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- [00:00]
Michael Boudreau
This is a Cherish podcast and I'm your host, Michael Boudreau. I'll be taking you for an inside look behind the glamorous facade of the interior design industry at a time when every aspect of the business, from sourcing to trends to marketing to dealing with clients, is undergoing rapid change. Hospitality, which seemed a death during the COVID shutdown, has come roaring back. People are traveling in record numbers. Restaurants are undergoing a resurgence, especially with young Gen Z patrons. And it turns out that Internet shopping has not killed brick and mortar stores. All of this even has. Business has slowed for many residential designers, largely due to the moribund real estate market. So is expanding into hospitality and retail design a viable option for interior designers? What are the trends in hospitality design? And even more importantly, what are the pitfalls? I have with me today three top designers whose creations for restaurants, hotels and retail spaces have won wide acclaim and who have all worked on both sides of the residential hospitality divide. First up is AD100 designer Roger Thomas. Roger, who grew up in Las Vegas, is probably the man who has most elevated the image of his hometown with his four decades of work for Steve Wynn and Wynn Resorts. Roger's wildly imaginative, exuberant and luxe restaurant, casino and hotel interiors incorporates saturated jewel colors, soaring arches, sweeping staircases and lush patterns and textiles. His designs draw inspiration from styles ranging from mid century modern to chinoiserie to Venetian classicism. His first book, Resort Spaces of Celebration, was recently published by Rizzoli and celebrates his amazing career. Welcome, Roger.
- [02:01]
Roger Thomas
Thank you, Michael. It's an honor to be with you today.
- [02:03]
Michael Boudreau
So glad. We're also fortunate to have with us Poonam Khanna, founder of the New York firm Unionworks. Poonam's work is clean line, spare yet welcoming, and her residential projects have been featured in ad, Elle Decor, Interior Design and Vogue Living. She's also designed the Soho and Charleston stores for the fashion and shoe brand La Florandal and the vivid red and black restaurant Pineapple and Pearls in Washington D.C. most recently, her firm has redesigned the iconic Maidstone Hotel in East Hampton, giving the more than 150-year-old classic a sensitive update. Hello, Poonam.
- [02:40]
Poonam Khanna
Hi. It's a pleasure to be here.
- [02:42]
Michael Boudreau
So glad. Finally, I'm pleased to have with us Dallas based designer Chad Dorsey. Chad is known for his restrained, moody, and frankly, sexy residential interiors that feature deep colors, bespoke furniture and luxurious textures. His training as an architect is evident in the clarity of all of his work, which has been featured in Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, Aspire Home and Design and veranda. He's also had a prolific career in hospitality, where he oversaw an impressive $2 billion portfolio, which includes private clubs, airplane interiors, Las Vegas hotels, lounges for baccarat, and most recently, a major refresh of Primland, an auberge resort hotel in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains. Welcome, Chad.
- [03:25]
Roger Thomas
Thanks for having me, Michael.
- [03:27]
Michael Boudreau
So it seems to me, I think a lot of designers now are having this fantasy that if their residential work is slowed down, that they could expand into hospitality. As if that's easy. And I suspect that it's not, which is why I'm so happy to be talking with all of you today. So I want to start. Roger, you've had a four decade career in Las Vegas, which is its own being its own beast, shall we say? But how do you think about creating the magical rooms that you do in all of your Las Vegas and also in Asia, all the hotels and casinos that you create? What's your thought process? How is it different from designing a home?
- [04:09]
Roger Thomas
Well, Steve's directive was to always think like a guest, which was the most important component of getting it right. When I was designing a guest room or a suite or a lavish villa, I always considered it from the viewpoint of a personal pied a terre in that. So it had to have all of the comforts of home, but at the same time, it had to deliver a very unique, dramatic, romantic, surprising, joyful presence so that you felt your most elevated self. And if you wanted to have that feeling again, that feeling of complete comfort and being your best self, you would return again. That said, the difficulty for transitioning from residential to hospitality is often one of scale. My core office staff was 60, and when I was doing large projects, I had as many as 200. So that's not something that you can jump back and forth from residential requirements of staffing unless you're doing enormous quantities of residences to a large hospitality project. That said, I also was doing some of the largest hospitality projects ever built.
- [05:29]
Michael Boudreau
Right.
- [05:29]
Roger Thomas
On a scale there, somewhere between 200 and about 45 would have been the necessary staff to run a really good hospitality firm.
