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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. Hi, everybody. Welcome to this Deep Dive. We have an American master with us today. Not only do you have a thriving design business and exquisite taste and an amazing clientele, and you create the most beautiful interiors that are at once, you know, visually stimulating, but also incredibly livable. Anyway, we're thrilled to have you. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about putting together a scheme for a room. When you start, do you start with the fabric? Where do you start?
- [00:48]
B
I mean, look, I want to tell you, I have a linear, incredibly linear process, but it's not always so clear. I mean, I think often we start with the rug. Remember that old Doris Leslie Blau thing? The soul of the apartment is the carpet or something? So often we start with the carpet. Just. It's easier. And I think it helps to define a palette or at least give parameters to a palette. Sometimes it's. Sometimes in certain cases, we use it and then kind of run away from the color of the rug intentionally to kind of create interest. But sometimes it can just be the fabric that I'm carrying around in my head or in literally in my bag that I want to use in some application. I kind of find it and think, ah, this is what we. What we should be doing. So it's not 100% linear, but I would say I'm giving you the most roundabout answer to the question, But I think really often it's. We start with a carpet, and do.
- [01:41]
A
You think about, you know, like, oh, this is upholstery, and how many upholstery fabrics would I, you know, like, where does that all come into play?
- [01:49]
B
I think often it's just about putting things together. You know, I think that having done it for so long, I kind of balance it. As a go.
- [02:00]
A
I wanted to ask you about your color sensibility.
- [02:02]
B
Well, I mean, color sensibility. I. You know, I always tend to veer toward blues and greens. I think that, you know, I have a very weird thing about fabric and color, which is. I think that there are. There are rules which we obey, which, depending on people's taste, either rules of fashion, you know, we. We don't sell very much red. It's not a color that people tend to gravitate toward in. In my work, but off. You know, but probably 15 years ago, everybody did it just. I think you see it probably better than anyone because you're looking at what fabrics sell and don't sell in a much more macroway than even I am. But I think that there's just taste and there are risks and trends in color. Certain things change color and are more susceptible to fashion, I think. But I. But I think that I tend to veer toward blues and greens. I find them more calming. And then there's a thing which overrides everything, which is when you find a beautiful fabric and you just think, this works beautifully, but this fabric is just a more beautiful fabric. Let's use this and kind of, you know, the quality, often the quality of printing, the quality of drawing, or just the exceptional aspect of the fabric, you just go with it because even though it might not match perfectly, it's just going to be infinitely more interesting.
- [03:22]
A
But you do this thing that I've always been struck by from the very beginning when I first shot one of your very first projects, when you went out on your own. But you do this warm, cool thing and I just think that that's really unique and you make it work.
- [03:38]
B
Is it? Oh my God. I love. I'm going to add it to my chat about myself. I don't even know about that, really. It's so funny because I think I always think I'm slightly incompetent about certain things. But it's nice to hear that I fooled you for all these years.
- [03:57]
A
Do you have a hard time pivoting from one kind of project to the next?
- [04:01]
B
No, I mean, I'm just so easily bored that I'm always, if I'm working on this project, halfway through it, I'm already being looking at something really traditional, but in that sense kind of being inspired. I think it's sort of three dimensional chess and sort of always finding things kind of fuel each other and drive each other into different areas.
- [04:23]
A
And is there one, one bent that speaks more to you as you know, your own sensibility than another or not.
- [04:30]
B
Really, I don't think so. I mean, I think if it's anything again, it's more furniture. I mean, I think also part of it's just romance and kind of a historical aspect of it. I mean, I love French furniture so much, but because I think my first sort of, you know, romance with, was with English furniture. I'm just always so, you know, if I see an English furniture kettle, I'm like, ah, I love English furniture. You know, like, I think it's that thing, it's sort of like your first love kind of. It doesn't mean that, you know, it's just you always have a kind of soft spot for it. And I think English furniture is always my soft spot, but it's not. I don't necessarily. I have lived with it in various houses, but I don't really like. I have very little English furniture in my life now. But I just think it's. It's just something that I just always, you know, I think English decorating is, I mean, for people of our extreme generation, I think it is. Was generally what we found when we were kind of coming up through the ranks to be the most sort of beautiful and, you know, just sort of magical in its way.
- [05:44]
A
Right when it was well done.
- [05:46]
B
Yeah, well, that. I mean, how about everything well done? I mean. Yeah, I think.
- [05:52]
A
I just remember the 80s, you know, that's kind of when I came into this business, the mid-80s. And some of it was fabulous and some of it was a little too much.
- [06:03]
B
Well, listen, it's. Yeah. That you could describe for every single thing. I think if you, I mean, think like, look, I was thinking of, like rooms like, you know, the color of lettuce or something lacquered, going to show house rooms that like a Mara bought a bedroom or something. I mean, kind of. You never kind of got over that. Right. I mean, you may not want it and I don't necessarily want to do it for someone, but. But you can't argue that it was kind of great.
- [06:30]
A
Yeah, no, I agree. I agree.
- [06:35]
C
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- [08:06]
A
So you spent a lot of time in Spain over the last few years, right? Your partner was the decade. Yeah, a decade. Wow. He was the American ambassador to Spain. So can you tell us what it was like to live there and if you learned anything from them in terms of how they use fabric or how they approach decorating?
