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Business of Home Podcast
The Thursday Show: Pinterest's 'AI slop' problem. Plus: Trump's tariffs return
00:41:03
Host Dennis Scully and BOH executive editor Fred Nicolaus discuss the biggest news in the design world.
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- [00:08]
Dennis Scully
This is Business of Home. I'm Dennis Scully and welcome to the Thursday Show. Today we'll be talking about the latest news in the design industry, including Trump's new tariffs, Charles Cohen's ongoing legal saga, and Pinterest's battle with AI Spam. To do all that, I'm joined by Business of Homes executive editor Fred Nicholas. Hi, Fred.
- [00:29]
Fred Nicholas
Hi, Dennis. How's it going?
- [00:30]
Dennis Scully
Couldn't be better. How are you?
- [00:31]
Fred Nicholas
I'm doing good. I'm doing much better now that we have our producer Caroline Burke back from K biz.
- [00:38]
Dennis Scully
Thank goodness we didn't lose her to.
- [00:39]
Fred Nicholas
The glamour and glitz of K biz and the Vegas strip. So all is, all is right in the world. I understand last night you came in last minute as an emergency stand in for Alexa Hampton. Those are big, big, high heeled shoes to fill. Tell us about that.
- [00:55]
Dennis Scully
Exactly. Big, big Louboutins to fill and not easy. So fun to get the call the night before the event saying, hey, could you, could you step in and emcee the gala for the New York School of Interior Design? Exactly.
- [01:09]
Fred Nicholas
This is the New York School of Interior Design's big annual gala. This is Oscar night is what this is. And Conan O'Brien canceled and they called Dennis Gulley to get up on stage. How'd it go? Was it a fun night?
- [01:21]
Dennis Scully
You know, it was a great night. We had a lot of fun. It was actually a record breaking fundraising night. We raised over $700,000 for scholarships at the New York School Interior Design. We honored Alessandro Branca and the carriers and Beth Diana Smith. And it was really, it was a really wonderful night. And I don't know if people could tell the difference between me and Alexa Hampton, frankly. I mean, I think I might have pulled it off.
- [01:47]
Fred Nicholas
Two titans of the industry as far as I'm concerned. Before we get down to business, I wanted to quickly shout out our editor in chief Caitlin Peterson's new podcast. It's called Ask Us Anything. It's a new series that she's debuting on her trade tales show. So if you want to check it out, get on over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's a really fun concept for a show. So Caitlin talks to working designers about what they're going through in their own businesses in normal trade sales episodes. But on Ask Us Anything, she takes a secret anonymous question from a designer about a real problem they're really having in their business and then workshops it with a past guest. You kind of get the fun, real talk. You get expertise from another designer. It's a fun conversation and the first episode just went up, so check it out. Speaking of podcasts, let's look back on Monday's episode. An interview with beloved LA furniture company, Lawson Fenning. Long time in the making. Dennis, what'd you make of this one?
- [02:42]
Dennis Scully
Long time in the making. And one of these brands that so many designers mentioned to me with admiration and so I was excited to talk to them. They have managed to create this remarkable California based supply chain with various workrooms that make their things and they've really stayed very true to their California aesthetic and have just come to New York after a lot of designers have begged and pleaded saying, please, we want to sit in your sofas in New York. And now they're finally able to.
- [03:20]
Fred Nicholas
Yeah, it was a great conversation. I loved how they talked about copycats and dupes, a subject that we love to get into here. Their strategy was like, we're getting duped a lot by hospitality designers. So we are going to sell to hospitality designers. We're going to go to BDNY this year and we're going to find a way to work with the people who are knocking us off, which I thought was a very forward thinking, open minded approach to it.
- [03:41]
Dennis Scully
I agree. I loved that. I loved that that was their reason for going to bdny. It wasn't. Oh, we were thinking about getting more into hospitality. It's like, no, those are the people that have been knocking us off the most. So we thought we'd introduce ourselves to them.
- [03:56]
Fred Nicholas
You may be familiar with us.