- [05:39]
Michael Boudreau
Right. Because it's a different process. Poona, I'm sure you felt that. Have you noticed when you take on a hospitality project like the restaurant or the shops for Lafleurandel is something that you've had to bring in different staff, staff with skills that are different, or how do you handle that as opposed to your residential projects?
- [05:57]
Poonam Khanna
First of all, I'm the freshman here in this graduate school course that I'm Auditing right now we're so small and the commercial work that we do is of a much different scale than what you do, Roger. So I haven't had to change staff particularly, but we have beefed up certain skills. I mean, the thing with commercial work that I found is the decisions get made a lot faster. The emotion of the decisions is a lot different because it's very much more like concept driven and goals driven and not so much like, I prefer this to that. It's really just like, oh, this is the right vibe, let's go, let's execute. So I think the speed, it's more of a sprint. I think for your bigger projects it feels like a marathon, but for us the commercial work feels like sprints, which is of itself requiring a certain type of staff sort of response. This is not the pace of residential work where we have more time, more mulling around things. We really have to get our acts together, understand the brief and execute it quickly. So I think that skill is what we are looking for in terms of the staffing that we apply to those projects.
- [07:11]
Michael Boudreau
That's so interesting what you're saying, Poonam, because I would have assumed that it would be just the reverse, that if you were doing a commercial project, there'd be more layers of approval involved, like a corporation or like Chad. When you're working on an Auberge resort, for example, are there more layers, corporate layers that you have to go through as opposed to a couple you're doing a home for?
- [07:31]
Chad Dorsey
I think there are definitely more layers, I think in working on the specific project we just are finishing in Virginia in Primlin with Auberge. It's a family of seven brothers and sisters, so we have all those approvals combined with the operations of a parish. So we're presenting to the whole team. So it's a different thing, residential, and it's not emotional. It's all about bottom line and making money and it's about the design and making money. Whereas in residential I find that we're able to sort of sell into emotion and if someone really wants something, the budget doesn't matter in residential, whereas I think in, in hospitality it is really about the budget at the end of the day and what the guests are really going to like.
- [08:09]
Michael Boudreau
Which Roger, makes me ask you, I mean, I know Steve Wynne is like an incredible client. He's head of a corporation. Is it hard to sell him on? You have some amazing and really over the top interiors in Vegas. They're all in your book, which is wonderful. And so much fun to go through. But is it a hard sell at times? Was it chinoiserie, the dragons, all of that, or was that something that Steve Wynne was interested in from the beginning and you brought him along? What was that process like?
- [08:37]
Roger Thomas
I had a unique position in that I had one client for 40 years. So not only did I know the corporation and the corporate thought, I was one of the inventors of the corporation and the corporate thought. And Steve was a fast decision maker. But I always, always took in two concepts so that Steve felt like he had made the choice. Two concepts on the grand scale and then two. Two concepts for every background material. Steve was very involved. He touched and helped select every single fabric, every single wall cover, every carpet. We did not do color boards. Everything had to go in a loose lay because Steve had retinitis pigmentosa, which challenged his vision. And it meant that I had to place each object in Steve's hand so that he could put it correctly in his vision. He saw everything clearly, but me guessing where he was going to see was eliminated by me just letting him manipulate it. So it was long meetings, but very decisive and fast meetings. As to the emotion, I discovered that my job was not just selecting all of these beautiful fabrics, stones, wood veneers, silhouettes of furniture, objects to include. My job was to appeal directly to the emotion of every single one of my guests, to make them sense. The drama, the joy, the mystery, the surprise, as well as the comfort of all of the interiors. Because if I resonated with them emotionally and the interiors were all completely unique, then they would have to return to have that same emotional response. They wouldn't get it anywhere else.
- [10:25]
Michael Boudreau
And Poonam, do you feel that your commercial work, the shops, the restaurants reflect the same aesthetic? Is that why those clients came to you? Or do you feel that you have to adjust or expand or reach beyond your comfort zone for that?
- [10:40]
Poonam Khanna
Well, they've all come. Word of mouth. We didn't actually seek any commercial work. It just came to us. But it's an interesting question. I think each version of what we've done is specific. I don't think there's one general sort of thread that ties it together other than we have a brand that we have to transform into an experience for people. Like you were describing, Roger, like, the emotional content is really in the guest or the customer, right? To come in and feel something about the space. It could be anything. But whether it's drama or calmness, you name it, they do want to feel something, which I also think is quite A different place than where we were maybe 20 years ago with hospitality, when it was really more consistently the same version of things that you would see in hotels wherever you went or, you know, a lot of restaurants were kind of like the same iterative type of spaces. And now I think there's a lot more surprise and almost like voyage. When you're in some of these spaces now, you've actually been somewhere. You didn't just go somewhere. So I think that for each brand, and ours are much, much smaller, we're really just focused on what the brand needs to show and say either to its customer or to its guests. So our work is a little less, other than Pineapple and Pearls, which they wanted to be dramatic, our work is a little bit more tempered so far in the commercial space.
