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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to Deep Dive, a podcast series in which Frederick's editor in chief, Dara Caponigro and fellow editors are joined by design industry leaders to share their unique insights, experiences and knowledge on the world of decorating.
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B
Hi, I'm Tori Malotte. I'm the style director at Frederick magazine. Thank you for joining me on the Deep Dive. I am very excited to welcome designer Tom Shear. Tom is one of the great American designers of our time and the author of More Decorating and Tom Shear Decorates. I'm so excited you're here. Welcome, Tom.
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C
Thanks for having me, Tori.
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B
I'm very excited to chat. I know this story because I did my homework and my research. But tell us how you got your start in interior design because it's so interesting. And is it something that you always wanted to, to do?
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C
Absolutely not. I had no idea until I was 30 years old that I was going to be a decorator. I went to architecture school kind of late in life. Like I think I started when I was 25. And when I got out of architecture school, I worked for a couple summers. During school I worked for a teacher. His name was Sean Scully. And a couple of summers I also went to Europe and worked for quite a well known Italian architect, Aldo Rossi. But anyway, when I got out of school, I worked for Sean for maybe four or five months and we didn't get anything done. It was the slowest, most painful process to try to get stuff built in those days. I mean, it just, it didn't have to do with the time, but just architects move very slowly. And I met Jeffrey Billhuber, who everybody knows too, at the Bemelman's Bar. We were introduced by a mutual friend and somehow within an hour of meeting one another, we decided Jeffrey didn't like his job much. He was working at the Carlisle Hotel behind the desk. Somehow we decided that we could be decorators. And so we just kind of went for it. We had a couple of, we had a little bit of a leg up. We knew a few important people and who trusted us. And anyway, we got a show house. And that was how we got our start. We, we did the Southampton Summer show house, which had at that point had the best decorators in the country participating in it. Mark Hampton, Mario Botta, Albert Hadley, I mean, all the best decorators were doing it. And that's all it took was one, one show house. And we got incredible press for it. We got, Carol Vogel, gave us like a three page color spread in the New York Times magazine section. And the rest is the rest is history. It sent us on our way.
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B
I have to say, I think that's one of my favorite stories.
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C
You heard it before?
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B
You know, I have never heard you tell it. I've read about it. But that is really, truly. I just. I love it. Like, let's just.
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C
We really didn't know what we were doing. I mean, you know, we had an idea. We do. Of course. Both of us had looked at a lot of decorating magazines and I had some architectural experience. We actually built a. We built a rather complicated tent, kind of like the Jottingham summer pavilion, Swedish tent thing, and it was a pool house. So anyway, I had some architectural experience. Jeffrey had some experience because he worked at the Carlisle and went. Was helping. He was the liaison between Mark Hampton and the hotel doing. Installing fresh rooms at the car. So he knew a little bit about it from that. And we just sort of made it up as we went along.
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B
How did you complement each other? Like, what do you think your strengths were that you brought to the table? And what did Jeffrey, you know, what was he really good at?
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C
You know, we. I had. As I said, I had more of an architectural background. I was probably shyer than Jeffrey was. He was much more. More kind of willing to dive into things that I might have shied away from. He was kind of the front man. We were called Bill Huber Inc. But, you know, we were. We were young. We were willing to do anything for a job, kind of. And turns out it took. It took quite a while for us to start to figure out a way to make money. And actually, until we split up our partnership and went our separate ways, I don't think either of us really hit our stride. When I left the partnership, I actually moved to Charleston. That was kind of my. It was. I was. Wanted to do something different and I moved to Charleston thinking I was going to do a retail business. I had this idea for a concept store kind of thing. It just kind of didn't happen. I got down there and it was. I was having a lot of fun. And my. Some of my. Our clients were calling me and asking me to do stuff for them, and I got distracted. And before you knew it, I was a decorator again.
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B
What was the concept for the store? I'm very curious about that.
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C
Oh, I was inspired by a store I'd seen in Barcelona a few years before called Vinson. It was kind of like a. Kind of where. Do you remember Ad Hoc housewares? Yes, I do cross between ad hoc housewares and Tiffany or Frederica de Vera or something like that. It was a very kind of fancy hardware store. I thought that Charleston was going to be kind of like the perfect laboratory to do it, but it was just a little bit too early for Charleston. One of the reasons why I thought to do this was I didn't really think. I, I didn't know that I was, that I was a good decorator and I kind of. Jeffrey was kind of like more the decorator and I was kind of maybe the nuts and bolts person and the architect, you know, had the architecture stuff down and I didn't really know that I'd be. Have that much fun doing it and be that good at it on my own. But it took turns out I, I could do it too.
