B (9:16)

You mentioned social media and people's strategies. And one of the things that I've been struck by in recent months has been a series of conversations with people and David Netto in our Year end predictions episode alluded to the fact that some people seem to be coming into the industry more as performers and people who can come across very effectively on social media. And I've had conversations with many very big name designers who have expressed a level of concern about what appears to be this ever increasing expectation that designers will also be performers or that they have to capture your attention in a different way beyond just their work speaking for itself. And I wonder what conversations you've had with people about that and even how you think about that whole aspect of this because it's, it is really showing up in our world in a, in a meaningful way.

C (10:21)

Absolutely. As an individual, I think we're all contending with this across not only professional practices, but just you know, as like people with hobbies and interests, you know, you know, the real deal and you know, fakery and performance. If you're interested in something and I think it's really disturbing to see certain lines become blurred because of social media. I just, I'm confident that this person is not a business of home listener. So I'm going to say this and we're gonna, we're gonna gossip for a second.

A (10:55)

Excellent.

C (10:56)

Someone just followed me on Instagram and their bio read Editor of Curated details. So I know for certain that they're not an editor, I know for certain they're not a curator, and I know for certain that they're not a designer in the way you and I would mean. Because I don't think details is the formal category that we would tend to recognize as the most important one in the design context. So is there reason to be frustrated with that? Yes, I think we, we should all be very concerned about the sort of, I almost want to say, breakdown of meaning making in language when we stop being serious about professional categories, when we stop being serious disciplines and about discipline itself, such that someone, you know, performing design or performing curation or performing anything has the more visible platform than those who are really doing the hard work of pursuing the discipline with all of its rigor and challenges. Ben Davis, the art critic, wrote an essay over the summer about this sort of slurification of mediums that I think is, is interesting. And it spoke to something that I discuss a lot in my household, which is that, you know, a brilliant art critic can feel right now that her words are not being read by as many people. I mean, that's just a fact in part because we're all so attached to video based content. And I won't name names, but you know, I've seen People in other arenas try to adapt to video in a fairly unsuccessful way. And it's sort of heartbreaking because if someone's a brilliant writer, should they have to become a video based performer? They absolutely shouldn't. I mean, I'm a writer myself and I respect writing as much as any discipline, including design. And it deserves its own arena and its own respect as a discipline. And there's so much to be gained from taking writing seriously and believing in the profundity and the demands of the written word. You know, not as a form of snobbery, but as a form of meaning making and exploration and communication. And there's a very, very rich opportunity for people who are deep thinkers, who are critical thinkers, who are dedicated to their discipline, including in design, but who are also successful performers, I guess, in, you know, audio visual contexts. You are one of those people, Mr. Scully. And I would say that for those who want to pursue success in a wide arena or who seek to have a large audience, that's just going to become one of the aspects of a successful skill set that has to be either an inborn talent or something you train towards. I don't think that's a tragedy. I think it's just another thing that we're having to adapt to. But my concern is how can we face that reality, be good on video, speak cogently on the podcast, but make sure we do so in a way that has a lot of integrity and that keeps our discipline and our seriousness intact so we don't just disintegrate into nothing. That is the question of our age. And so I have to believe that there will be rewards for those who bring integrity to this hyper visual realm. And I think that for those who are, you know, considering themselves younger, we'll, we'll let people self identify in, in their age brackets. But for those who are really concerned with cultivating their career well into the future, it probably is important to think about how to communicate through what we used to call new media, but it's now just media. I'll add one final note, and I say this as someone who comes from, you know, a background of rural poverty in Alabama. There are other barriers to entry in the design conversation, including class. This has been an industry with a lot of snobbery and, you know, a lot of demands in terms of people's self presentation, for example, for a long time there are always artificial parameters that condition who gets to be a designer, who gets to be a successful designer in their period. And so I just want to acknowledge that while this focus on video in particular represents a new set of conditions that designers have to navigate. There have always been conditions and I think David would be the first person to acknowledge that because he's iconoclastic. And I often think about this because there are a lot of rooms that I've been in that I would not have been able to access a few decades ago. And I think it's just something to consider. There are trade offs as we advance into the future and there are negatives and there are positives to having a sort of, let's call it a more open field because unfortunately, in this case, you know, that's the problem. Right. People are getting to call themselves designers who really aren't. There's a sort of openness in our society at the moment that allows for a lot of self definition and, and almost play acting. But let's hope that we can do any, everything possible to support the people who have a lot of integrity, whatever their background, whatever their talents and who take this business seriously. And I have to believe that those people will be the victors and a battle for attention.