- [12:11]
Michael Boudreau
And Chad, do you feel that I would say that this is true, that your commercial projects sort of reflect your residential aesthetic other than the scale of them? I look at some of your projects and think, oh, yeah, that does look like Chad's work. But of course, when you're doing a lounge for baccarat, you have to reflect baccarat. So is that a challenge for you? How do you go about that?
- [12:34]
Chad Dorsey
I mean, I think at the end of the day, we're all have our own aesthetic and I think that's why ultimately we're hired and that's our success. And so when you're doing a lounge for baccarat, then you're definitely responding to the client's needs or the, the directive of the project, both architecturally as well as the interiors. But also your signature is on that style, no matter what it is, whether it's a concept or just a simple element of the room.
- [12:59]
Michael Boudreau
Right. And you brought this up, Hunam, and I want to touch on this as well. So I'm glad you did. You know, for a long time I felt, as I was saying, I think that a lot of hotels were acres of beige, plush beige. The Four Seasons, any of those hotels. They were all basically the same wherever they were. Then there was this big trend for authenticity that you were mentioning. Poonam. A place has to look like where you are, so, you know, you've arrived. It has to reflect the region. It has to reflect the ethos of the city or the island or wherever it might be. And I'm curious about is that still happening or what's the next thing? Roger, obviously, Las Vegas or Asia, that kind of thing, that's a very special thing. But even Las Vegas, thanks to you in large part, has evolved and is so different from what it was 40 years ago. So how do you see the design progressing for hospitality?
- [13:51]
Roger Thomas
Well, for me, over the past entire 40 years, I've had to make each and every hotel that we've designed unique. My new book is only about the last 20 years because previous to that, Steve would have a big idea and direct a neighborhood of vocabulary to use. So with the Mirage, which closes today in Las Vegas. Yes, I'm that old. One of my biggest projects has run its life. The Mirage was to be influenced by Tropical. He was traveling in Hawaii with his family. My family was traveling in the Caribbean. We both often spoke about it and he felt that everybody wanted to be in the tropics. That's what directed the Mirage for Bellagio. We had now been traveling for me in the north of Italy, for Steve and Alain Wynne in the south of France. And he wanted something that bespoke the elegance and the locale of those. Not to replicate the vocabulary, but to use it as a jumping off point. Finally, with Wynn Las Vegas, the first Wynn Resorts project, his directive was to invent something that had never ever been seen before. Music to my ears. Now I'm not restrained by any vocabulary, but I'm allowed to be inspired by the history of design and art. But I have to create my own vocabulary. I have to be able to create new words, new sentence structures, new paradigms for paragraphs so that whatever I create has never been seen before.
- [15:25]
Michael Boudreau
That must have been so daunting.
- [15:27]
Roger Thomas
It was. But I think that what I learned is if you don't take risks in hospitality design, why bother? If you're replicating a Four Seasons relentless beige, why bother? It's no fun to do that. Making your own dreams come true is the better way, I think, to design hospitality, because I think your personal dreams resonate with other humans. We are all dreamers, we all want romance, we all want unique experiences. And I think the only way to do that is to make your own personal dreams come true. That means sometimes you're going to fail and that's painful. But with Steve Wynn, I had a client who if we failed, we immediately redid the room. I did a lot of 90 day reinventions. Not easy.
- [16:18]
Michael Boudreau
Good to know.
- [16:19]
Roger Thomas
And you don't know what you can't do in 90 days until you try. So in 90 days we did some extraordinary things. One of the most amazing creations we ever put into a restaurant was the 27 foot long Crystal Dragon that has a 650 pound single cast glass head. That was done in one of the 90 day turnarounds.
- [16:41]
Michael Boudreau
Wow.
- [16:41]
Roger Thomas
Completely invented and manufactured. Anything's possible.
