This North Haven, N.H., home contained a $6,000 shower curtain and $15,000 umbrella stand when Dennis Kozlowski, the jailed ex-CEO of Tyco, lived in it. In Nov. 2010, the property sold at auction for $4.1M.

In light of North Carolina decorator Bryan Huffman taking the stand in the John Edwards trial—Huffman quietly funneled money from Rachel "Bunny" Mellon to Edwards' failed 2008 presidential bid by passing along $200,000 checks marked with the word “bookcase”—this week the Times looks at just how shady certain elements of the decorating business have become. Sometimes it's the case of not knowing where the money comes from; as a Manhattan decorator says, "We had the sweetest family, and we looked them up and they own South African diamond mines. Ten percent of the time the money comes with a question mark." Other times it's using corporate funds for, say, $6,000 shower curtains or $15,000 umbrella stands, as Dennis Kozlowski, the jailed ex-CEO of Tyco, did for his 10,000-square-foot home in North Hampton, N.H. Occasionally it's being unknowingly wooed by cocaine bigwigs and ending up being convicted of money laundering, as was the case with San Francisco decorators Antony Alexander Blarek and Frank V. Pellechia, who "were paid in cash delivered in Gucci bags" for their work for José Santacruz Londoño, a California druglord. But let's face it: often it's just the simple case of asking a decorator to commit insurance fraud or perhaps calling the sex room the "wine cellar." The best lines from the Times piece:

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Welcome to Why This Works, a new Curbed column in which decorator and former shelter-magazine editor Alexa Stevenson looks point-blank at professionally decorated rooms and breaks down the elements that make it work. Have a suggestion for someone whose work should be showcased? Do let us know.

Photo by Alexander Johnson

What to do with a giant room that's been sitting empty for a decade? Virgina Toledo and Jessica Geller, partners in the Manhattan-based firm id 810—whose modern Queens, N.Y., bachelor pad was recently featured on Curbed—took advantage of the double-height ceilings in this New Jersey living room and created various zones throughout the space. "The clients are a family-oriented couple—whenever we had design meetings, the kids would sit in—so it definitely needed to be family space," the decorators explain. "Yet they often host big parties so it also had to accommodate an adult-only crowd. We had to make it a space for entertaining as well as a place to read, watch TV, and play games." Below, see the room point-by-point.

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