B (17:00)

Well, and to your point, on the one hand, I don't want this to become a barrier that if you don't have the ability to sell yourself on social media effectively, that somehow you are not going to be recognized as being as talented or as gifted as somebody else. But I also. This is an industry that has remarkably low barriers in many ways. So many people can wander into this industry and suddenly become. And whether they call themselves a designer or a decorator or that whole debate, people can come into this industry and they can get a great big social media following and they can have a voice and suddenly they're on this list and that list and they're given all of the recognition and, or support that makes you think that they must almost be part of the establishment all of a sudden. And I think to your point, many.

A (17:58)

In the establishment are a little bit.

B (18:00)

Uncomfortable with one's ability to perform being the sole reason that your work is getting attention.

C (18:09)

No, it's true. And you know, when I think about factors that can stabilize this dynamic, I just continue to come back to the word integrity. I mean, if someone takes design seriously at whatever scale, whether they're making objects and they're sort of falling under the banner of what we might call collectible design or contemporary design in the decorative arts context, whether they're an interior designer or decorator, term of choice to be discussed and debated. I do think you can tell even when someone is quite new on the scene, whether they're in it for the right reasons. And I'm always interested in young and new talent. And for me, the, this sort of key parameter that I'm always looking at is, do they know why they're doing this? Are they in this because they have a vision that they want to execute and bring into our world? Are they doing this for the, their sheer love of a craft or of a discipline, you know, that's relevant? Are they doing this because there's something burning in them that they have to express? You know, when I see that and I see a practice that is sort of built around the integrity of sort of having a purpose in your practice, I'm interested in that and I want to nurture it and support it. When someone is in it for social clout or popularity or frankly, just for money, it causes my spidey senses to tingle, you know, and I think that, I think we all probably feel that way. And one of the fun things about still engaging in the antiques world is that I get to talk a lot about authenticity. Hopefully not in the cringe way that the word authentic can invite from overuse on social media, but in the truer, deeper sense of the word. And I also think that we have to cast this gimlet eye on ourselves. It's easy to lose yourself in the swirl of social media and image making. And I've, I've had very interesting conversations with people who are very critical of this low barrier to entry and social media stardom, but who will admit, like, oh my God, for five years I started chasing the lists or the audience and sort of forgot why I loved this. And then they reclaimed that sense of purpose. And I feel we all have to do that all the time now. You know, you have to really keep yourself away from the edges that will carry you away from your truer, deeper sense of why you're doing what you're doing. So there are a lot of demands being placed on us, Dennis, by the moment we're in. And once again, we return to this idea of not really being able to take anything for granted.

A (21:19)

Taking a quick break from the show to remind you about Ernesta. Designers know that proportions make all the difference. And that difference starts with Ernesta. Find a custom size rug that elevates your vision. When you join Ernesta's trade program, you'll receive dedicated one on one support, preferred pricing and unlimited samples curated for your project. To apply for membership to Ernesta's trade program or to learn more, visit ernesta.com boh and now back to the show.

B (22:00)

In coming back to the conversation about your impression of where the collective consciousness of the designers who come to the summit, who participate with the Design Leadership Network, whom you're having regular conversations with, I wonder, going into this new year, we all acknowledge 2025 was pretty challenging and a lot of different reasons. And I don't see 2026 as being all that much easier from what I can see in the early days so far, a lot of new things are being thrown at us and I'm wondering what your sense of is of how the design community is feeling and how were they collectively making resolutions for the coming year, what you think those might be?