- [16:45]
Michael Boudreau
But at the same time, as Poonam was mentioning, a lot of restaurants tend to look alike. A lot of hotel rooms, you know, miles of beige, whatever. And I think that sometimes you go and you think, well, this is either a corporate directive, you know, we want to standardize everything, or it's a budget thing that you think, okay, you know, farm to table. I used to joke the farm to table restaurants. Why does all of them have to look like they're farm tables in the restaurants? Couldn't you do farm to table food and have a tablecloth? You know, is there anything wrong with that? But it did seem like there was a uniformity, which I think, happily, we're breaking away from, thanks to people like you, Roger. But, for example, Loeffler, Randall, when they came to you, did they give you a specific directive, or did they just say, here are our shoes, here's the clothes that we design. We want you to come up with something. We need to have so much square footage and we need to have so many dressing rooms. But other than that, did it give you sort of free rein?
- [17:42]
Poonam Khanna
Yes, but it was very much specific to what I already knew about the brand. And I think the very first meeting we had in person, I just pulled some materials that felt to me like they would resonate, and that's what we ended up doing. It didn't really take a long time to figure it out. I think a lot of what happens in hospitality now in particular, is personal. It is either the point of view that you're talking about, Roger, like the something you've never seen before point of view, or a particular brand vision, or our own aesthetical direction. But I think more openly amplified and recognized now than previously is people want to come into a space and feel like there's a connection to somebody in that space, that it's someone's home that you've walked into, or their kitchen or their closet, whatever it might be. But it's more like. I do think that every version of a hospitality that you could probably point to, it is much more personal now. And that's actually what people want more of, is to see behind the curtain a little bit, to feel like they got to know who's behind it a little bit, as opposed to just the stuff.
- [18:54]
Ana Brockway
Hi, everybody, and thanks for joining us on the Cherish podcast. I'm Ana Brockway, the co founder and president of Cherish. I'm really excited to let you know that we've Just added a major new feature on Cherish. It's called Cherish messaging, and it lets you communicate directly and privately with our sellers. If you have a question on an item, need a specific measurement, want to ask about a seller's price flexibility? You can now speak discreetly and directly to our dealers through Cherish. Shoppers, and particularly the trade, have been asking for this feature, and we've listened and delivered it. So please come on over and give it a try. Now, back to the show.
- [19:39]
Michael Boudreau
You know, it used to be when I was at editor at El Decor, we would get a lot of projects in from various people, and it was. People would say, oh, well, I wanted my home to look like a hotel room. Which always sort of surprised me because most hotel rooms were so impersonal. I mean, yes, I want a luxurious bath. I want to have all of that, but I don't want my home to look like a hotel room. And that, to me, I think, is changing. Chad, how do you address that issue? Clearly, people want luxury. They want to have some place that's relaxing, especially when they're going away to a resort or whatever. But at the same time, people want delight. So how do you think about that? Is it a hard sell to the corporate client, so to speak?
- [20:21]
Chad Dorsey
I don't think so. I think we all travel to be inspired. No matter if we're going on a weekend trip to Las Vegas or we're going to a resort in the Maldives or something, it's all about being inspired and coming back rejuvenated. And I've always said when I'm at a resort, it's all about the interiors and the interior architecture that we really remember, and we bring that home.
- [20:40]
Michael Boudreau
Beaches tend to be the same, you know, Come on.
- [20:43]
Chad Dorsey
Well, you know, because that's where you had your drink or you had your romantic dinner or cocktails with the sunset, and those memories last with you forever. And the next time you visit the resort, it may not be the same because it may be a different operator or something like that. But with that said, that's why I think we say, hey, I'd really like to live in a hotel room. It's really about that experience. But my clients, particularly at the Auberg, each resort's so different. There are no standards, and they really are pushing. Everything is unique, from just even the guest services to the elements within the rooms. And I think that's really what makes it special. And that's why you want to visit other properties within the brand, because it does feel like you're going to hey, this is my vacation home in the Virginia Highlands. Or, or I'm going to Austin where Ken Folk did the Commodore Perry and Roman Williams is doing the hotel in Houston for them now. So it's all these really collection of designers that makes it so special. And those are pieces that I think we all want in our own homes.
- [21:41]
Michael Boudreau
Dar, I want to ask a little about the practical issues of doing hospitality because clearly a hotel lobby, for example, is going to take much more of a beating than your living room. No matter how much you entertain, no matter how many children you have, no matter how many guests you have, it's not going to take the beating that a hotel lobby would take. And I know there's lines of commercial fabrics and all of that, but how do you get a handle on what materials are going to work and what doesn't? Roger, you're an example of this. I mean, I'm not that you always make 60 foot long Chinese dragons, but you know, in terms of fabrics or picking furniture pieces, how do you have to think about it? That's sort of different from just putting together a normal home.