- [03:58]
Dennis Scully
Brilliant. Exactly. Good, good strategy. Show up, introduce yourself. And I, I hope it works out for them. That was, that was a crowded show, so I'm sure they got to meet a lot of people. I, I'm glad to have them in New York and it seems like a lot of designers are as well. Okay, we're going to get into the news, but first a quick break. This podcast is sponsored by Jaipor Living. Since 1978, Jaipor Living's mission has been to revolutionize the rug making industry by transforming traditional weaving into a lifeline for women artisans. Each handmade rug is a love story from one of over 40,000 artisans weaving rugs at Jaipur. Living is not just a craft, it's a lifeline that empowers artisans to unleash their creativity, enabling them to achieve dignity, independence and a purposeful life. Experience this Soulful art@jpor living.com Jaipor Living Honoring the makers, transforming lives. And we're back. First up, Fred Tariffs.
- [05:13]
Fred Nicholas
Welcome back to Tariff Talk on Tuesday, the Trump administration officially rolled out 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada and an additional 10% on goods from China. Along with inviting backlash from top US Trading partners, the new taxes are already beginning to affect the home industry. Dennis, what do you think of these tariffs for as long as we have them?
- [05:35]
Dennis Scully
Well, exactly how long do we have them? What time is it exactly? Because they could be rolled back at any moment, which is I think, perhaps the most important thing to remember about these tariffs. Yes.
- [05:46]
Fred Nicholas
Yeah. I mean, a little bit of backstory here. So obviously the first incarnation of these tariffs was a month ago at the time Trump threatened them, but then sort of pulled them back at the last minute when Canada and Mexico agreed to work more on border security. But it was only delayed for a month. Now we reached a month later and he's officially rolled them out again. Now we're one day into them. They are real, they are happening. But we're recording this on Wednesday, March 5th at 1:47pm and there's already speculation in the press that these tariffs are going to get rolled back or cut in half or something like that. So we just want to be very clear that we don't know exactly what's going to happen. And this may sound a little bit silly tomorrow morning when this show airs, but it has happened and it has having an effect. I don't know. What are you seeing out there, Dennis, when you talk to people, when you look at the stock market?
- [06:35]
Dennis Scully
Well, so, I mean, the stock market reacted pretty dramatically. And interestingly, we've been seeing a lot of the stocks that we talk about on the show, RH and Wayfair. I often look at Toll Brothers, which is one of the luxury home builders, and that stock has been dropping pretty dramatically. So we've seen across the board the home industry stocks have reacted very negatively to this and really haven't bounced back, even with the speculation that these might be quickly resolved. And I think the fear is that the stock market, which acts as a discounting mechanism, or in other words, it's trying to tell you what things are likely to look like in the future. It's basically reducing the value of these companies, saying they're going to have pretty tough sledding regardless of the outcome of this.
- [07:27]
Fred Nicholas
Yeah, it's worth taking a second to explain why. There's two big buckets of reasons why these are difficult for a lot of these big companies. One is that simply we import a lot of stuff from Mexico and Canada, whether that's lumber from Canada, we make a lot of upholstery in Mexico and import it to the US if there's a 25% tax on top of those goods or products or materials coming in, then companies suddenly have to spend a lot more money and some of that cost get passed off to the consumer. That's one exp that gets added to the bucket. The other speculation is just that this makes consumers more nervous, makes them less likely to spend on discretionary goods. Of course, sofas are generally a discretionary good for most people and also potentially could raise inflation, which then will make the housing market more complicated because borrowing costs are going to go up. It's a combination of companies seeing their own cost structure increase because of tariffs and just a shaky macroeconomic environment that's sort of generally a little bit rough for business. So that's why you're seeing these stocks go down. But even on the sort of micro level, I've been talking to designers and furniture manufacturers and a lot of designers are getting notices direct from companies saying we are going to be raising prices by 15% or letting designers know, hey, we've seen this, we're monitoring it, we're not raising prices. But there's a lot of communication from brands going around right now in a way that there really wasn't a month ago.
- [08:50]
Dennis Scully
No, absolutely. I was talking with a gentleman last night, interestingly enough, who came up to me at the Nystad event, who has sold his showroom to a partner, but who knows that one of their largest lines, one of their biggest collections is from Canada. And he's quite concerned about what this means. But both in terms of what the near term price impact question might be. But also what I'm hearing from a lot of people that I talk to is just what's going to happen to the relationship itself with Canadian trading partners. Many in Canada are, are very upset about what's happening and not wanting to bring on as many American products and are worried about trading with American companies. So it has possible lasting effects that go beyond, again, just the possible inflationary impact or some of the other issues.