C (22:54)

Well, I loved reading the other predictions. I think that more than predictions, they were almost all a gut check on the Zeitgeist. I do think that my sort of aggregate sense of where the conversation is within the DLN and the industry is that things are coming to a head around AI and this question of authenticity that we've been discussing throughout the conversation, we are going to see, I think a couple of years where people really have to plant their stakes on one side of an emerging divide or the other. If we just take AI sort of efficiency tools, it's self apparent that you can look at them as bringing efficiency to processes that are rooted in non IA based creative ideation or goals. So I'm a designer who loves Castang and high tech design from the 80s and I'm trying to make my mark and everything I do is really synthetic and original and my practice is still quite new or I can't afford the number of junior designers I really need. So I'm going to use, you know, AI on the back end to speed up routine processes, to eliminate admin work and maybe to create renderings based on really, really strong human produced inputs. You know, like that's one side of the equation and I think there are a thousand shades of nuance on it. It's the side that I think most of us would say we're on, where we're using AI instrumentally as a tool for supporting human based creativity. Right. That's one arena I do think, in the realm of these editors of Curated Details and their ilk, which include self professed interior designers and even quote, residential designers, you know, sort of quasi architects, et cetera, will also see more and more and more slop, you know, to use the sort of word of the year. And I think that there could be rewards for those people, monetary rewards, not existential ones. In approaching work through a very Successful uptake of AI to generate much, much more in terms of output or to garner a much larger audience because of the way they successfully manipulate AI to create a practice that looks larger than it is or whatever. So I do think that we have to really think carefully about which side of that divide do I fall on, what are my priorities, what are my standards in my discipline as a creative. And, you know, if the answer is that the starting point has to be human creativity, that's going to, to define your practice and answer a lot of smaller questions that are going to be asked along the way as this technology becomes truly ubiquitous. And I think we're going to see, you know, a sort of even greater divide in terms of how people live out and express a creative practice. I think that we're going to continue to see that, you know, as a primary conversation in the creative professions. And I think that there is a growing element of exhaustion within authenticity. And I think you guys have seen that in some of your interviews, and I think that came through in some of the other predictions. You know, as a millennial, I survived the period of perfectionism that Instagram engendered where we all had to be poreless and perfectly posed in front of the perfect sunset. And that was hellish. I mean, that was a really, really bad direction for society. And I think we're still living out the impact of that in terms of, you know, body image, mental health among young people that demand to be picture perfect. It was really dangerous for society. But despite the continued sort of focus on image based social media, there has been this countervailent force among young people to be more authentic. And, and I think there's a real pushback against leading an imagistic life that's sort of unmoored from deeper analog and an existential priorities. So, you know, I'm, I'm seeing that continue and it makes me hopeful that we won't just be carried along by the technology, but that we have some agency, albeit in aggregate, you know, as an industry, as society, to put down the anchor from time to time and to say, like, hold on, AI is very useful, but I actually don't enjoy reading AI produced prose. You know, you can feel the absence of human texture and nuance in it. So, you know, we're promising on this platform, there's no AI produced writing. You know, I mean, that's something an organization could actually state. I love thinking about the ways that we can kind of define reality for ourselves, define priority for ourselves as a, as individuals, as an industry. As a society in the face of, you know, seemingly insurmountable new influences that, you know, we may not, like I say no push back. And I think young people are a great example of that and I love looking to them for, for inspiration.

B (29:15)

Well, so staying with, talking about you and how you're thinking about living your own life, you shared recently on social media that you made a very conscious decision to, and I'm just going to quote you, to live in the open. You described it and you talked about the fact that it was the, it was the hardest year that you could remember. I don't know if that was related to your choice to live in the open. Maybe you can tell me a little bit about what living in the open means and what you've been conscious of trying to do and change in yourself. You seem to have gone through a bit of a transformation yourself in terms of how you appear in the world. I assume that this is part of this, but you tell me, yeah, you.

