If anyone knows how to make a mood board, it's Bridgerton decorator Gina Cromwell. This Emmy Award-winning designer has been making these for more than 30 years and uses the results to create stunning sets, a new set of which appeared last week with the launch of the show's second season. Whether it was Lady Danbury's ornate home, Daphne Bridgerton's bedroom, or the show's elegant ballrooms, each decor piece began with a mood board that captured the essence of the narrative.
While many designers today prefer the neat and limitless interface of digital tools like Pinterest to build a mood board, Cromwell sticks to the good old cut-and-paste method. "It's basically no-tech," she says, adding that she loves clipping and saving images of furniture, fabrics, and textures while researching. "It's an old-fashioned way of doing things, cutting things. It's the job of starting to paint a picture, a sketch of a room”.
She shares with Vanity Fair her tips and tricks for creating the ultimate mood board - a board that will light the way to a dazzling interior that's anything but copy-and-paste.
Look for ideas in unconventional places.Ms. Cromwell used old books and anthologies as inspiration for her Bridgerton mood boards, including old and out-of-print volumes she found online. One of the key books for the collage cutouts was Regency Furniture and Interiors; another was Dior And His Decorators. Ms Cromwell also tapped into her massive World Of Interiors archive, which dates back to the 1980s.
“This magazine has been a great source of reference for us, as it has some great photos of weird things you don't really see online,” says Cromwell. In a mood board, she placed images of handmade malachite pots from a number, eventually channeling the inspiration into the decor for the second season ball.
"It's something we're very proud of," she says. "It's all part of the process and contributes to the overall look of the decor."