- [09:43]
Fred Nicholas
One perspective I want to make sure we acknowledge is, and this is something I've actually gotten some feedback from listeners about, is this idea of, well, yes, tariffs are confusing and they're destabilizing, but what about the American manufacturers that these tariffs are supposed to help? Because of course, that's part of the idea behind tariffs is that you make imports expensive. And so people are less motivated to buy from other countries. They're motivated to buy from U.S. companies or start manufacturing in the U.S. thereby balancing out trade, so to speak. There are plenty of US manufacturers of home goods to be sure. I do think there are some people out there who are happy about these tariffs. I think the problem is just that even companies who manufacture in the US often rely on importing materials from Canada and Mexico and China. Hardware, things like that is often manufactured in China. Mechanisms and things like that. I've heard through the grapevine already that some US furniture producers are seeing the cost of things like hardwood go up because of course a lot of it comes from Canada. That impacts their own cost structure, which means they may have to raise prices even though they're not importing furniture. That's part of it. The other part and probably more important thing is just simply that people are concerned that even though they're producing in the US if the tariffs destabilize the economy and make people nervous and impact consumer confidence and raise the cost of housing, that the net effect on their business will be negative. Even if they're eking out a little bit of advantage by not having a tariff on their goods. We're still not out of the post boom slump in the home world, really. That's the other reason why even US producers are not unequivocally excited about this. Now there are some people probably out there who are jazzed about these tariffs, but for the most part there's a lot of caution and just kind of a wait and see approach even from US based companies. But Dennis, what about you? What are you hearing from American producers?
- [11:34]
Dennis Scully
No, no, and I think you make a great point. Even the companies that could stand to benefit from this. So for example, we mentioned Lawson Thinning earlier. They've got a completely American supply chain, but they don't in any way see this as good news for their business because it's creat stress and anxiety. It's creating tension and it's making people just. If it ends up making them hesitant, if it confuses them about whether this is the best time. And as you were just saying, the biggest battle that we've been facing in the home world is high mortgage rates, high housing costs. And none of this helps to address any of those issues.
- [12:15]
Fred Nicholas
Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. And I think if the tariffs stick around for the long haul, there's gonna be all kinds of complicated implications that are hard to predict right now. In the more short term, a few things that designers should look out for. If you haven't seen this already, I think you're going to start to See, some vendors put a line in the contract about we can only guarantee this pricing for this amount of time or we can only guarantee this timing for this period because they're dealing with a lot of uncertainty. I've already heard a few designers reach out to me about this. There's a tariff clause or a force majeure clause. I think in general, you should take vendors pretty much at their word about it because they're dealing with a lot of uncertainty in their cost structure. They don't know what price they can really offer. You're also going to see vendors, they may have loaded up on inventory and they want to sell that at a certain price. And let designers know, hey, if you buy a bunch now, we can guarantee this pricing. Once that inventory runs out, we can't guarantee it anymore. That may be a sales tactic. It may be sincere. But if you have a need for a product that you know you're going to need to tap into in the short term, it might not be a terrible idea to buy. Now, of course, these tariffs may go away and we may be business as usual in a week. It's hard to know what to do in any given situation. I just think it's wise to keep a close eye on the contracts. Talk to your clients about it. Let them know there's going to be some unpredictability coming because it is real. This isn't just vendors trying to shuck and jive. There's a lot of uncertainty out there.
- [13:41]
Dennis Scully
No, I completely agree. And stay close to those vendors that you think might be impacted by all of this. I know that companies are trying hard to communicate, but certainly try to be understanding during this time because a lot of your vendors aren't sure what prices they should be charging in the light of all of this. So it's a challenging time for designers and suppliers both. Up next, a Charles Cohen update. After months of legal back and forth with his lender, Design center landlord, Charles Cohen is once again facing down an outstanding payment. This time, it's $187 million of his own funds.
- [14:18]
Fred Nicholas
Fred, the story just keeps going. Should we just sort of catch up to speed on what's transpired so far here?
- [14:25]
Dennis Scully
Let's remind them of the hot water that Mr. Cohen seems to be in.