- [08:26]
B
Oh, yeah, that's really interesting. Well, they have a very different approach, like much of continental Europe. I mean, I think that they're. Look at, you know, I mean, look, there's. This is a whole other tutorial. They tend to buy fabric in a different way. It tends to be more. More consumer driven than decorator driven. They tend to buy print. They tend to buy a print that's really bold. And I mean, the sort of, you know, super bold. And I think that they, you know, it's very different than the way I think we tend to look at fabric. I mean, it's just a different sensibility. I think they want fabric to. I think they want. Given the fact that they often live in houses for often generations, they want fabric to do more. You know, they want it to be impactful. They want it to be, I'm modern, I'm fancy. They want fabric to do a lot. And so therefore, you see a lot of very bold prints. And I could absolutely. From my friend Lorenzo Castillo, or, you know, I could pick out the fabrics that are made for. That are Spanish versus Italy or France or whatever. I mean, they tend to be bold, again, graphic. You know, they tend to like something that does a lot. The fabrics often do more than I would want to do in a fabric, but, you know, big, dramatic patterns on curtains and things like that, which are good. You know, European decorating, it's not particular to Spain, but I think European decorating tends to be. Go in waves and be more consistent. Right. Either you have people who are outliers, who are friends, who are kind of group who won't kind of even know each other, the kind of Caroline Irvings of the world who are really understand and love fabric and kind of put them together in a way that's very personal, like someone who collects kind of ethnic jewelry or something. They kind of layer fabric together, but it's different in every application, but it's ultimately personal and distinctive. And you see the work like people like chakrange or, you know, that kind of mixing up a fabric in a way which is knowing so much about it and then deciding to just kind of freestyle it in a way that's really interesting. But you often see, I think in most European decorating, a very consistent palette use that feels can be beautiful and subtle, but can often time, I think, sometimes a little boring.
- [11:03]
A
But, you know, the way you were describing Carolina and Jacques, I mean, it's like painting a canvas or something, right? I mean, it's really.
- [11:12]
B
Well, yeah, I think it's about fabric rep. I mean, look at fabric is such a different thing, but I think pattern can represent so much personal memory. Right. It's like a perfume of someone you loved or something. So, you know, those two. And a lot of us all think of like a Madeleine Castaigne kind of, you know, fabric vibrates in a certain way because it has all this connotation, not just beyond it being fabric. You know, there's just this layering of almost folk art or iconography onto each other. Feels so, you know, it's so pleasing and kind of wonderful.
- [11:51]
A
All right, here's another question. I love all your artwork selections. How do you select pieces typically?
- [12:01]
B
Again, it's. I mean, it's. It's. It's both extraordinarily simple and extraordinarily complex. I mean, I think I'm often drawn to things that I really, really like, and I think that that can be. Even those visions of what I like can be very much tempered by, you know, again, it's specific. So it's like I look at art through the eyes of both my own taste, but also through clients taste and what it's meant to do. Right. Is it supposed to create a window in a room where there isn't one? Is it. Does it have a kind of resonance? It does something to the room, like a very dramatic. Like a kind of, you know, Franz Klein black and white painting will do something to a room. Not unlike the print, the Schumacher print we talked about, where there's sort of rigor, where you need something that does something else or takes the direction of the room in a different way to make it complex or just more visually interesting. And then there's all sorts of other applications. Is there a collection, is there a narrative within that collection that someone's moving, you know, the client who loves Hockney, for example. And so then to look at the inspiration of Hockney, so to look back at Matisse and then to look forward at other artists who are influenced not just by Hockney, but by Hockney's inspirations and kind of how you kind of interconnect that into something that's really interesting. Yeah. So there's a lot. It's both blink. Right. It's a Malcolm Gladwin blink thing, but it's also based on three dimensionally, all these elements at the same time that I'm trying to be mindful of.
- [13:50]
A
Yeah. But it sounds like everything that you do, you come from a very educated place, you know, like, you really study. It's true.
- [13:57]
B
Yes.
- [13:58]
A
You have all these references. Like, you need to, like, be on your game to have all those references.
- [14:05]
B
Well, I think. I mean, yeah, it would be great to think I'm not always on my game, but I think, you know what it is? I think that. I think what has served me so well is this idea of constantly being a student. Right. You know, it's like. Like, it's so interesting. We're talking about Schumacher, for example, with obvious reason. But it's like, you know, I went once to. I think I called you about it. I went to the showroom in Chicago and spent, like, 20 minutes just photographing fabrics that I loved in the collection and kind of gathering them together and kind of immersing in that idea and then kind of putting it into my memory and then also having those photographs. And literally, I'm doing something for myself. Not the pink bedroom, but another bedroom. And I was like, I got to go through Schumacher, those pictures and see, because I want whatever, a very specific idea of something. And that idea is, I think, a constant. Right. Which is constantly trying to immerse myself in sort of riffs. Right. Like, I'll see an artist or a maker or something on Instagram, and then I'll go to who they follow and see where that goes. Or I'll be in a foreign city and I'll say, oh, you know, who's the dealer I respect here? And then I'll follow who they follow and look at dealers. They respond. You know, I think it's. It's a constant desire to refresh and to treasure hunt and to, you know, file away for. For some other time.
- [15:44]
A
This is really fun.
- [15:46]
B
Thank you. This was super fun. And I do think you've done with Schumacher. You and Schumacher as a marriage has been incredible, and I think that it is beautiful. And what you've done and how you advance Schumacher is amazing. And what you've put light on the past, you're sort of one foot in the past, and one foot going forward has really been workable and wonderful. And I think you've changed the perception of what fabric and what do you know kind of. How do you even record on decorating or report on decorating? Can be for a brand. So I'm very excited to see what you've done.
- [16:24]
A
Well, that's sweet. That means a lot. Thank you. Thanks for joining us today. Stay tuned for next week's episode of Deep Dive.