a home of her own; Little did Plum Sykes know that after she got married her biggest challenge would be to wed her feminine 1930s-inspired style with her husband's more masculine aesthetic.(Column)

Byline: Plum Sykes

Getting married, writing a novel, and decorating a new apartment all in the space of a year is quite something. Inevitably, the three "projects" merged into one another. My new novel is centered on the "Debutante Divorcees"-New York's young, decadent, newly unwed girls. The book also concerns the life of a newlywed, Sylvie Mortimer. While navigating a particular Manhattan universe of Professional Friends, Husband Huntresses, and Socialite Babies, Sylvie is also decorating the apartment she has just moved into with her new husband. Meanwhile, her newly single friend, Lauren Blount, the most decadent and glamorous of the Debutante Divorcees, lives in a splendor worthy of a modern-day Marie Antoinette (as she occasionally refers to herself).

While my heroine doesn't have to worry-anymore-about a man's opinion and can decorate her town house with all the antique pink satin she desires, I, of course, had a decorating problem to overcome: a new husband. It's one thing decorating your first few apartments alone, quite another trying to marry male and female tastes in the same space. My taste is, undeniably, insanely feminine and 1930s-inspired. Toby's is ultramasculine: If his house could be decorated like White's Club in London, that would suit him perfectly.

After we bought the new apartment, Toby's first stipulation concerned the pastel-pink sofa in my old apartment: It had to go. "But darling, it's so flattering sitting on a pink sofa. It makes your skin look amazing," I implored. I was crazily attached to the pink sofa. No, he insisted, it was far too camp. I relented: I would find pale-blue fabric for it and have it recovered. When I showed him the wallpaper I wanted for the dining room, he looked confused: Why would I want lily of the valley falling down the walls, he would ask, and I would respond by spending hours justifying the use of wallpaper in decorating. Did it have to be so . . . flowery? he wondered, looking alarmed. In the end I realized that the only way to get him to agree to what I wanted to do was to sweetly pretend that I was going to do exactly what Toby suggested, and then just do what I wanted anyway. Otherwise nothing would ever have gotten done.

Husbands think they know a lot about decorating. But I have come to the conclusion that their opinions are unsound. Straight men are not wired in the art of prettification (thank goodness). When I met my husband he was living in a cavernous white bachelor pad whose main features included a sauna, steam room, state-of-the-art coffee machine, and football pitch-size terrace. There was almost no furniture, and I don't think the kitchen had ever been used. Whenever he disagreed with my decorating decisions, I'd remind him that someone who'd been living in a blank canvas didn't really know how to create a home. Having said that, husbands are extremely useful sounding boards when it comes to technical difficulties: They have helpful opinions on things like plumbing, water pressure, window casements, and flooring-all the things girls can't really be bothered with. Toby was also rather good on chairs: He picked out some incredibly chic 1950s dining chairs at Les Puces in Paris and had them shipped over to New York, and commissioned a heavenly white leather chair from Venfield in Bleecker Street, which we both love. When I said I wanted to order a few more things for the drawing room from Venfield, he insisted we not get anything else because of the expense. I nodded my head and immediately ordered a hot-pink silk taffeta half chair and a floral-covered ottoman. Toby loves them.

While the girls in my novel-sensibly-turn to interior decorators, I-insanely-declared I didn't need that kind of help. I knew exactly how I wanted my ...