- [14:30]
Fred Nicholas
Charles Cohen, billionaire, landlord. He owns the Design and Decoration Building, also known as the D and D building here in New York, the PDC in Los Angeles, and the Design center in Houston. Until recently, he owned the Dakota in Florida. Took out a big loan, $533 million in 2022 from a company called Fortress Investment Group. But the loan started to get on thin ice. A couple years in, he stopped making Fortress, sued Charles Cohen to get it back. Last year, as part of this whole legal kerfuffle, they basically won the Dakota at auction. So they're now the owners of the Dakota. But as part of the loan collateral, Cohen put up $187 million of his own money, not of buildings his company owns, but his own actual money. And now a judge has basically ruled that he is indeed liable for it. So Fortress is going to be coming for yachts. It's going to be coming for allegedly French chateaus, apparently, according to reporting in the Real Deal about, I don't know, this is another. People always assumed that Cohen would always have another billion dollars here, billion dollars there, and would keep control of the design buildings. But this is another little twist in this drama. What did you make of it?
- [15:39]
Dennis Scully
I think that it's so interesting that the perception has suddenly changed. And you and I have talked about Charles Cohen on this show many times, always with the assumption that he would figure a way out of it. And you see some of the quotes from people in the various coverage, including our own Caroline Burke's article, talked about the fact that he sounds like he's really run out of options here and that a judge really any day now could enter a judgment against him for $187 million. And yes, he is going to have to perhaps sell some personal assets. We don't know if that's going to make him finally put some of these design centers up for sale or other things that he that he could. But it's one of the reasons that when you talk to lawyers and you're in business, they say don't put a personal guarantee on anything, whatever you do. I mean, that's one of the first lessons, is don't. And I was really pretty surprised that he did. Also pretty surprised to see how little value in the end the Dakota and the Florida properties ended up getting and that he's really on the hook for this $187 million personal guarantee, which could.
- [16:48]
Fred Nicholas
Be quite serious in addition to the rest of the 533 million. I mean, there's a lot of money at stake here and it's not clear what all happens with it, but lawsuits can be slow moving and companies clawing back money that's owed to them can be slow moving. And it'll probably be a long time before we see anything happen with the design centers, if indeed anything does happen with the Design center, but the possibility that he'll need to sell them or that someone else will come in and make him an offer he can't refuse. On the D and D, the pdc, and the Houston Design center, it just feels like it gets a little more real with each passing day. I don't want to add fuel to the fire. It's not like there's any specific rumors around this. It's just that when you look at these numbers, you see how much money he owes, you see how effective Fortress has been in court, you start to wonder what else is going to get sold. And certainly these buildings are still surviving and thriving, and people are opening up new showrooms every day. But there's certainly tension here, and it'll be interesting to see what comes of it.
- [17:44]
Dennis Scully
I agree, and I think many in the industry are hoping that this might be the time that he finally does step away from the design industry in a meaningful way. But it's. It's hard to know what the outcome will be. But I think many who are tenants in these buildings feel like it's been quite some time since the service levels and the attention to the buildings has been what it used to be. So we watch with bated breath to see what the judge decides. But this time, it feels a lot more real than any of the other discussions that we've had in the past. So we are glued to this story, and we'll update people whenever we get more information. In the meantime, Pinterest has been taking some heat. Fred.
- [18:29]
Fred Nicholas
Last week, an investigation by news site Futurism found that Pinterest has been inundated with AI images. Only they're not called AI images, Dennis. They're called AI Slop.
- [18:40]
Dennis Scully
And I love it. That is my new favorite term, AI Slop. I'm here for it.
- [18:46]
Fred Nicholas
Exactly. Just load up that trough with AI Slop and let the public feast. Yeah. So I guess we should define what AI Slop is to get to kick this off. So AI Slop is just AI generated content that is sort of designed with the sole purpose of gumming up the Internet with a bunch of stuff that people can. It's not exactly a scam, but it is kind of like a hustle. What you do is you set up basically a fake site. Let's say I set up Fred's recipe blog and I fill it with AI generated recipes and AI generated images of my recipes and a little AI generated profile. It's all fake, but I'll put a real ad on it. And the more People who come to the site, the more ad money I can generate. Now, a good way to get people to come to my fake AI slop site is to go on Pinterest and put up more AI slop. Put up recipe teasers and things like that that look right and satisfy the whims of Pinterest algorithm. So people click on my AI generated image, they come to my AI generated site, it's all fake, nobody's happy. But I pocket a few cents on the dollar every time someone looks at that ad. So it's this whole weird scammy ecosystem that's kind of, kind of a depressing, depressing place to be.