C (30:09)

Know, I'll start with the antiques world, not the design industry, because I think in general we're. The design industry is a little bit more open and rambunctious in terms of the ways you can live in it. And again, I think about some of your conversations over the past year, you know, with Corey, Damon Jenkins and others about living authentically in the design industry. There's, there's certainly I'd say this field is better at it than others, but I come from a professional background where when I started in the antiques world, working in fairs, you had to wear a three piece suit every day. And I never had a strong Southern accent, so I didn't have to sort of beat it out of myself. But I certainly would have if I had been from the previous generation in the South. Like as a millennial. I grew up on Merchant Ivory DVDs, you know, so like somehow the, the accent worked itself out. But, you know, I knew Southerners in, when I was working in London from America, who said, you know, they're ridiculed when their accent came out in a fine and decorative arts context. And in New York there are similar dynamics and there's a lot of classism that we still contend with today. So one of the pleasures of working in the design industry has been showing up as authentically as myself as I can and feeling that, you know, if I want to wear a suit, I can. If I don't, that's okay too. So that's sort of the baseline in this, in this arena. But it hasn't been in all of the arenas I've worked in and that I show up in. And one of the. One of the dynamics in the antiques world that I really began to understand more deeply over the past year is that, as we all know, there's a discussion about a declining audience for. For antiques, for historic art, et cetera. A big part of my career has been saying, no, no, no, millennials, and now Gen Z are interested. There are some strong barriers to entry, but when they matriculate into their buying power, they'll become collectors. But I realized the way I talk about these things with my friends over cocktails was different from the way I talked about antiques when I was in a formal interview context or a broadcast moment at the winter show or a panel discussion. I brought formality and maybe even a slightly intimidating level of rigor to that discussion because I was used to fashioning myself to the standard of my bosses and the sort of leaders in that field when I started, you know, and so I was really buttoned up, and that was a good thing. You know, it allowed me to climb through the ranks of those fairs that I worked at. It allowed me to be respected in rooms where I was the youngest person. But I realized, wow, I'm advocating for more openness in this arena. I'm advocating for younger people to enter it. But the way I talk about it, the way I show up, the level of formality I bring to the conversation can in itself be intimidating. And I'm not so worried about, you know, judgments, but I am concerned with lowering the barrier to entry in that arena. And so when I appeared on the Middlebrow podcast, I made a very conscious effort to speak in the same way I would speak over cocktails with my friends. And Dan Rosen is a friend, so I was able to just, you know, chat with him in, you know, an informal register as a millennial who loves these things but also uses slang. And so for me in that arena, this has been a year of really focusing on presenting myself in a way that allows me to be a better advocate for antiques and historic art. That can be difficult, though, because the most successful boardroom performance I can mount, it has a lot of formality and rigor in it. You know, so the part of my professional performance that allows me to be a younger person in a room who is still respected despite my younger age, I have to let go of some of that stuff in order to communicate successfully with this younger audience that I'm pursuing in the discussion about antiques. So it can be complicated. You know, I'm Very interested, though, in trying to bring all of my contexts and the way I show up in them into alignment. And so that means that someone I know from the TAF Maastricht context might be really surprised by the way I sound on a podcast interview this year. But my goal is to, you know, as I develop my practice as a professional communicator, to make sure that no, no matter where I show up, people are hearing the same voice, representing the same integrity, no matter the topic. I do think this relates in a very important way to the dln, because first of all, the focus right now, I think, in our industry should really be on the amount of discipline, integrity, seriousness, creativity we bring to our work, not on trying to look more professional or trying to emulate other disciplines. You know, the design world is not the business world. There's an important component of business in it. But our strongest differentiator is in some ways our lack of businesslike thinking around creativity. And the amazing creative contributions that designers bring to the table are, as you know, so well, not value engineered at the beginning. And maybe they get value engineered, but if that happens too soon, it kills the creativity. So, you know, I'm just much more interested in all of us showing up with a great deal of honesty and integrity. You know, you had this conversation with David Netto about how there are people on social media who have an inauthentic self representation. I mean, there's an easier way of being in media or in organizations where you just kind of ignore those people. You know, you just, you, you take the advertiser dollars, you acknowledge that they're out there. You, you don't make distinctions about these different types of practices we've been discussing, and you just sort of, you know, have a cocktail party attitude towards it all. But insisting that there is such a thing as a standard, insisting that people try to bring their most authentic selves into the room can, yeah, it can sometimes just be a little challenging. It can create a little frisson of like, oh, wow, you know, they're, they're really saying that. And I've, you know, for example, I've talked a lot this year about snobbery in the design world. And as someone who comes from a very working class background, I don't think that I had done that in the past. I think I had been afraid to raise the topic of class. And, you know, sometimes in a meeting, someone will cite the fact that, you know, their parents exposed them to something or that they had an early childhood experience, as if that validates their position or perspective today. And I think in. In those moments, I think, well, you know, what really matters is what you're doing now. Are you doing the hard, hard work today to pursue your discipline at the highest level of rigor? You know, I don't really care what you did in 1972 with your mom. I care about how you are impacting the world today. So I don't know. I've just tried to be very focused on that. And for me, that's pretty consistent with the way that I've navigated my professional life in the past. But I think we're all always changing, right? And so one of the sort of, you know, evolutions in my personal life is just deciding I am going to come on Dennis Scully's podcast and really speak as myself, not in an institutional voice, not according to talking points. I'm not going to wear something to try to intimidate you or impress you. You're just. You're seeing me right now. And that is something I think a lot of your listeners can relate to. It's just exhausting to live any other way. But I think that to tie this to the larger conversation, the demand to be as authentic as humanly possible, whether it makes things easier or harder, still feels like the most important thing to pursue right now, you know, as an individual. And I do think this is because the dangers of being swept away by social media and sort of AI are greater than they have been in the past. And, you know, we've got to plant our stake as humans, as fallible humans who are all just doing the best we can.