- [22:23]
Roger Thomas
Practicality is extraordinarily important in doing a Las Vegas project. It's open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. Even Disneyland closes for maintenance. Las Vegas doesn't have that opportunity. So in the very early days of Wynn, in order to fulfill the dictate of extreme elegance and being Steve's dictation for Bellagio was that it be the most extraordinary and elegant hotel on planet Earth. Great. I had great fun doing it. I had an extraordinary budget. When we got to Wynn Las Vegas, he said, this has to be better than Bellagio. It has to be the most extraordinary, the most elegant hotel on Earth. I said, if you had told me I was going to have to do this again, I wouldn't have tried so hard the first time. So I looked at what the most elegant fabrics were and I determined that Rubelli at the time had the most beautiful fabrics. They were $480 a yard and they were pure silk. But the Rubelli family had become friends and they were willing to version their own textiles with their superior knowledge of textile construction. And we were able to build inherently flame retardant fabrics. Well, I needed miles, not yards, so that helped. At $40 a yard that looked exactly like their silks or incredibly durable upholstery fabrics within a budget. Even though I have the reputation of exceeding an unlimited budget, we always had a budget. And so I learned that in order to be unique you had to invent those super durable fabrics that we're using. I had the luxury of needing enough of it that I could invent anything I wanted. When I was ordering a nightstand, I was ordering 5,000 of them. It could be anything that my dreams dictated in almost any materiality. So I had those great advantages of massive quantities. So durability was always something that we wanted to do. That said, we changed our guest rooms every five years stemmed astern. That was not something that was typical in Las Vegas. Ten years is more like the expected lifetime of a guest room. Restaurants lasted until the restaurants didn't last. And usually it was a fashion thing. The way we dine changes radically over time. My favorite room at Wynn Las Vegas was a restaurant called Alex, which was a Michelin starred bespoke kitchen dining room. And it took four hours to dine. No one goes to dinner for four hours anymore. They go to drink and have dinner for four hours. But the dining experience doesn't last that long. That restaurant hasn't been around for decades, but it still remains one of my best. So although it was durable, it was changed before its durability was ever challenged.
- [25:23]
Michael Boudreau
And Chad, is it easier now, do you think, to find? I mean, Roger could go to Rubelli, but I'm assuming you didn't have that option. But there's all sorts of performance fabrics now. And I know with hospitality, there's all these things that you have to, you know, the certain amount of rubs that it's going to, whatever the fabric is stronger, it has to be fire retardant, as Roger was mentioning. Do you think it's become easier to find interesting and sumptuous and engaging fabrics than it used to be? Do you think that's improved?
- [25:49]
Chad Dorsey
I think so. I think there's so many new resources and just different technology with the performance fabrics. I think there's something for everybody just having designed, and we design in our local workrooms a lot of furnishings. And so we get an understanding of what really works structurally as well as with fabrics for our clients over the years. And I think it definitely applies to hospitality. Just the knowledge that you gain. And I think, you know, we all make mistakes. And just having made some, you learn from those and you think about, hey, this is similar to that mistake before. Why would I ever use that?
- [26:23]
Roger Thomas
So in hospitality, I think the race to the top of solution dyed acrylic fabrics has helped a lot. It's incredibly durable. It is inherently flame retardant. You can clean it with bleach. And really sophisticated houses are producing Solution dyed acrylic. Maria Flora makes an extraordinary line of very beautiful fabrics that do not look outdoor. It was originally developed for outdoor use, but it's come indoors in many, many places now, both residentially and hospitality. There's no better fabric to choose for the living room or dining room of a young family than a solution dyed acrylic. And it's sophisticated enough that you can do that.
- [27:05]
Michael Boudreau
Poonam. In terms of the wear and tear on the restaurant that you did in dc, which is very fun and glamorous, how did you decide? Was it the client for the restaurant that said, you know, I want to push the color, I want this to be really dramatic, or is that from the beginning with the chef? How did that come about?
- [27:22]
Poonam Khanna
Well, for the restaurant, the brief was we want it to feel like it's New Year's Eve every night in here. It's a Michelin restaurant and they have a pretty elevated menu. And there's a sequence of events that you go through when you visit them, which I will not disclose, but which gives you this comparable to Vegas. Like a real experience, like a real. Like you just got to do something that you would normally not.
- [27:46]
Michael Boudreau
You don't go there for a burger.
- [27:48]
Poonam Khanna
Yeah, exactly. You don't go. Well, I'll give you one secret, which is you leave with the burger for later in the night. It's like you're after. You go out dancing and do whatever you want to do. There's a to go burger that you walk out with. But, yeah, it was entirely there, brief. But then we had to figure out in a space that had already been built and been in use for, I guess, five or so years, maybe longer, how we transform something that we're not really building, that we're actually just inheriting into something else. And so we made literally each space very, very different. As you kind of move from the entry into the back, it's also. It's a space where the front is a coffee shop during the day. It has actually two lives. So, yeah, that one came directly from their ethos of how they want food to be experienced by their guests.
