalty and their attendants and is a reintroduction of a design Brunschwig first introduced in 1985.

The collection’s worldly influences, Rollins says, laid the groundwork for spaces that will inspire Johnny and Archer to “curiously daydream” as they “pore over the textile patterns and imagine what stories they tell,” she says. “I’m a firm believer that spaces should reveal their treasures more and more the more time you spend in them, and that children should be exposed to beautiful things but learn to live with them. If you wait until the kids are older to decorate or use the good stuff, how will they ever learn to behave in those spaces or to appreciate and value them?”

The patterns also have a surprisingly practical side: “As a mother, I can tell you that solid-colored clothing is not your friend. Behind patterns can hide a whole world of mishaps, mistakes, falls and spills,” says Rollins.

Get the look:

Fabric “Cascade” by Brunschwig & Fils

Fabric “Beauport Promenade” by Brunschwig & Fils

Brunschwig & Fils Beaumois fabrics

Steele Marcoux is editor-in-chief at VERANDA and covers design trends, architecture and travel for the brand.