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Drawn by the people and beauty of New England and its neighbors, Ms.Parker traded her California business to focus on designing for a more traditional, eastern clientele, although many of her west coast clients hailed from the east, so she wasn't a stranger to the style and mind-set. Never losing her flair for the contemporary, personalized tastes of the creative community, Gloria first designed Pulitzer Prize winner, Frank McCourt’s upper west side co-op – a tasty blend of comfort and warmth emerged. While doing business in southern California, exclusive Montana Avenue in Santa Monica was the first and second home of Ms. Parker’s interior design and custom furnishings center, The Painted lady. The earthquake of 1994 destroyed the first store. The second opened in a new, larger location just west of 17th Street. Ms.
Parker's interior design sense took her all over the United States,
from New York to North Carolina, but it was the elegant homes of Beverly
Hills, Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Westwood, Pasadena and Santa Monica
that were most often graced by her unique and traditional furnishings
and design. Her custom window treatments frame some of the most sublime and breathtaking views in America. Her store was a favorite destination of business professionals, film, television and sports figures, interior designers and a loyal host of tasteful customers. Celebrity clients included: Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, Martin Short, Meg Ryan, Pierce Brosnan, Dennis Quaid, Christine Lahti, Mitch Kupchak, Maria Shriver, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ali McGraw, Sam Raimi, Robert Zemeckis and Barbra Streissand, to name, as they say, a few. Gloria settled in the fashionable northwest corner of Litchfield county, Connecticut. She restored an early, 19th century, Greek Revival center-hall Colonial home (featured in the October, 2005 edition of Cottage Living magazine), and later built a new barn-style home on the banks of the Housatonic river in Falls Village. |