- [28:40]
Michael Boudreau
That's a festive. It's a very festive place.
- [28:42]
Poonam Khanna
Very festive. And it is. It's really, really fun. And it's a small restaurant, so you feel like you're at a party with a bunch of strangers, but you're all there together.
- [28:50]
Michael Boudreau
Yeah, well, we've all been to parties with a lot of strangers, so, you know, not so different. And in terms of stores, because store design, retail as we know has been challenged between the Internet and then Covid the whole thing. But it does seem like stores are coming back as something people want to experience. And God knows, shopping is vital to Las Vegas as well. And, Chad, even resorts have small shops or whatever. So how do you engage people to get them to come in and not say, oh, I'll just order it on Amazon or go shopping online? Is that something that. I think the huge department stores have fallen away, except for a few exceptions. Macy's, Bloomingdale's, et cetera, et cetera. But it's very risky. And the experience of Neiman Marcus in Hudson Yards, a huge elaborate store, barely lasted a year. So is this something that you guys have thoughts about, or do you think it's just something that each case is so different? How do you get people to engage, to walk in and be delighted and pick something up and look at it and think, I want this in my life?
- [29:49]
Chad Dorsey
I think a lot of it goes back to the design of the shop, the facade and the entry, and what you're seeing and creating elements that are interesting. I always think it's really great to walk in and see one or two items in a style. So you don't feel like you're buying from the selection of, like, mass quantities. And so you're buying something unique. And I think the boutique could be that way, too. I was just this last weekend, I was at the Bottega at the Rosewood in Montecito, and it was this beautiful shop that had this Italian tile floor that was very simple with these teak elements, and it was really just inspiring. And the amount of product in there was so minimal. But I walked away with something I wanted to buy. And I think that's what we really love about design and hospitality is really kind of inspiring. Just based on very simple ideas and could be elaborate ideas, but just doesn't have to be in mass quantities.
- [30:37]
Michael Boudreau
So more atmosphere, fewer objects, less of a hard sell.
- [30:41]
Chad Dorsey
Like a gallery almost, in a way.
- [30:43]
Michael Boudreau
Right, right.
- [30:44]
Poonam Khanna
Also, there's the aspect of it where it's like interacting with people online or by phone is not the same as when you meet them in person. Right. So when you go to a brick and mortar store, even though you might order a product online from the same brand, it's a different thing to get to know who they are in real, like you would a person. I remember Covid, people took off their masks and I didn't recognize them. We didn't really know each other until we actually took off the masks and saw each Other again after that interval of time. But I think with the weird thing about brick and mortar, to me now is the smaller stores, the smaller brands are actually doing really, really well. And I think it's the bigger brands that are actually more susceptible to not lasting anymore. I don't know why.
- [31:31]
Michael Boudreau
Yeah, I think maybe that's impersonal. And the other interesting thing is a lot of online brands are now opening brick and mortar. So it is a connection. But at the same time, in our world, you'll go to a very nice restaurant and you'll see so many of the young couples across from each other, both of them on their phones. And it's like, I think it's become a harder challenge for you guys, you designers, to really engage people. You know, Roger, I don't think in your resorts, in the casinos and the restaurants, there's a lot of people on their phones because you have that unlimited budget which you exceed, as you said. And, you know, maybe if we could all clone Steve Wynn and make him have other designers work with him, we'd have many more engaging spaces. But I think it's, like, very hard with the limited budgets. As you said, a hotel room will only last five years, seven years, 10 years. It is a constant expense to keep it up. And I think sometimes budget considerations come into that. So how do you really get people to keep them engaged? Chad, do you have any thoughts on that?
- [32:31]
Chad Dorsey
You know, it's just about keeping up with the trends and staying away from the trends, being ahead of it. I'm always like, how do we not be trendy and stick to what we do and stay ahead of what's happening? I'm like, oh, this is so current. We need to be doing, you know, for the projects we're working on three years, what's next? And predicting what's next with fashion, with color, with ideas, and what people will want is what we need to be doing.
- [32:53]
Michael Boudreau
And what are you looking at now for inspiration?
- [32:56]
Chad Dorsey
I can tell you it's hard to pinpoint. It depends on the project and what I'm working on now. We thought about two years ago, and that's developing is coming in three years. So you're talking, wow, it's a five year journey to get there.