- [19:56]
Dennis Scully
Someone making money, sending you to a place you don't want to go, where you're actually not going to learn about the subject matter that you said you wanted more information about. And then there are people that are creating instructional videos, which I'm afraid to say I actually watched that teach you how to create these AI spammy slop sites. And it's just the worst in human nature once again, coming out. And isn't it everything that people were afraid of with AI, that this would just go wild and these images would just take over and of course they.
- [20:34]
Fred Nicholas
Are out of control. That slop is out of control. No, I agree. And it's weird because I think, like, look like Pinterest obviously has every incentive, I think at least to get rid of this stuff, because I don't think users genuinely get anything out of it. They're sending traffic away from the site to give ad dollars to scammy people who are setting up these fake sites. So they don't like this. Ideally they'll figure out tools to get rid of AI imagery or not get rid of it, but at least market or figure out some way to deal with it. But it is a sincerely complicated problem because I think it's tough to make an algorithm that can really tell the difference. And how do you distinguish between an image that's generated with AI that is cynical and scammy versus one that someone genuinely thinks is kind of cool and creative and is uploading to Pinterest because they like it? That's a very subjective judgment that it's hard to make that call. I understand why sites like Pinterest are struggling to deal with that. Now, in terms of the impact on designers, I do think this is real. I think that Pinterest being gummed up with AI junk makes a difference for designers. I think it's two things. One of them is a little bit more Ephemeral. But I do think that, of course, as we all know, Pinterest is the Internet's mood board, and designers use it to figure out an aesthetic direction to go with clients. And if the thing you're using as your mood board to get a project started off is gummed up with a bunch of AI garbage, I think it makes it harder to find real, actually inspiring imagery. And it also makes taste, frankly, a little more generic. If clients are looking at Pinterest and trying to find stuff they like, and a lot of what they like is generated by AI, and as we all know, AI is kind of by definition, a little bit generic. I do think that has kind of like a general drag and a somewhat depressing effect on aesthetics and taste and culture. But. But in some ways, the more real impact here is simply that designers have found Pinterest to be helpful as a marketing channel. It's a place to get clients. You have an image that pops on Pinterest. People discover you that way, they hire you. I know lots of designers who have gotten work that way. And if the site is getting less and less useful and getting overrun by AI slop, then I think it's less useful for designers to find new clients. So there's just a lot of negative effects here.
- [22:41]
Dennis Scully
Well, exactly. I mean, and that's just where I was going to go. I've spoken with so many designers who this is a big lead gen channel for them, and suddenly you see all of the AI images are suddenly ranking much higher and knocking them out of contention for leads. And so it really does change the dynamic. And Pinterest is not a place that I spend a lot of time. But I'm amazed when I talk to designers how much of a tool it is for them, as you say, both for clients mood boarding and showing them things, but even more importantly, people discovering designers work. And suddenly this throws quite a wrench into that whole system. Next up, we're going to talk about the client dictionary. Fred, because in this week's feature, you asked designers to help decode what clients really mean when they use words like timeless and minimalist, often meaning something else entirely.
- [23:39]
Fred Nicholas
Yeah, this was a fun feature to work on. Kind of a pet project for me, just to rewind and kind of explain it a little bit. I am unfortunately a writer and I'm very interested in language and especially the language we use in the design media. If I had my druthers every week for Business of Home, I'd be writing about, well, why do we call it warm modernism? What does that warm mean and what does that term imply? I love kind of picking apart language in that way, but of course, for me it's just an academic, fun thing to think about. But when you get out into the industry, confusion over these terms is a real pain point for designers because their client walks into the meeting and says, I hate traditional. But then everything they pick is totally traditional. Confusion over those terms is a real thing that designers have to overcome. I thought it'd be fun to reach out to a bunch of designers and get little translations, examples of, of things from their own experience. When a client said X, they really meant Y and put together this little kind of client dictionary, as I called it, of common misconceptions that clients have about design and what they might really.
- [24:47]
Dennis Scully
Mean, which is such a needed tool. Fred. I mean, what's so fascinating is for all of these shelter publications that are out there and all the images that people can look at today, it turns out that often they don't have the correct words or understand the terminology around what all of these different images really represent. I thought the minimalist part I thought was so interesting. And you quoted Margarita Bravo, who talked about how her client minimalist, to the client, it turned out, meant serene and sophisticated and so great. Good to know. But it didn't at all mean this sparse, empty white space, which is how many people think of it. And that's so important to clarify. And to your point, there's so much out there, and we think we've been educating the consumer about how to talk about all these things, but perhaps we have.
