[3][4] She was certainly the most famous name in the field until the 1930s, but the profession of interior decorator/designer was recognized as a promising one as early as 1900,[5] five years before she received her first official commission, the Colony Club in New York.

[6] She transformed the interiors of wealthy clients' homes from dark wood, heavily curtained palaces into light, intimate spaces featuring fresh colors and a reliance on 18th-century French furniture and accessories.

"De Wolfe simply didn't like Victorian, the high style of her sad childhood," Wilkinson wrote, "and chose to banish it from her design vocabulary.

[16] Many elements aided her in becoming such an influential figure in the emerging field — her social connections, her reputation as an actress and her success in decorating the interior of the Irving House, the residence she shared with her close friend and lover, Elisabeth "Bessie" Marbury.

[17] Preferring a brighter scheme of decorating than was fashionable in Victorian times, she helped convert interiors featuring dark, heavy draperies and overly ornate furnishings into light, soft, more feminine rooms.

The building, located at 120 Madison Avenue (near 30th Street), would become the premier women's social club on its opening two years later, much of its appeal owing to the interiors de Wolfe arranged.

Instead of the heavy, masculine overtones then pervasive in fashionable interiors, de Wolfe used light fabric for window coverings, painted walls pale colors, tiled the floors, and added wicker chairs and settees.

[4][19] Over the course of the next six years, de Wolfe designed interiors for many prestigious private homes, clubs, and businesses on both the East and West coasts.

[citation needed] That year she received her greatest commission – from coal magnate Henry Clay Frick, one of the richest men in America at the time.

[18] De Wolfe's 1926 marriage to diplomat Sir Charles Mendl, the British press attache in Paris,[20] was page-one news in the New York Times.

[15] Although his career had been of no great distinction, Mendl's knighthood was allegedly bestowed due to his retrieval of letters from a gigolo who had been blackmailing Prince George, Duke of Kent.

[22] The Times reported "the intended marriage comes as a great surprise to her friends" a veiled reference to the fact that since 1892, de Wolfe had been living with Bessie Marbury.

In a 2003 book, David Von Drehle wrote of "the willowy De Wolfe and the masculine Marbury ... cutting a wide path through Manhattan society.

[28] In 1924 de Wolfe took up an invention of her hairstylist, Monsieur Antoine (Antoni Cierplikowski), and dyed her hair blue, thus starting a new high society fad.