“More is more, less is a bore.” Nobody distills an aesthetic point of view down to a six-word credo like designer and lifestyle guru Danielle Rollins. This particular decorating doctrine is how Rollins describes her approach to designing the Palm Beach home of lifestyle and interiors photographer Nick Mele, his wife Molly, and their two sons, Johnny (9) and Archer (6).

A self-professed Brunschwig et Fils devotee, the designer leaned heavily on the textile house’s latest collection, La Menagerie, to outfit the Mele house in a wild mix of elaborate and whimsical patterns suitable for both their lifestyle and their unique aesthetic.

Nick and Molly “live a real life…in a non-pretentious way,” says Rollins, who has known Nick’s family (he is the grandson of Marion “Oatsie” Charles, a longtime fixture on the Washington, D.C. and Newport social scenes) since she was in college. “There is a 100% chance books will be read on sofas, card games will be played laying on the floor, pizza will be served on the Chinese export porcelain, tents will be made out of tablecloths and a lemur will show up for cocktails.”

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

Mele has made a name for himself with his highly stylized approached to interiors and lifestyle photography, often playing with traditional imagery of East Coast domestic leisure by infusing them with irreverent conceits that border on absurd. It’s as if he is gently (or not so?) satirizing the world from which he descends with Slim Aarons-like eye for composition and access to society and a Wes Anderson-esque sensibility and sense of humor.

It’s not often that a designer will rely so heavily on a single collection of fabrics and wallpapers to design a home, but Rollins insists these fabrics work particularly well together thanks to their coordination of pattern and scale and consistent intensity of color. To wit, the collection, largely based on archival designs in new colorations including several iconic reintroductions of patterns from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, is an emphatic statement that the brand believes maximalism not cooling off any time soon.

For his part, Mele confirms he is a maximalist at heart. “I can’t stand a white wall. I love pattern on pattern and bold color choices. I like chinoiserie, chintz and needlepoint pillows with pithy sayings on them. I come from a family full of Southern charm and Yankee thrift, and I appreciate homes with history and décor with a story. To me, the genius is in the details,” he says.

Given his appreciation for maximalist design as well as his distinctly playful approach to life, Mele found Brunschwig’s La Menagerie collection a perfect foundation for his own home.

The textiles “feel both traditional and fresh at the same time. I also love how playful they are. There is a whimsy that fits our general aesthetic very well,” says Nick. “On top of that, layering them all together lets us hide all our many imperfections.”

In a certain way, the layering of pattern and color is a manifestation of the Mele family personality. “I love it when a home is an extension of its owners and their personality bleeds through the design. I try to give my photographs a very distinctive style and feeling,” Mele says. “If you don’t stand out, you’ll blend in. I wanted our house to stand out. I wanted it to be both memorable and markedly us and I think we succeeded.”

Read on for more details on how Rollins brought to life the mantra of “more is more, less is a bore” inside the Mele home.

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Kitchen

The kitchen’s crisp apple green palette was inspired by , a classic Brunschwig & Fils pattern the textile house has reintroduced with the La Menagerie collection in seven new colorways with colored grounds and neutral stylized spots (the reverse of its original incarnation, which launched in 1965).

Rollins clad the kitchen walls in the pattern, whose throwback references updated in a vibrant shade are a perfect fit for the Meles’ aesthetic and lifestyle. Les Touches is “the ultimate classic and the perfect scale to mix into just about any and every scheme. It’s a neutral with out being a nothing,” says Rollins.

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