- [25:44]
Fred Nicholas
Yeah. And I mean, I think it's just difficult because, like, you know, clients spend their whole lives looking at this stuff, but they rarely have to actually articulate these ideas into words. And when they finally interact with the designer and hire the designer designer, you get this flood of jargon that's kind of empty or connected to cliches or kind of misguided. And the designer's job is frankly, just to translate that into a working design. And sometimes it's easier than others. The minimalist thing I've heard over and over again, for sure, when a client says they want something minimalist, they do not mean minimalism. They do not want a white box. Oftentimes it's like the client is talking about. They say a look, but they really mean like a feeling like this. Brad Ramsey, a Nashville designer, said that clients will say they want a five star hotel, but they don't really want shiny sheets and super luxe details. They just want a Space that's welcoming and kind of an indulgent escape is how he put it. So there's lots of examples of that. Traditional, of course, is another one. So many designers told me, it's like when their clients say, my style isn't traditional, what they really mean is that they don't want to turn into their parents or that they don't. I'm a modern person. Just fun to sort of dig up these examples. You were telling me before we started recording that when you were working at Domino, you guys did some version of this as well, right? You did some sort of experiments around this.
- [27:04]
Dennis Scully
Well, exactly. We actually did focus groups with people to ask them. We gave them a bunch of images and tear sheets from magazines, and we asked them to put them into various piles with various terms to represent different styles and what they meant. And, of course, most of the time, they didn't have them in the proper place or the images weren't minimalist, to your point, or for all of the things we've shown people over the years, it turns out that we haven't done a good enough job in the shelter media service world of just connecting the dots with what things really mean and terms that we use. I think one of the designers in your piece talked about you wouldn't start throwing out medical jargon if your father. I think your father was a kidney.
- [27:57]
Fred Nicholas
Devin Tobin of Duet Design Group. Yeah. Yeah.
- [28:01]
Dennis Scully
So, I mean, I think it's the same sort of thing. What I thought was so funny in the piece, a friend of the show, Gail Davis, thought, well, surely everyone's on the same page about navy. If my client says they want navy, we can all agree what they. That color looks like. Well, it turns out, no, she gave her client navy. And the client, oh, I was actually thinking of a more ethereal blue. Something lighter, different. Right. And she's like, well, you said navy, so, I mean, again, you think that's a pretty universal term. Turns out even navy blue isn't the same thing to everyone.
- [28:34]
Fred Nicholas
The light blue version of navy.
- [28:36]
Dennis Scully
Exactly.
- [28:37]
Fred Nicholas
Yeah. No, it's truly funny. And what a funny experiment of Domino that must have been. The days when design media had money to spend on things like focus groups.
- [28:46]
Dennis Scully
It was great, actually, and it was really fun to hear from consumers what they thought about it. And to Domino's credit, the editorial team there really made a point of, through the course of the magazine, trying to teach people what all of these different things meant and show them lots of images alongside them. And so it was a big part of the design education. And it turns out people need that because for all of the, for all of the images that people are inundated with, including the AI slop, I don't.
- [29:18]
Fred Nicholas
Think AI slop is the answer to this problem here. To be honest, though, I think it's like even if you do educate clients left and right, I think everybody's going to have a little bit of a private vocabulary. Some of these terms are a little subjective. I think traditional is not just an empty word that means nothing, but the actual definition of what traditional design is is a little slippery. And I think that every designer over the course of a project, develops a shared vocabulary with the client that's kind of part of the bond. And I do think we in the media could do a little bit of a better job. But I think that this is always going to be a task that designers love to deal with.
- [29:54]
Dennis Scully
I think. To your point, Fred, what's so interesting about this, and it really came through in the piece, is that so often these words or these terms are a way into a better understanding about your client. And so many of these words turned out to be triggers of one kind or another. One of the designers talked about a bad wallpaper experience that they might have had early on and what Victorian meant to somebody. Somebody has some trauma around some kind of design. And so it helps designers to really get at what clients are actually trying to tell them and what they might have experienced, which is again, the therapist role that designers so often have to play. And so in a way, I think, I think the lack of clarity around some of these terms is actually an interesting way to have a dialogue with people and not assume that one person's minimalist is another person's. That comes through loud and clear.