B (40:05)

It's so true. As we wrap up, Michael, did we deliver on the premise of resolutions and what we're thinking about in the year ahead? Do you have any personal resolutions yourself?

C (40:19)

Do you.

B (40:20)

Do you make such things for yourself?

C (40:22)

Do you think about that? I do have some concrete resolutions. Always on the go. I mean, Dennis, just getting to the gym is the lifelong resolution that we'll all, like, live and die by, literally. And it continues to be a daily challenge. But in terms of this New Year's Eve, what was I thinking about? It really was about trying to continue navigating the most authentic course through my leadership practice at the dln, as a family member, as a husband, as a sibling. And I think that doesn't have to mean anything very dramatic. It means remembering that life is short, that we only have so much time to make an impact on other people and on our world and to just try to be as honest and forthright and focused on making a positive impact every minute as we can. I think that if any of us leads from that place instead of from conformity or trend chasing, we are likely to meet more success for ourselves personally. But also I think we'll create more successful projects, conversations, businesses. And I love thinking about the design industry as one that gives a monetary reward to creativity. You know, I mean, because there's so many creative contexts where there really isn't a financial incentive to producing art or design. But we're in a part of the design world where there is a pretty virtuous cycle. People make beautiful, interesting things with a lot of integrity and they can build a business out of that and build a sustainable practice. That is an amazing opportunity and I love to see like leadership get expressed through that. A designer helping a client to live more like they want to live versus how their neighbors live. That's an amazing contribution. And in the DLN context, if I'm being authentic and honest, I think it often empowers a conversation with a designer who wants to live and practice in the same way so that they understand, you know, the DLN is not about coaching you to get to some model that we say is ideal. That's a form of coaching or education that I think we don't really align with. It's about what is your dream practice and how can we and how can this community help you get there?

B (43:12)

Michael, we've covered so much ground here. I really appreciate it. I'm thrilled to get to spend time with you and I thank you for making the time.

C (43:20)

You too, Dennis. Thank you for always facilitating interesting conversations and for having me on. It is a true pleasure and an honor.

A (43:31)

Thanks for listening. If you'd like to keep up with the latest design industry news, visit us online@businessofhome.com where you can sign up for our newsletter, browse job listings and join our BoH Insider community for access to online workshops, a free print subscription and much more. If you have a note from for the podcast, drop us a line@podcastisinessofhome.com if you're enjoying these conversations, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps others to discover the show. This show was produced by Fred Nicholas and edited by Michael Castaneda. I'm Dennis Scully. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next week.