Sister Parish

Interior decorator, born in Morristown, New Jersey, USA. When the stock-market crash (1929) brought an end to her early life of privilege, she began her own decorating firm (1933), creating an unpretentious aura of upper-class comfort for wealthy clients. For her 1962 commission to redecorate the White House for the Kennedy's she brought in Albert Hadley as a partner.

Sister Parish (born Dorothy May Kinnicutt, 1910-1994) was an American interior decorator and socialite.

A stately and occasionally eccentric white-haired lady with an aquiline profile that reminded some observers of Gilbert Stuart's fabled portrait of George Washington, Parish was the design partner of Albert Hadley, a Tennessee-born decorator, with whom she co-founded Parish-Hadley Associates (1962-1999).

As the only daughter in a five-child family, Parish acquired the nickname "Sister," which lead to her being mistaken in the press as a nun with a talent for arranging furniture. Married in 1930 to Henry Parish II, an investment banker with whom she had three children, Parish opened her firm in suburban New Jersey in 1933 as part of a plan to help the family finances during the Depression.

In addition to the White House, Parish's clients included the philanthropist Jane Engelhard and the socialite and art collector Betsey Whitney.

One of Parish's cousins was another influential 20th-century interior decorator, Dorothy Draper.