- [30:52]
Fred Nicholas
Not assume that navy means navy.
- [30:55]
Dennis Scully
Navy in what context? What exactly do you mean by navy? Yeah, fascinating stuff. Next up, we're going to talk about off limit living rooms.
- [31:04]
Fred Nicholas
Fred For House Beautiful last week, Alyssa Shelaski spoke to homeowners, designers and brands about the return return of the adults only living room, an elevated space free from kid friendly furnishings. If only we had one of those here in my new apartment in Brooklyn. Not many apartments in Brooklyn have an adults only living room, but if you can get one, seize it. Seize the day, seize the living room. What do you think? Dennis?
- [31:27]
Dennis Scully
Well, it was so interesting to see how designers responded when I posted something on Social about this piece, how quickly the conversation turned into well, people need to step up and play a bigger parenting role and create some boundaries. And I loved the Paloma Contreras says, my daughter is three and a half years old, and I have a formal living room with a white sofa and soft colored chairs. And we make it clear that this isn't a room to play in and that there are other rooms in the house to play in. And I think that Rebecca Plumb weighed in, saying that she's also turning her living room back into more of a salon again after it, playing the role of a home office in various roles during COVID And she's trying to come to terms with the fact that the kids just can't eat spaghetti wherever they want to and that you need to create some boundaries. So it was interesting that that's where this conversation turned from. A lot of the response, I think this notion that you somehow can't let your fabrics raise your children somehow became a big theme, which I love that. Definitely taking that away from the whole conversation, but also interesting to hear people wanting these more formal rooms back. And a lot of designers wrote to me saying, yes, my clients want a room where they can entertain and make it clear that's what this nice space is for. And then there are other rooms in the house, as you say, Fred, not everyone has the luxury of having the formal rooms and the not formal rooms, but if you can. Lucky you.
- [33:11]
Fred Nicholas
Exactly. I love how we've gone from tariffs to parenting in the space of shows, the breadth of the show here. Yeah, I think this is really interesting, and I do think it's always a little bit treacherous ground to giving out parenting advice, and I'm certainly not going to do that here on the show. But what this called to mind for me is this kind of the big pendulum swing of interior design. I sort of feel like in the early part of the 20th century, there was a lot of formality and you would have a room for your silver and stuff like that. And now, over time, it's slowly swung towards casualization, especially with Gen X and Millennials. We're getting rid of the formal dining room. We're getting rid of the. We're all going to eat in a big trough and eat our AI slop out of the trough. Moving away from the. Everything is performance fabric. We have to be able to blast every surface of our homes with red wine and bleach it out. I do think there has been a lot of movement in that direction, and it's understandable. I'm a somewhat casual person at home, and I also have two young kids, and I'll try to keep them off the sofa with the white boucle but don't know how successful I'll be. So I'm in support of, I think, generally, a more casual approach to living. But it's possible we've just swung too far. We may have gone too far away and expecting everything to be so durable and casual that there is a cultural desire for a more elevated space, even if you do have young and crazy kids. I'm really interested in the subject in general. I think it's popping up in all different kinds of ways. And I'm curious to see if there are going to be more instances of things like this in the near future of people wanting something a little more delicate, a little more refined, a little more, dare I say, adult.
- [34:49]
Dennis Scully
Well, and also, and I completely agree, and I think your framing of the. Of the pendulum swing is exactly how I was thinking about it, too. And we. And we went too far in one direction. We've been talking recently about making our homes be ready to sell and neutralizing them that way. And now people revolting against that and trying to personalize spaces more. It turns out for many people, personalizing their space means, hey, I do want that more formal living room again. And listen, listen. I grew up in a household with a wildly formal living room with lots of china around that I may have damaged over the course of the years with my tennis rackets and other things. I can certainly remember clearly many things breaking. But my parents also wanted me to learn to respect the lovely room. And eventually I came to respect it very much.
- [35:44]
Fred Nicholas
After I broke it, I came to respect it.
