Donald Trump has wasted no time in redecorating the White House, says Craig Brown in Air Mail, adopting the “flashy, gold, porn-baron, casino” style pioneered by “Liberace, Imelda Marcos and King Midas”. The Oval Office is now stuffed with military flags and baroque mirrors in gold frames. The coffee table bears a large golden paperweight embossed with Trump’s name; his marker pens are decorated with his “crazily jagged signature” in gold; above the fireplace is a gold statue of a basket held up by the Three Graces. None of this comes as a surprise. Trump’s Manhattan penthouse has a gold-and-diamond front door. Inside, gold-rimmed chairs carry gold-rimmed cushions embroidered with the Trump coat of arms. “Gold lamps, vases and cherubs abound.”

Trump shares his taste for “over-the-top interior décor” with some other prominent leaders, notably Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin and Nicolae Ceauşescu. In his book Dictators’ Homes, style guru Peter York identifies “fancy, faux, French gold-work” – what Nicky Haslam calls “Louis-the-hotel” – as the most glaringly obvious common theme. “Gold taps are everywhere,” he writes, noting that Saddam’s 65 palaces had a “disproportionate number of basins”. Trump is also a fan of that other dictator-favourite: the “tennis court-sized table”, à la Vladimir Putin. The marble dining table at Mar-a-Lago is 29ft long. And vast chandeliers hang from all Trump ceilings. As PJ O’Rourke observed: “Saddam’s chandelier was the size of a two-car garage. If a reason to invade Iraq was wanted, felony interior decorating would have done.”

👦⚱️York believes brash leaders like Trump got their taste in interior decoration – the “Ferrero Rocher look” – from glitzy hotels, having spent a lot of time waiting in lobbies to schmooze potential backers. “For ambitious lads… the local grand hotel was always the good-life template.”

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