← The Grand Tourist with Dan Rubinstein
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- [00:00]
Bunny Williams
You know, I live the way I do because I really live in my house. We entertain. There's a big table with a bar on it. The drinks are there, the ice bucket. You feel that you could flop down on the sofa. It's not too precious and yet there are good things in there. But I think my whole thing is I do this because I want people to live in these rooms.
- [00:21]
Dan Rubenstein
Hi, I'm Dan Rubenstein and this is the Grand Tourist. I've been a design journalist for more than 20 years and this is my personalized guided tour through the worlds of fashion, art, architecture, food and travel. All the elements of a well lived life. There are many American living legends when.
- [00:37]
Interviewer
It comes to design.
- [00:39]
Dan Rubenstein
So many domestic gods and goddesses, but my guest today deserves the title in spades. She brings a sensibility that seems truly universal to the American household. Her timeless interiors are always elegant without being fussy, comfortable without being sloppy, and interesting without being a bit much. The New York Times called her the doyenne of cozy chic Bunny Williams. Frankly, the only thing more charming than a Bunny Williams interior would be Bunny herself. She and I have always been ships in the night in the world of design, and I'm so glad that I finally got the chance to sit down with her to experience some of that charm myself. Born in Virginia to what sounds like a picturesque American childhood, Bunnie's senses were awakened when she visited the storied Greenbrier Hotel.
- [01:27]
Interviewer
More on that later.
- [01:28]
Dan Rubenstein
She went to Bost and then got her started in New York, first in antiques, but quickly landing the job that would change her life at the iconic design firm Parrish Hadley. She rose in the ranks there before setting out on her own and today.
- [01:42]
Interviewer
After more than 40 years in the.
- [01:44]
Dan Rubenstein
Business, she runs her design firm, Williams Lawrence, as well as her own long standing home furnishings business, Bunny Williams Home. Aside from being a successful and widely.
- [01:54]
Interviewer
Published designer for the well to do.
- [01:56]
Dan Rubenstein
Her concepts and taste in decor have earned her fans far and wide. She's published successful books, one of which, the bestselling An Affair with a House is being re released in a special 20th anniversary edition out this month from Abrams, as well as a new box set reprinting three of her other bestsellers. These kinds of reprints are rare in design.
- [02:19]
Interviewer
After all, there are so many new.
- [02:20]
Dan Rubenstein
Home books out there every year. Why revisit the past? To me, it all speaks to Bunny's charm and her ability to create homes that people can learn from and identify with. And as I discovered, her talents make her a fantastic podcast guest to Boot. I caught up with Bunny from her office in New York to talk about her pony filled childhood. What she learned from the iconic Sister Parrish, her singular best bit of decorating advice, how she met her husband, the celebrated antiques dealer John Rosselli. And much so I wanted to start at the beginning. Obviously.
- [02:59]
Interviewer
I've been such a fan of your work for such a long time and you're such a legend in the interiors world, you know, especially here in the States. And I read that you grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I was wondering what your earliest memory of life growing up there was.
- [03:16]
Bunny Williams
We lived in. I always think I had the ideal childhood. We lived out in the country. We, we had a small farm. My father and mother had a small farm. I grew up. My father raised beagles. There were horses, there were dogs all over the place. There were vegetable gardens, there was, you know, we got up after school, we were outside running around in the summer. We were building forts and there was just a freedom of living that was magical for a child. And we lived in the country and we had a lot of relatives, family members that lived along the same road. So there were lots of cousins and a very large family that, where we gathered together for Sunday lunches and picnics and horse shows and all these things. Something that is sad to me because I think families break away, you know, kids grow up and they move to a different city and we don't have that wonderful sense of having lots of family members in your life all the time, which is pretty special.
- [04:20]
Dan Rubenstein
Yeah.
- [04:21]
Interviewer
And would you consider that sort of Deep south in Charlottesville?
- [04:24]
Bunny Williams
No, no. Charlottesville. You know, I always say Charlotte's is. They think they're southern, but it's, you know, they're close to Baltimore and Washington and so there's a little bit, it's a little less Deep south, but it's pretty sophisticated area of Virginia with, you know, I went to Monticello as a child and, you know, would go look at beautiful houses with my mother and her sisters at garden club things. So you're surrounded, whether you know what you're doing, you're surrounded by cult, you know, a history, a history of architecture that if your family appreciates it, it's sort of by osmosis that you begin to appreciate it too.
- [05:09]
Interviewer
And I heard that your dad was involved sort of the world of horses.
- [05:13]
Bunny Williams
Yes.