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B
So you really enjoy it?
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C
I, I do enjoy it. I'm actually. You called me New York based, which is nice. I'm a New Yorker. I've lived in New York for 68 years. But I have actually just closed my office in New York.
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B
Oh my goodness. Okay.
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C
Going. I'm going to, I'm going virtual. No more, no more decorating. I mean, I am, I am decorating, but I'm doing it in a different way. I'm kind of re. What's it called? Retooling my business.
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B
Oh, I love that. And I know that you do have homes. You have, I think you have an apartment in Paris and you have a place in the Bahamas. Is that right? So you can kind of work from anywhere now.
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C
Yeah, you can work from anywhere these days. And I, you know, I want to work a little bit less and enjoy these places that I've set up for myself all over the place. And you know, it, it's, it seems to be working out really well. I have, I had, you know, a year ago I had 15 employees in an office and now I have none of it. I have two employees, they're both satellite. And then I have a couple of teams of my ex employees who are, we're doing projects together. Basically I'm working for them now.
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B
When I was thinking about it, I was like, wow. So Tom, you know, he studied architecture for. I mean, how long did you study for? 2 years, 4 years.
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C
I went to a 5 year undergraduate architecture program.
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B
That is quite a large time.
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C
Yeah.
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B
And I was wondering, do you ever walk by a beautiful building or you know, work on a beautiful home and do you ever sort of have a pang of like, gee, like a regret almost? I wish I would have done that.
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C
No, no, I don't because I really, I actually, I Wasn't, not only was I not fully indoctrinated into the kind of philosophy of the school that I went to. I didn't go to Columbia. I went to Cooper Union, which was very theoretical and very kind of not really about building the kind of buildings that I was interested in. I mean, I stuck to it. I stayed there for five years because it was really interesting, but it just really wasn't actually my thing. And I realized that I didn't have the patience for architecture. It's very, very painstaking, detail oriented process that's, you know, complicated on so many levels. Technical levels, philosophical levels, political level, you know, just. It's a complicated thing and I don't have the patience for it. And that was one of the great things about decorating is like, you know, as I said, Jeffrey and I, we decided to be decorators and like three weeks later we had a completed project and people were coming after us to get us to work for them.
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B
So I'm going to ask a question that every designer and decorator detests, but I feel like it's very important to hear it directly from the designer. How would you describe your style?
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C
This is kind of the anti architect in me, but I, you know, I think of myself as a decorator, not really a designer. And that's kind of part of it. I like the kind of superficiality of decorating and I don't take it that seriously. I mean, you know, there's some people who deserve the title designer. You know, they have a very, very specific look that they stick to it and every, every move that they make is to kind of move their, their look and their design forward in a very specific way. I'm much more free floating. I, you know, I can, I like to mix it up a little bit. I'm kind of a good mimic, you know, I mimic styles of other decorators, past decorators, I'll admit it. But through all that, I think I'm kind of a modernist and that's, you know, that's the holdover from my architectural education. I really do prefer things kind of clean and kind of under, slightly under baked, let's put it that way. And clients generally don't want that. They generally want something that's got more levels, more, more layered. That's a word I really don't like very much, but I can't think of another one they like. You know, they like a lot of stuff. I kind of am always trying to figure out a way of having less stuff. So I'm a modernist and I think. I think I wrote it about myself, but I called myself a relaxed modernist. I like modernism, but I don't take it. I don't take it that seriously.
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B
Your comment about mimicking other designers. Now, I am going to respectfully disagree, because I feel like I can always spot a Tom Shearer room. You know, it's not that they. Every room looks the same, but I. They're all always a touch, you know, that tips you off.
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C
I'm glad that you see that, and I think it's true. But the sort of. The starting off point is often another decorator's work or something that I've seen or some, you know, travel thing or something. I don't know. I mean, actually, getting back to Frederick, you ran that incredible story on that house that I did in Dallas.
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B
So beautiful.
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C
I mean, I had, you know, I had some very, very clear images in my head when I started that house. And it was mimicry. I mean, I was like, I. You know, we did this incredible sort of English Georgian front hall, and then I did the. I did this deep orange library that I was very specifically thinking about that Valerian Rybar famous library in Paris. It didn't really turn out looking like it, but it was, you know, that's where I started. And there's. There's. There's some. There's some similarities.