- [33:08]
Roger Thomas
I agree with Chad. If you design to trend, you're going to be behind. By the time your project opens, it will have passed. And I think one of the ways you keep attention in restaurants is by use of really extraordinary and dramatic moves, simple, dramatic moves in this space. Something that's memorable and digestible But I think it's also important that you design to experience. And that means that every chair you use is comfortable for three to four hours of dining. And the only way you know if that's going to be true is by actually going and sitting on that chair or having the chair developed for you. You cannot make that selection sitting at a screen and clicking on choices. It doesn't happen. Getting the chair height, the seat height, the arm height, and the table height and thickness all aligned perfectly can only be done in real time, 3D experience. There's no other way to get it right. Thinking that you can use a formula, I think is folly.
- [34:15]
Michael Boudreau
Right? But it's interesting to me, too. You have to balance. I totally agree with you, Roger and Chad. The restaurants, the hotels that you remember are the ones that are dramatic or romantic, visually exciting, but at the same time, they also have to be practical. The waiter has to get from the kitchen to the table. The bar has to seat enough people. It has to make sure they can serve enough drinks and make the place profitable, all of that. So how do you balance those two things? Has that ever been an issue for you, Roger, where they say, oh, this isn't working. You've got too much stuff going on here. Nobody can walk. Those chairs are too expansive.
- [34:56]
Roger Thomas
One of the great advantages of being in house design for Wynn Resorts is when I started designing a restaurant, I had lots of meetings with chefs with the restaurant manager, and I met with anticipated waitstaff, if it was a new restaurant or existing waitstaff, if I was redoing a room, because I felt that one of our crucial tasks was to make the job of each person in the room so simple, so well thought. Have all the adjacencies of mise en place so well placed that that server or whomever could spend more personal time with the guest. I thought that was a really crucial element. And so traffic patterns to and from the kitchen. We always had an indoor and an outdoor for every kitchen so that there was great efficiency there. Inside the kitchen. We worked with the same restaurant designers so that what you hit first inside the kitchen was what you needed first inside the kitchen. It was a very difficult dance to choreograph, but you have to be aware that choreography is an important, important part of any restaurant or bar.
- [36:08]
Michael Boudreau
And Poonam, did you have meetings like that when you were doing the restaurant in D.C. because I'm sure the chef's concern are a little bit different from the owner's concerns.
- [36:17]
Poonam Khanna
Yeah, for sure. The circulation, like it is really a dance with Commercial work because it's a lot of bodies, and they don't all move in predictable ways. So you have to actually anticipate quite a lot. And without, let's call it the OCD that most of us have, there's a point where you have to release some of that to say, okay, somebody's going to choose a different way. If they do, how do we make this all work? Because you don't want to corral everybody either. So fluidity is kind of a big deal, actually making sure that there's enough room. Again, because our spaces are a little bit smaller. It is different, but it does remind me of an architecture school. When you design spaces, thinking of sequence, thinking of when you arrive, is there a pause? Or what's happening happens at each of these thresholds and moments as you move through space. And then when you add the layer of, well, and this guy's doing this, and that guy's doing this, and it has to get to the table by this point and blah, blah, blah, blah. That's a pretty complex solution. But all of it's in the cake. All of it has to get baked in there when we're working on commercial work. So as much as it's aesthetical and visual, there's so much underneath it. The furious paddling under the water is going on in all of these projects because you have to make sure it is durable, practical, functional, logical, and it's not overly controlled. You don't feel like you're being sort of shepherded through these spaces. You get to discover them on your own, too.
- [37:45]
Roger Thomas
And it only takes one guest confused about how to find the restroom to upset the entire choreography.
- [37:52]
Michael Boudreau
And I've been that guest, let me tell you. We all have.
- [37:55]
Roger Thomas
We all have. It's inevitable, right? You have to design for that, too.
- [38:00]
Michael Boudreau
And I can tell you one of the big issues. And I saw this on the Bear, actually, which I think is only gonna increase interest in restaurants now. That's such a huge success. But I remember when I was working as a busboy at Tavern on the Green, the big issue was we never had enough teaspoons. You know, I was like, how could you find a tea? It's, like, so crazy. And those are the kinds of things that you don't learn that in design school to think about that kind of stuff. And that's why it's so interesting. It's like, so, Chad, how do you hire, in terms of finding staff, people who are gonna. That kind of minutiae? We're talking about everything from the grand gesture to where you put the teaspoons, where you put the stations so that they can reset the tables to get people in and out to. How do the nightstands work? I remember once I was in Las Vegas, not at a Wynn resort, unfortunately. It was a business trip, Roger. And I could not figure out. I was exhausted and I've up all day for the trade show, whatever, late dinner. I could not figure out how to turn the lights off in the room. I mean, it just drove me crazy. And I had to call down to the desk and they said they'd sent somebody. I was passed out by the time they sent somebody out. I mean, you know, there's all these considerations. So how do you find people who are gonna understand that and embrace the complexity of that? Is that special skills you look for? Do you train them?