- [05:14]
Interviewer
And your mom was known to enjoy some amateur decorating.
- [05:17]
Bunny Williams
Yes, she loved.
- [05:18]
Interviewer
Tell me about the horses. First of all, just because I know that you, you had a little. Maybe you tried to, tried to do that as a young girl or what was that like?
- [05:28]
Bunny Williams
Well, I spent my life. I spent my life in the summers on a pony, riding around. It was just, you know, it was fun. Actually. The part I liked at the stables was polishing the bridles and brushing the horses, going around in the ring over and over again to learn to walk, trot and Canterbury sort of bored me. I think it's my, my ADD personality came in and I'm like, do I have to do this much longer? But I loved, I loved being around the animals and my father was an extraordinary rider and just loved it. I woke up one day and realized I was never going to be an extraordinary rider. It's like any athlete, you have to have a passion for it. And I didn't. And I said to my mother once, is there anything in the world besides horses? And she said, yes, there's lots.
- [06:18]
Interviewer
Was he a hors, like a trader or is he a trainer?
- [06:22]
Bunny Williams
Well, he rode horses and then he was head of the American Horse Shows Association. So he fox hunted and rode in horse shows and did eventing and things like that on his own. And then when he was a young man out of college, he rode horses for other people who paid him to ride their horses because he was such a good rider.
- [06:44]
Interviewer
And so what was home life like? Was it strict or, you know, what was that kind of.
- [06:48]
Bunny Williams
No, it was pretty relaxed. You know, I did get in trouble every now and then when I pushed the boundaries. But I had a really loving, really loving family. My father was. Had a great sense of humor. So even if I was naughty, I think he found a lot of humor in it. We were strict in. We had to have good manners. We sat at the table and had dinner with my parents. We learned how to eat at the table. So there were. It wasn't strict, it was just what you did and you were corrected if you didn't stick your hand out and introduce yourself. And I think that's something that gets lost today. And I'm very glad they, they gave me that background.
- [07:34]
Interviewer
You've told the story, you know, before of how at 15, you visited the Greenbrier Resort, which had just been redecorated, I think at the time by Dorothy Draper. Can you tell us a little bit about that visit and that place for people that aren't familiar, especially for those.
- [07:49]
Bunny Williams
Maybe not in the US The Greenbrier Hotel was a turn of the century, big summer hotel that was built in West Virginia. Incredible space, big white building. Now it's very fancy. It's Got many golf courses, and it's very popular. But when I went to see it, it was more modest in. In its facilities because it was a long time ago. But there was a golf course and tennis courts and spas. It's known. There are. There are all these wonderful treatments of salt water, sulfur water. So there was a big spa component to it. And Dorothy Draper, who was this great American decorator, had just refurbished it. And my parents were friends of some of the people who had invested in it. And so we got the. They were invited to go to a sort of opening lunch. There were not that many people there. And they took me along. And, you know, I came from a conservative household. My mother loved oriental rugs, and it was attractive, but not, let's say, not bright colors. And I was 15 years old, and I walk into the Greenbrier Hotel and there are these emerald green walls with white plaster palm trees and black carpets with roses all over. I mean, it was like kind of a fantasy dream for a young person who is visual and interested in the arts and colors. And it was just amazing. It was absolute magic for me. And so that's when I sort of learned what an interior decorator was or designer was. Is that people. This lady was hired to design, furnish, pick out everything. And I kept thinking, ooh, that seems like something that would be fun to do. I'd had a dollhouse growing up. You know, I was always papering it. I was always playing around with my own dollhouse. I was always wanting to repaint my room a different color. So I had an interest in those kinds of things. But you don't know how you're going to channel them.
- [10:02]
Interviewer
And you went to school in Boston? Correct.
- [10:04]
Bunny Williams
I went to a junior college in Boston that had an interior design program. I wanted to go to New York, to college, to parson. My parents couldn't imagine me living in New York City with a school that didn't have a dormitory. So I found a junior college in Boston that had an interior design program.
- [10:24]
Interviewer
And what was it like there? What was the curriculum like, going to school in Boston?
- [10:30]
Bunny Williams
Like everything I've done in life, it's pretty loose. We lived in townhouses on Commonwealth Avenue. It was sort of in those days, what they call a finishing school. So you had courses? Yes. You had English and history, but then you could take fine art drawing. I took life classes. I could study fashion design. And we lived in these beautiful turn of the century townhouses on Commonwealth Avenue. And one of our jobs or one of the curriculum of being in the school is that every two weeks, another two of the students had to manage the house. We had to plan the meals. We had to arrange the budget for running the house, because they thought in those days that they were turning out these ladies who would maybe go on and have a big house of their own. But it was fun, and the curriculum was varied and things that really interested me.