- [11:27]
B
One of the things I wanted to talk about is probably one of your most famous projects and famous rooms. I believe it's the reception room at the Lyford Key Club. I feel like every designer references it as inspiration. I think it's probably one of the most Instagrammed and pinned rooms I've ever seen. And I. I want you to talk about your decision to go with the chocolate brown walls, because chocolate brown, in my mind, initially I would think, oh, that's like antithetical to the Bahamas. But it is. I mean, it is the most glorious room, I think we can all agree. What was your inspiration? Did you get any pushback about the chocolate brown or did you have carte blanche? Talk about that room, please.
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C
Well, it was a very drab room when I. When I got there to the club, and they actually tested me out on a couple of other projects before they gave me that big room. Anyway, it needed to be a wow room. I seem to always put a chocolate brown room practically in every job that I ever do. I get one in there somehow. And it wasn't necessarily the chocolate brown I was after. It was the white I was after of the palm trees and chocolate brown Seemed to be the most neutral. And Lyford Key has a kind of a. There's a historical affinity for pink. And pink works on the inside as well as on the outside of all the buildings. So it was kind of an unavoidable formula. I could have done the walls in dark blue or I could have done them in dark green. I don't like red in the Bahamas very much. I don't like red in the tropics. So there's, you know, there are not that many choices. So anyway, that's why it wound up brown. And I saw the, it was actually, I think it was a, it was a document that something, somebody like it was either Brunswig or Clarence House or something they made. They had a document palm pour fabric of a palm tree with those sort of berries hanging off it. And I, we just used that shape and then we've, we reversed it so it wouldn't be too monotonous. And then we made it 17ft tall. I used to lie awake at night and think, where did, where did I get this whole, where did this idea come from? I was nervous that I kind of plagiarized it in a weird way. I just thought, you know, I must have seen this somewhere. It's so great. I mean, where did it come from? Anyway, then several years later, I realized that I had probably been, at some point in my earlier life, I'd been to Vizcaya. And Vizcaya has that same palampur, that same shape that maybe Brunswick got it from. I mean, it's, you know, it's embroidered and it's multi colored and it's kind of beigey gray, but it's that same exact shape and sort of that same general scale. It's really hard to find. Anyway, I, I just somehow, several years later, I saw it in a magazine and I was like, oh my God. That's probably where I got the idea from.
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B
Anyway, that's that none of us are like reinventing the wheel here. It is decorating, but we are putting however, our own spin on it.
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C
Yeah.
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B
You know, you use the word mimic, which for some reason is bothering me so much because I don't think you do that.
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C
Reinterpretations.
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B
Yes, reinterpretation.
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A
We're going to take a quick break to thank the sponsor of today's Show, Schumacher. Since 1889, the fifth generation family business has been the go to source for textiles, wallpapers and trims. Their insatiable passion for luxury, beauty and quality have produced designs that transcend time and rise above the ordinary. So head to Schumacher.com to check it out.
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B
I believe you wrote in one of your books that David Hicks and Billy Baldwin are big influences. Tell us a little bit about what you. You love that they did with David Hicks particularly.
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C
I think the beauty of his stuff is that it was really, really grand, but it didn't take itself seriously at all. There was always an element of modernism or an element of humor or some particularly sort of bright and sort of happy layer that he would put on almost everything that he did. And that's missing from a lot of what other people do. I think Billy Baldwin just was. It was different. I mean, he just sort of happened to nail it in every other way. I mean, Billy Baldwin knew so much about furniture plan, planning and comfort and kind of these kind of practicalities that are so sort of baked into his work that you don't. You may not even realize until you actually live like them. I don't know. I don't know.
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B
When you're designing a room or a home, you know, what are the most important qualities to you? Is it. Is it comfort? Is it practicality?
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C
I mean, I really do think that the furniture plan and the furniture forms and the balance of furniture forms, and I don't want to say styles, but because sometimes everything is in the same style. But that's, to me, ultimately the most important thing. It's the way that the dynamism of the room should always come first from the way the furniture is arranged and proportioned and the relationships between them. Color. Color comes second, maybe, and the fabrics come third. And the lighting. I don't know about that, but lighting's in there somewhere.
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B
You once said that you'll never be accused of jumping on any decorating bandwagons. Tell me what that means for you. And also, what do you see in decorating right now? Like, what's the climate? Do you feel like there are a lot of sort of copycats? A lot of. I don't want to say the word imposter, but I guess copycats, the right word.
