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Volume I - Casa Fiorentina
This year "Mark's" fifteen years of our firm. To celebrate, throughout 2026 we will be revisiting fifteen favorite Mark D. Sikes Interiors rooms from the past fifteen years, sharing the places, people, and ideas that inspired them. Each space tells a story, not just of design, but of what continues to shape the way we work today.
We begin the series with Casa Fiorentina, a room that represents the very heart of my design philosophy. For the 2020 Kips Bay Decorator Show House in Dallas, we created this room inspired by La Fiorentina on Cap Ferrat. For me, La Fiorentina has always been the ideal. Set directly on the water in the South of France, the house embodies a kind of casual elegance that feels endlessly relevant. It has the ease of indoor-outdoor living, the lightness of California paired with European grandeur, and a sense of life well lived.
At one point La Fiorentina was owned by one of the twentieth century's great tastemakers, Rory Cameron and his mother. Later on, advertising executive Mary Wells Lawrence acquired the home and enlisted Billy Baldwin to decorate the main house. Baldwin’s hand brought clarity, comfort, and confidence to the interiors, proving that elegance need not be precious. His work there has remained one of my greatest sources of inspiration, and it felt only fitting to honor that legacy in our own way. Not only does La Fiorentina have a rich history, its guest house, Le Clos Fiorentina, was the summer home of Hubert de Givenchy, who remains one of my greatest style heroes.
For Casa Fiorentina, we were inspired by the iconic silhouettes of Billy Baldwin Studio, a direct nod to the history of the house, and Iksel, whose custom Iznik wallpaper became the soul of the room. The wallpaper sets the stage, allowing the architecture, furnishings and antiques to quietly shine. Every piece of furniture in the space was upholstered in a single sky-blue fabric, a deliberate decision meant to create cohesion.
Casa Fiorentina sets the tone for what this anniversary year represents. A reflection on what we have accomplished, what continues to inspire us, and why certain rooms stay with us long after they are finished.
Over the coming months, we will share fourteen more rooms and the stories behind them. Each one a chapter in the larger story of our firm, and a reminder that the most enduring design always begins with inspiration.