- [11:27]
Interviewer
And like, where was the design aesthetic at the time when you were in school and coming right out of school? Like, what was the. What was the popular look like? What were they trying to kind of. What were they teaching you? And what was the sort of prevailing aesthetic at the time?
- [11:42]
Bunny Williams
Well, I think what I was being taught was not a style, but the basics, how to do a floor plan. I think that a good school exposes you to style. I mean, my real education was later when I went to Parish Hadley at Garland. I learned how to do floor plans, elevations, sort of the practical side of. And there was a little bit of color theory. I also was taking art. But I don't feel that they were enforcing a style on me, which I don't think any educational institution, they should expose you to styles. But what you hope is that you give somebody a creative background to make their own style.
- [12:31]
Interviewer
So you graduate and you head off to Manhattan, where you've always wanted to go. And your first big break was working for Parrish Hadley. You know, what would you say you learned there? And if you could maybe describe. Again, it's kind of like a greenbrier to people that may not know this sort of legendary firm. Like, who were they? And.
- [12:52]
Bunny Williams
Well, in those days, actually, my very first job when I was 20, was in an English antique shop called Stair & Company, which was amazing because I got to see all the designers. I got to see all the people that came in. I got to. I was the receptionist. So I got to meet Mr. Hadley, Mrs. Parish, Mrs. Morgan, Mrs. Brown and McMillan, all the kind of Billy Baldwin. All the famous designers would come in of that era with their clients. And I also got to learn a lot about furniture. I had to write out the descriptions for furniture. So it was a great training place. And I really knew I wanted to go to interior design. And by having been at Stair, I got to see and feel a little bit about. And I was studying who did what. And I knew that I really wanted to go work at Parish Hadley. And in those days, Mrs. Parish had started the firm. Albert Hadley actually had been at a competitive firm called macmillan. They were the top design firms at the time. They had Very established clients. The. What was the old money as well as the new money of the. This is. You know, this is in the late 60s. So it was a different, different time. But what was amazing is I decided that I loved. From what I could tell, I loved Mrs. Parish and Albert's approach to design. I actually had been in a house that Mrs. Parish had decorated for a man who lived in Virginia, who was a friend of my father's. And what I loved was the warmth and the coziness. It wasn't academic. It was. There were beautiful things, but you walked into these houses and you felt like I could live here. And so I chose that if I was going to work for a design firm, that would be the one I would like to work for. So one day I walked up and knocked on the door and introduced myself. It was a small Little office on 69th Street. And turned out that Mr. Hadley needed a secretary. And I was willing to do anything. I mean, I think that you walk in the door, you get into a place you want to be. And I knew that I had a lot to learn. And what was extraordinary about the firm was that they were working on the great houses of America, many of them, The Whitney family, Mrs. Astor's house, the Paleys who. Who had these beautiful houses in Long Island. So I, even as a young girl, taking samples or going along to take notes, was seeing interiors, private interiors of this sort of high end of American living.
- [15:51]
Interviewer
It was like the creme de la creme.
- [15:52]
Bunny Williams
Basically, it was the creme de la creme. I mean, you couldn't. And, you know, you're just overwhelmed by it. It was like going to the Greenbrier, except this was real life. And, you know, the fresh flowers in every room and the way these houses were rung and the way they were put together was magic. And as I say, the thing that I love so much about the way Mrs. Parrish and Albert approached. They were homes. They were to live in. They may be grand, but, you know, there were dogs running around and there was life there. And I think that is very, very important. In the end, that's what it's all about.
- [16:34]
Interviewer
And you were at the firm for how long?
- [16:37]
Bunny Williams
I was there for 20 years. I said I went to the University of Parish Hadley. And, you know, it's. What's so interesting is that we. Parish Hadley, in those days, we not only did they do interior design, but they had an architectural department. So we. We often would go into an apartment or a house and do the drawings to correct a space. So you learn that you have to look at a room. I mean, Albert said, look at the room bare. What's good about it? What's not good about, you know, what can you correct to make the room better? Raise the doors. How do you, you know, if it's low ceilings, how do you make them seem higher? How do you solve the problems of the space before you think about what color it's going to be? And that was amazing. The other thing that was so astounding is that Albert was really a teacher. He had taught at Parsons School. We would go to his apartment after work, and we would just sit, and he would have a couple of martinis, and we would talk about design. We talked about every great designer in the world. Great houses, great rooms. He had his scrapbooks. I mean, I learned more in those evenings than, you know, I'd ever learned in school. Designers I'd never heard of traditional ones, contemporary ones. It was just an exciting time. And he always. Whenever we were. When I moved up and started working on a project, he made me do a scheme, and I presented it to him. And then he'd say, well, now, what is this for? What is that for? So, you know, he knew. He made me think. And it was a discipline that I, you know, I'm indebted to. And I don't think enough people have that exposure anymore.