- [35:46]
Dennis Scully
Yes, once I glued some things back together, I came to respect it enormous. But I do think that it's interesting to hear from designers that their clients are swinging back a little bit in this way and want some of those spaces that don't feel quite to your point, as casual. And also, I mean, no one should be giving out parenting advice. I couldn't agree more, Fred. But it's interesting to hear people talk about, is this an opportunity to say, hey, here's a room that's going to be a little bit different from the other rooms in the home? And it sounds like more people are at least exploring that conversation, whether through clients or the designers themselves with their own kids. And I know a lot of designers use their own homes as a selling tool for clients, so that's an important aspect of it as well.
- [36:38]
Fred Nicholas
Let's start with a formal podcasting studio and build from there.
- [36:41]
Dennis Scully
I long for that, Fred. All right, that's it for the news, but there's plenty more to check out on businessofhome.com including the launch of a new national shelter magazine and all the latest showroom openings. We'll be back in a minute, but first, a quick break. We're taking a quick break from the show to remind you about Jaipur Living. Jaipur Living's curated collection of geometric rugs brings the art of angles and timeless craftsmanship into the home. Inspired by the patterns of faraway places, from Moroccan tiles to Bauhaus lines, these artisan made rugs tell a story of style, movement and a life well traveled. Let a handcrafted geometric rug transform your space. Explore the collection@jaipurliving.com or followporliving on Instagram. And we're back. We're getting to the end of the show here, but before we go, we'd like to take a second to highlight anything going on in the industry that might have caught our eye.
- [37:50]
Fred Nicholas
Fred Material bank caught my eye this week as we talked about a few months ago. Now, they recently launched something called Design Shop, very quietly got it out in the marketplace. It's a version of Material bank, but for consumers. And just the other day, I think they unrolled something called or, you know, it's a trade program. It's essentially for Design Shop. So if you're a designer and you either cannot get on Material bank or you do not want to use Material bank, you can head on over to Design Shop and get some of the same benefits overnight samples. Now, the complicated thing about it, Dennis, is that it's a fee. So it's $99 a month to be a member of Design Shop's trade program. You get unlimited samples once you pay that fee. But designers aren't really, like, used to paying for samples in general. And anyway, so I'm very curious to see if that gets any traction. I don't know if they're doing it just an experiment. I don't know if they've modeled out the costs. I guess we can talk about that more in depth in a later episode. But that definitely, definitely got my eye.
- [38:45]
Dennis Scully
I agree. And I'm, I'm very eager to, to perhaps talk with Pam Jaccarino or Adam Sandow or some member of that organization and have a real conversation about what's going on there. I think that time is coming.
- [38:59]
Fred Nicholas
All right. Well, very quickly. Also, another thing that caught my eye is that Lily Sullivan, who's the design writer who's on Substack, and she's one of the people that I profiled when I did my article about Substack. Last year she came out with another print edition. So sometimes substackers do this thing of they have a newsletter and then they get a newsprint version of their letter and hers is called Love and Other Rugs, a very fun, punny title. And she just came out with her second print edition, which is cool. I'm looking, looking forward to checking it out. And it is definitely not AI Slop, so that recommends it highly. Dennis, what caught your eye this week?
- [39:31]
Dennis Scully
What caught my eye was a bit of good news coming our way. I got an update on our good friend Mitchell Owens, who listeners might know suffered a a stroke a while back and many of you very kindly Contributed to the GoFundMe campaign to, to help Mitch out. I've gotten a report that, that while progress is slow, it is steady and he is feeling better. Some of you might have seen him participating a little bit on social media recently, which was nice to to see the magazine Antiques, where he was editor in chief for a short period of time, is having a sort of rotating group of editors step in in the hopes of one day Mitchell stepping back into that role. We'll, we'll see what happens. But, but I did just want to share some, some good news. It sounds like he's making progress and we certainly send him our very best and we look forward to hopefully talking with him in the future.
- [40:27]
Fred Nicholas
Very much so. Yeah, it's been really nice to see him posting on Instagram a little bit again. So yeah, continue. Best wishes for Mitch.
- [40:33]
Dennis Scully
Absolutely. All right, that's all the time we have today. Thanks so much for listening. If you want to keep up with the latest news, browse job listings or take a work, visit us online@businessofhome.com if you want to get in touch with the show, write to us@podcastusinessofhome.com this episode was produced by Fred Nicholaus and Caroline Burke and edited by Michael Castaneda. I'm Dennis Scully. Have a great weekend and we'll be back with you on Monday.