- [39:13]
Chad Dorsey
I think that's really hard. It's really hard to hire someone to do something specifically that you want. I think it's all about experience working with the person, developing projects together, and them understanding the style and the process that you work through. But I found my most successful hires are oftentimes friends or former colleagues of my own employees. I think sometimes if I don't know them, it's almost like a shot in the dark. And sometimes you do really well. Sometimes it's nothing like what you expected.
- [39:41]
Michael Boudreau
Well, yeah, hiring is difficult under the best of circumstances, but these are really special skills. As I mentioned at the beginning, I do think there's a fantasy that a lot of people, residential designers have. We're going to go into hospitality. So I want to ask each of you, what would be your one bit of advice to a designer who's not had a lot of experience doing hospitality? Maybe they've done one little coffee shop or something. How should they think about this task? And why don't we start with you, Poonam, because you're kind of the closest at that level. You've just basically started not starting out because you've had very successful projects in the hospitality arena. But what would be your biggest advice, best piece of advice to them?
- [40:19]
Poonam Khanna
I think what I would say is just be really respectful of the voice of this brand or this company, because that's really what you've got to translate. Like you could put your own flourish and your own point of view on it, but you're here just like with a home. Well, I wouldn't actually. They're not really comparable. Sometimes you hire designers for your home because of their aesthetic that you want. Sometimes they read you and it becomes your Esthetic visualized in a different way. And in particular with commercial, I think you really have to know your client really, really well. Best piece of advice is do your research on your client and the brand so that you can actually add maybe to something that they haven't thought about to what you were just saying, Chad, like, you know, maybe there's a different way to express this. Maybe we can challenge this, maybe we can push this here and there, but you really have to know them to be able to make those decisions. So I would say, like, do your homework on the client.
- [41:18]
Michael Boudreau
And Chad, what advice would you give?
- [41:20]
Chad Dorsey
I think, of course, we all want to be as creative and doing hospitality work is like all about doing something very emotional and capturing that, but it's also very functional. And it goes back to what Roger said earlier about testing every chair and every table. It's so important and I think so many times, I think as residential designers, we get caught up in, hey, this will work, this will work. But you've got so much circulation and so many other factors going into these spaces. It becomes so critical that every inch is really thought about.
- [41:48]
Michael Boudreau
Yeah. And Roger, what would your advice be other than finding another Steve Wynn? Good luck with that.
- [41:55]
Roger Thomas
Yeah, good luck with that. I think I'm speaking from a unique perspective in that I didn't have to do this, but because of the advantage I have, my greatest advice would be assume you know nothing. Do an enormous amount of research. I completely agree with Poonam. And ask as many questions as you can think of. Get all of your questions answered and have the patience to listen. Let them answer the questions, don't help them answer the questions.
- [42:26]
Michael Boudreau
Oh, that's a good advice. I think I'm going to add one.
- [42:29]
Poonam Khanna
More thing, which is measure to the quarter of an inch. When you do commercial work, just go to the fraction, please.
- [42:37]
Roger Thomas
I did a residential project in which everything had to be to the 16th of an inch. And if you're doing a yacht, that's basically what you're going for. So. Yeah, yeah, measure twice, cut once, or.
- [42:52]
Michael Boudreau
Exactly that old refrain. It's so true. It's so true. Well, this has been so interesting to me because other than going to restaurants and resorts and casinos, I don't know that much about hospitality design. And I think many of our listeners are going to find this fascinating. So I really want to thank all of my wonderful guests, Poonam Khanna, Chad Dorsey and Roger Thomas. And I want to thank everyone for listening to the Cherish podcast. You've been listening to the Cherish Podcast brought to you, of course, by Cherish, which was voted by the readers of USA Today as the best place to shop online for furniture and home decor. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell a friend or colleague. Or better yet, go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review. We appreciate your help in spreading the word and we would love your ideas for future episodes. Please email us@podcasterish.com the Cherish podcast is produced by Muggs Buckley and engineered by Hanger Studios in New York, York. Until next time.