- [18:43]
Interviewer
And, you know, by the time you left, maybe in the last couple of years of working there, like, what position were you in? And what were you kind of. Were you handling your own projects and things like that?
- [18:52]
Bunny Williams
Yeah. Yes, I was handling a number of projects. And as a matter of fact, we. You know, I had tried to, you know, talk to them about a partnership, and it was very difficult because I think Mrs. Parish, you know, was her firm. You know, it was. Sometimes you have people who just, it's me, or that's it.
- [19:14]
Interviewer
And you still call. I've noticed you still call her Mrs. Parrish.
- [19:17]
Bunny Williams
I call her Mrs. Parrish. I've called her Mrs. Parish till she died. It's so many. I always think it's funny when people call her sister, and I'm like, really? And I call Albert, Albert. But we were. And yet I was very close to her. But I think I was just brought up that you call her Mrs. Parish, and she was always Mrs. Parrish to me.
- [19:39]
Interviewer
Yeah. I mean, to me, she's just a photograph that we. When I was back in my days as an assistant in House and Garden, and she was just a photo of a legendary person, and that was it.
- [19:48]
Bunny Williams
You know, I mean, I had great fun with her. I mean, we would travel, drive to. I'd drive to Maine with her because she didn't like to fly. So we'd take these long jaunts to go to Maine. We'd be in the car talking. And she was fun. I mean, and it was interesting. I learned a lot from. I think that the thing I find interesting about working for the two of them is that Albert was a real academic designer. He knew everything. And he could do a Victorian room, a French room, a modern room. He was. He just was so versatile in his approach to design. Mrs. Parish was looser, and so Albert's tended to be more studied. You know, he did a floor plan, and it stayed that way. Mrs. Parrish was a little bit. She liked to move things around, throw something over a sofa. You know, even though you had a floor plan, she'd always go in and mess it up and kind of move it around. So it was watching the. These two people work together that was really stimulating. I always think in the end, I'm somewhere in between the two of them. I mean, I hear Albert in my head all the time. And then I have the fun of, you know, doing exactly what she did by just layering things and taking away the edge of. Sometimes design can be so austere in plan that you're afraid to move anything. And that doesn't always make for a comfortable room.
- [21:26]
Interviewer
And I mean, at the time, what year did you leave around?
- [21:30]
Bunny Williams
I started my business in 1988.
- [21:32]
Interviewer
Okay. And so, you know, at that point that that kind of mid century modern period had completely passed through, and it was kind of coming into a new era of the 90s. And postmodernism has kind of had its day. And there was that kind of. With the very beginnings, I guess you could say, of rediscovery of traditional aesthetics. Right. Is that how you would describe the scene and where you thought you fit into it at the time?
- [22:01]
Bunny Williams
Well, I think that obviously I came from a traditional background. I grew up in a traditional thing, so my interest is traditional. I think that if you grow up with modern, you know, in a modern house, with parents who collect modern art or have your whole sensibility is going to be different. So a lot of our soul about what we do, I do think comes back to that childhood that you're talking about. I think the thing that I loved about Parrish, Hadley, and it's what I hope that we do. If you look at their work, if you really study it, yes, it was traditional, but it was also incredibly inventive. I mean, Albert Hadley was the first one to do, you know, black and white herringbone stencil floors. He was doing this when everybody was still doing wood floors with oriental rugs. Albert was always looking. It was traditionally base plan, but you know, there were just something the two of them were always wanting to do something creative. I remember Mrs. Parrish got very involved with women in America that made patchwork quilts. We had been working on a house for Jan Sharon Rockefeller and Sharon Rockefeller was so supporting these quilting bees across of America. Well, Mrs. Parish loved that. So we went down and, and they had, we had fabric made to make curtains out of, out of, made by the women who made these patchwork quilts. So there was always this inventive looking for something out of the ordinary. But those, those patchwork quilt curtains went in a traditional room with English furniture, which was always what made it fun and exciting.
- [23:45]
Dan Rubenstein
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- [25:09]
Interviewer
And so what was your first big break once you got set out on your own? Is there like a project that kind of sticks out in your mind?