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C
You know, you just kind of have to look at my work. Like, if you look at my two books and hopefully my third one, third and last one, they're all the same. I haven't changed my pitch style. I don't think the things that I did in 1920, 22 look noticeably different from the things I was doing 30 years earlier. It's. I've always done the same thing, so I haven't really changed my. I mean, happily, there's new products occasionally and you know, I make new discoveries, but I've been using a lot of the same elements for 35 years. And that's what I kind of meant by, you know, not being on any particular bandwagon. It's my own bandwagon. But, you know, I think problem with decorating generally today is that it's very so, you know, product oriented. You know, there's people get very focused on. Well, they get. I mean, there's things that are available that are made available by these fantastic companies, honestly, like Restoration Hardware and even I was looking at a Pottery Barn catalog today. There was great stuff in there. So it's sort of market driven in that, in that way. And it takes a lot of the individuality out of it.
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B
And I think just because of social media, we all just seem to see.
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C
We'Re being, yeah, we're being, we're being led to these through the marketplace, basically. We're being led to look at these things. I mean, I think about it, I think, oh dear, you know, you have to be careful. You can't buy too many things in the Martial Pouce or it's going to look like a French decorator did it. Or you can't buy too many things at Serene and Lily, as wonderful as it is, or it's going to look like a Serene and Lily catalog.
- [19:14]
B
You know, you have homes in a few different places, so I know you're on the move and you're traveling, but where do you find inspiration?
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C
I always look at the house, you know, the place that I'm given. And it seems to me, I mean, it's a matter of kind of reading the weather of any particular house or reading the weather of a particular client or both. And I think that that's my skill and that usually is the thing that pushes the design forward and tells me what to do. Of course, I'm inspired by, you know, going to visit somebody in their fantastic Tuscan villa. You know, of course that's inspiring, but it doesn't mean that I'm going to come home and say, oh, gee, I need to do a Tuscan villa in this, you know, high rise apartment in West Palm Beach. You know, it's really about. It's usually about the place itself and I can always find a way in. I mean, it's very rare that I can't find a way into a smart design for any given place. I can, I can also walk away from a really uninteresting job.
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B
Oh, really?
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C
I've been known to do that. Yeah. I mean, I can't. Can't even really think of what it's been, but, yeah, some people. I've had calls from people that have really ugly houses that I just said, you know, can't do it. I mean, I don't. I think of a nice way of.
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B
Putting it, but I love it. You're a man of principle. I imagine, though, that that would be very difficult to take something that. I mean, maybe there's, like, a house that just. The bones are horrible and you just can't do anything with it. It's like putting lipstick on a pig, right?
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C
Yeah.
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B
Like, that's really got to be uninspiring to do.
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C
That's true. That's uninspiring.
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B
Yes.
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C
You know, luckily. Luckily, it doesn't happen that often. I mean, usually the kind of people that call me, call me because they like what I do and they think it'll fit with them as well.
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B
So where is your favorite place to work? Do you have a. You know, a country, a geographical location?
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C
I've said this for a long time. I really do love working in the tropics. I mean, one of the. It was. I think I put it in one of my books. It was like one of my, like, childhood fantasies. Like, my parents brought us to Florida occasionally to see our grandparents when I was young. I was just very drawn to it. I. I love the tropics and the palm trees and the swimming pools and blah, blah, blah. And it's still with me today to an extent. And I've had a lot of success doing stuff in the tropics. And the reason I like to do things in the tropics is that, first of all, it's generally not people's first house there. It's usually their second or third or fourth house. So they're less kind of invested in it, and. And they're a little bit more willing to be easy about it. And there's a lot of. There's technical issues that you don't have to deal with, like heating and air conditioning if you're in the right place in the tropics. And it's. It can be done cheap and cheerfully. It doesn't have to be too serious.
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B
And it's also just beautiful.
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C
To me, it's. It's. It's sexy. No matter, you know, almost in every case.
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B
It's. It really is. That's the perfect word to describe it. It's very sexy. Very. All right. So, Tom, now that you are. You've closed your New York office and you're designing remotely. What's next?
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C
I. I have to find. I'm going to need to find some hobbies. I am working a little bit and I'm doing a third, my third and last book for Von Dome. I don't have this yet untitled, but I have, you know, another five or six or eight years worth of work that didn't make it into my last book. And so I'm doing that's quite involved process, the photography and writing it and organizing it. So I'm doing that. That's going to keep me busy. And yes, I'm doing a lot more travel, spending bigger chunks of time in my places that I have in Paris and in the Bahamas and you know, it's kind of semi retirement actually I.
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B
Was gonna say it sounds like you're actually still really busy.
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C
I am. I actually right now I am pretty busy.
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B
Well, Tom, thank you so much.
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C
I hope you got enough.
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A
Thanks for joining us today. Stay tuned for next week's episode of Deep Dive.