- [25:15]
Bunny Williams
Well, I was very lucky. I, as I say, I walked out with a number of clients who I was. One of the things I was very afraid to leave was, you know, would they go with Me or would they want to stay? Because I work for this firm with such a big name and, you know, did they have to have that name attached to what they were doing? And when I approached the clients I were working on, they all said, of course we're with you. We want to help you in any way we can. So one of my clients, I had done their apartment in the city and they had bought a beautiful house in Florida in Palm Beach. This was years ago. And it was an old house that needed tremendous amount of renovation because it hadn't really been touched. But it was a Wyeth house. But, you know, it needed air conditioning. It needed brought up to the 21st century. And I worked with these clients and with Mark Ferguson, who's a very successful architect who I had worked with at Parrish Hadley and got them started in their business. So it was sort of like all of us coming together to work on this project. And I didn't have an office. I remember showing them the first plans and schemes for the apartment, for the house in my apartment, when I wasn't supposed to have an office in the apartment, but I had to work out of the apartment till I found an office. So. And that apart, that project appeared in Architectural Digest, so it was pretty exciting.
- [26:48]
Interviewer
And so as you left, like, did. How did. In those first, let's say in the 90s and you know, that first sort of decade of you being out on your own, like, how did your aesthetic sort of evolve or did, you know, once you were out on your own, did you kind of start doing things differently and, you know, march to the beat of your own drum?
- [27:05]
Bunny Williams
Well, I think you marked you even when I was there. If you're creative, you're marching. I don't change. I mean, if you look at my work, I think it's the work. It's the same thing I find about Parrish Hadley's work. In a way, it's not dated. You know, it can be traditional, but even the traditional isn't dated. I mean, why should we have traditional leanings and say, oh, that's dated? What's dated is when you're not true to yourself. And to me, the fun today is mixing it all up. I mean, I love mid century furniture with English furniture, with contemporary art, make it be so classic that you can't pinhole it, you can't put a time on it. And I think that anything that is of a period, I don't care if it's English, if it's Federal, if it's French, if It's deco. If you have an all deco room, you're not going to see it. It all begins to mush together. But you take a great deco cabinet and you put it with, you know, something not related to it, it's harder to do that, but you get this yin and yang that I think makes for exciting interiors.
- [28:24]
Interviewer
And how did you meet John? Where does he sort of enter into your life?
- [28:28]
Bunny Williams
I've known John since I was probably in my. I was working at Parrish Hadley, and John had a shop and I was. Mrs. Parish needed some accessories and things for the shop and I was helping her, and she said, well, go to John Roselli's, and he has wonderful objects and accessories. And so I went into his shop and I met him and we just hit it off. And then we both. We were chatting and he was. I was in there one day and they were ordering wholesale bulbs, and I had bought the house in the country. And he said, would you like to add on to this order for the wholesale of daffodil bulbs? And I said, oh, yes. So anyway, we ordered the bulbs and I would just go in and see them in the shop. And then many years later, I was in there one time and I. We were talking, I said, you know, I've never been to the Chelsea Flower Show. And he said, well, I haven't been either. Let's go. And I was married at the time, and not. Not in a successful marriage, but I was still married. And so John and I went off to the Chelsea Flower show together, which was the beginning. I said, we. We decided to open a shop. We came back and we opened a great garden shop called Trailage, which we had for a number of years. That was historic of its fantasy. It was in an old blacksmith shop, and in those days nobody had a garden shop.
- [29:55]
Interviewer
I mean, where was the shop exactly?
- [29:57]
Bunny Williams
It was on 75th street between York and First Avenue in what was the building that was the carriage house is for the big townhouses on the east side. So it had these big carriage house doors and brick walls, and it was magic place. The whole thing was filled with garden things inside, outside, just things that John and I love to buy. And I always say we had the baby first, and that was triage. And then obviously it started our relationship together, which we're two peas of a pod. I always say, if you look at a bookshelf and we're the bookends, every book in between, we share and come.
- [30:43]
Interviewer
Oh, that's nice. And, you know, it's funny because there are Certain designers, over time, maybe not so much anymore, just because New York has changed and it's impossible to find a carriage house that can be turned into a shop for gardens or, you know, accessories and things like that. But do you think that having sort of, you know, a retail part of your business with a store and people coming in the door, do you think that that kind of helped you in your career? You know, obviously, beside the financial element of it, was it sort of.
- [31:15]
Bunny Williams
It never really. It never made a lot of money. The problem with it, the problem is, is that if you have money in the bank, you go off to Paris or you go to the flea markets and you spend it in two seconds and you come back and you're like, oh, we don't have any money again, because you just want to buy beautiful things. You know, I think what helped, I think the fact that I'd have establish a decorating career. And John obviously was well known because he had his own antique shop, brought people to the shop. I think that it's interesting in America, which is very different than England. England, all the decorators had shops. You know, Colfax and Fowler, Robert Keim, all the great English decorators. Nina Campbell, they had a shop, and that's how people got to know them. That was not the case in New York. And I think it's funny, because I'm not sure we are such a decorating centered country. Europe is not. I mean, every. Every European designer I know that even is successful always say, it's nothing like the decorating in America. In America, people do the whole project. They build a house, they decorate it. They. In Europe, a lot of people have things, you know, if they want you to work on their house, they need a pair of curtains for the drawing room or they want to recover a sofa. There's a. There's less of, you know, there's some of it. But it's not like in America. This is huge country. We have new people, new wealth, new houses. The growth of this country is amazing, and that has supported the decorating business. So back to what you're saying. I think that decorators are competitive with each other. So a decorator, another designer doesn't necessarily want to walk their client into a shop that has my name on it. They want to go to an antique shop. They want to go to shop. But it's a little bit of a different situation.
- [33:22]
Interviewer
And when it came with you and John working together, you know, when it comes to design and interiors, is there something that you guys just never quite saw Eye to eye on very little.
- [33:33]
Bunny Williams
John is. Well, let me say this. John really loves his things. I mean, he loves his objects. So he doesn't really like decoration very much. And it was very funny. We were building a house together in the Dominican Republic, and I had to get everything recovered. He had a lot of furniture from a house he'd sold in New Jersey because we were living together. And so we had all this furniture, but I had to get fabrics and things, so I thought, okay. So finally I got everything I wanted to do, and John came home one night and I said, john, I want you to look at these fabrics and things because I need to order things to get them recovered so we can ship them to the Dominican Republic. And he looked at it and he said, I hate everything. I said, what do you mean you hate everything? He said, oh, it's just too much. Because John really likes white walls, sisal carpet, and beige furniture, because then he wants all these things. And I said, john, this is Dominican Republic. I'm telling you, this one fabric that you think is the whole room is just going to be on one chair. And finally he said, okay, okay. And of course, he loved the house when it was finished and it wasn't overdone, but I think he had this moment of thinking he was going to walk in and it's all going to fancy, you know, too much pattern, too much stuff. And he was very happy to see all of his furniture restored and in the house. So.
- [34:57]
Interviewer
But it sounds like a collector's mind.
- [34:59]
Bunny Williams
Yes, total collector's mind.
- [35:02]
Interviewer
And, you know, since you've had quite the successful career, I'd like to think of you as someone who sort of rides out any kind of trend that is, like, here today, gone tomorrow. And you really always come back to this idea of comfort. Do like younger designers on your team. Ever try to convince you of something that, you know, when you're putting together a house that maybe that generation is sort of fascinated with now that you have sort of younger people on your.
- [35:30]
Bunny Williams
Team, and I love it, I want them to bring. They excite me all the time. You know, they're so much more geared into all the, you know, Pinterest, TikTok, all the. They see things more than I do. I mean, I frankly, I spend my free time looking at my books, my own scrapbooks. I don't spend a lot of time on a computer or my phone. I just didn't grow up with it. And I'd rather look out at things than just the phone. But they see new things, new Artists. So they're bringing new things to me all the time, you know, new fabrics, new textiles. So all of a sudden, there's. There's this bold, you know, wow. And then I think, okay, I can do this. You know, this is. This is fun. You know, I think that. I think decorating and if. If you live in a house or an apartment for a long time, if you think this is. It's like, you know, the book that's coming out, An Affair with House. I've lived in that house for 40 years. I knew when I bought it, I was gonna. I couldn't afford everything, so I had empty rooms for a long time, but I knew this was gonna be a home base for me. And I think that you don't want things to be too trendy. I remember in the beginning, I had no art, no furniture. So I put this big patterned wallpaper in my living room, and I had chartreuse curtains, and everybody walked in and said, oh, I got so sick of it. And I got rid of it because it just was, like, too much. So I think that when I look at things, and I think you want to be bold, but you also want people to make sure that they're going to love it for a long time because it's expensive to do all these things.
- [37:26]
Interviewer
And you've done a lot of books. One of your latest is Life in the Garden, and you've also created online courses with Create Academy, which are wonderful. And do you like this idea of sort of teaching and sharing about what you've learned about design? Because now, from hearing you, it sounds like there was so much learning from your time at Parrish Hadley that it's kind of. Maybe it's sort of wired into you this idea of passing things on and sharing information and ideas and not being kind of a guarded decorator, guarding their secret list of what?
- [38:01]
Bunny Williams
I totally. I feel so strongly about that. And the older I've gotten, I was so blessed and lucky to have the education that I had. I mean. And Parish Hadley turned out a lot of great designers. Brian McCarthy and I did a book called the Tree of Life, which is all the people that came out of that design firm. And it's astounding of the talent that was there. And I believe that you don't. It's hard to get that kind of information. Design schools don't teach it anymore. You know, when are you going to sit around and talk about, you know, Elsie DeWolf and Jean Michel Frank and, you know, all the. All the design people and the gurus and, you know, Amelia O'Tieri, all these. It's just amazing. And half the time, people, young designers who have a name, if you gave them a list, I could give them a list of a lot of people important in the design world, and I bet they wouldn't know who they were, just because there's no source to get it. So I'm hoping that, you know, that we. That I can leave some of that curiosity. They may have to go find it themselves, but just open the door to. To being curious and travel and educate yourself.
- [39:23]
Interviewer
And when you're kind of, you know, teaching others about stuff or you're kind of putting together a book, is there something that comes up again and again that you kind of feel like you have to edit into what you're doing, if you know what I mean? Like, you come up with a plan, and then you look at it and you go like, no, no, there's this idea or there's this concept or something that keeps coming up that you have to kind of. Of make sure you're leaving your stamp on it.
- [39:50]
Bunny Williams
That's an interesting question. One of the things that I absolutely feel is that people have to go and see things in person. You cannot understand a room from a photograph, from a Pinterest picture. You just cannot do it. Even rooms that I knew that I'd seen a thousand pictures, when I finally got to go see them in person, I was like a different experience. And so I think that, you know, I try to encourage people to, you know, instead of going and lying around the beach for their vacation, try to travel, try to go see houses, try to go look at things. If this is your passion, this is what you have to do. And, you know, if you're good at this, it is a passion. I mean, it is something, you know, I take a trip. Where do I go? I end up in a house, museum, an antique shop. I'm always doing something. And, you know, you go to a great shop, and then the shop owner tells you about a little restaurant in Lisbon that you wouldn't have found. And then they tell you about, oh, you know, try to go see this. And, you know, the world opens to you if you have curiosity. And I think you have to go.
- [41:11]
Interviewer
Look at things with, like, life in the garden. Gardening is such a sort of part of your identity with the success of the book and things like that. Is there a bit of gardening advice that you give people if they kind of are a newbie and they're kind of saying, oh, well, looks doable?
- [41:27]
Bunny Williams
I Think that one of the things, I always laugh, I think, you know, you can decorate your living room and maybe once a week you could push the vacuum around and dust it. The thing about a garden, it is constant, constant maintenance. And I think you have to only bite off what you have time to do. My garden has grown. I now have to have full time people there. You know, I started out gardening on the weekends myself. I had two perennial borders. You know, being a designer and wanting to develop the property, it's gotten completely out of hand. And I think people don't quite understand the maintenance side of it. What can they hire somebody to do or what do they expect to do themselves? And if they have to do it themselves, just have shrubs, just have trees, have it very simple. Because gardens, even a vegetable cutting garden takes constant work. And I think it's the reality of it where you don't have to be quite so realistic when it comes to your house about maintenance.
- [42:33]
Interviewer
And in 2023, your firm sort of changed names to reflect the new partner in the business, Elizabeth Lawrence. Tell us about Elizabeth and how long is she working with you before the change was made and how all that is going?
- [42:48]
Bunny Williams
Well, Elizabeth came actually came to my office as an intern. She was at New York School of Interior Design and she came in for a summer internship and she was here for two summers, I think. Then she went on to do something else for a while. And then I was looking for somebody and she came back and she was hired immediately. She had been the best intern I'd ever seen. I knew immediately she had a good color sense, she was passionate. We would talk about design. It was just. She was a unique person. And. And so she was hired and she has worked with me. We were talking about it yesterday, last night, actually. And it's almost. It's a little over 20 years from the time the internship, then a couple years off and then working here and, you know, it was. She became a partner three years ago. And I want, you know, she's so. She's so much a part of this office anyway. I mean, she helps me so much on the business side of it, the personnel side of it. You know, the decorating part is the fun part. But you running a business is.
- [44:07]
Interviewer
How many people are you at this point?
- [44:09]
Bunny Williams
16.
- [44:12]
Interviewer
On the whole studio side?
- [44:14]
Bunny Williams
Yeah. I mean, well, there's 16 in the design side, which is backup coordinators, accounting. And then there are. I have Bunny Williams Home, my furniture line that has about 10 more people.
- [44:32]
Interviewer
Oh, gosh. And so how does that work with your Studio. Does the studio design the products or do you have a separate team for that or how does that work?
- [44:41]
Bunny Williams
Well, I do the designing with a team at Bunny Williams home. I'm always thinking, oh, I miss designing some things this week. And you see something and I think, oh, well, that would make a great mirror. Or something comes up like, I want a coffee table that's higher. So if you're on your sofa wanting to watch television, you can have your dinner in front of you, not on a low coffee table. So I'm trying to make a sort of old fashioned tea table height coffee table because that's the way people live. I mean, you're at home, you've got a sofa, you want to put your, your dinner there. I don't want it on the floor. So I'm trying to make something that sort of relates to that. So designs come up because of need sometimes and you get inspired. So I do, I work on all the designs that come out of it with people from Bunny Williams home. And even Elizabeth will say, did you see this? Or what do you think about that? So we're all. She's contributing to the design side of it too.
- [45:46]
Interviewer
And I heard you're also working on a boat coming up or you've done a few before perhaps?
- [45:50]
Bunny Williams
Well, not like this. This is a huge sailing yacht and it's quite, it's been fascinating. I adore the architects of the boat. I mean, they're just totally different. I mean, when you think every tiny little thing that can, you know, has to be thought out, it's space, you know, you can't have a drawer that falls out. It's. The technical things of building a boat are amazing and there's a lot of weight considerations.
- [46:22]
Interviewer
Everything has to be balanced out and you can't just move a chair.
- [46:25]
Bunny Williams
Well, and also this is a sailing yacht, so everything has to. It's not like a big flat yacht where things don't move. This boat is sailed. I mean, the owner is an incredible sailor. So everything has to be attached. You can't have. Every chair has to be, has to have a way of being attached if the boat's under sail. So it's fascinating. It's just fascinating.
- [46:48]
Interviewer
How big is this sailing yacht? I mean, in terms of square feet? Ish.
- [46:54]
Bunny Williams
It's very big.
- [46:55]
Interviewer
Okay.
- [46:55]
Bunny Williams
Very, very big.
- [46:57]
Interviewer
So is it a harder, you know, if it was a house of the same size, is it something like it's twice as difficult or in your estimation, like, is it just something.
- [47:06]
Bunny Williams
Well, it's interesting because it's really, you know, a house needs every piece of furniture, piece of art, everything. The majority of this boat is built by the boat builders. I worry about. I'm doing carpets, fabrics, but working with the architects and the discipline of where lighting goes. So it's been more of a, I would say, an interior design project than decorating because you, you can't decorate it a lot. You can have car may have carpets made, fabrics for the upholstery. I mean, beds, bunkettes, artwork. But it's the technical part of it that has been fascinating to me. How do you, you know, it's a. Though the boat's big, each space is small. So how do you function in that? Where does someone sit? So that part of it has been fascinating. You don't have to furnish it with a lot of things because everything has to be built in.
- [48:11]
Interviewer
And one thing we've brought up before is this sort of idea of comfort, which is such a English American idea. I don't know, in my own head, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. And, and in this sort of age of Instagram and flat images and Pinterest and everything, like, what is your advice to people where you're trying to create a comfortable, an actually comfortable home?
- [48:36]
Bunny Williams
Well, first of all, you think about how do you live? You know, you've got a room, where's the television going to go? Where are you going to work? What is your, what do you, what do you need to do in these spaces? And you kind of start there and you think, okay, I really do want a big television. I like to watch movies or whatever. So needless to say, you're gonna have a sofa across from that. I think that we're all working from home. I mean, even if you go to an office, you come back and you've got your computer, how do you wanna work on the computer? And it's great if you've got a place, a table or a desk. I mean, a lot of people I see work with their laptops. I, I do have an iPad, that I do. But when I'm really trying to work on something, I prefer the computer not to be in my lap. And particularly if I'm typing or looking up things. So where is that going to be? And I think that helps to form your floor plan of where you're going to put furniture. I think the other thing is people got to get the scale right. I mean, everybody thinks, oh, you know, I need it. 10 foot long sofa. Well, maybe it doesn't fit in your room. I mean, maybe it, you know, so you've got to learn a little bit about scale and make sure that it complements the size of the room that you're working in. And I think if you, if you have a sofa and you want people, if you want six people, how are those people going to relate to each other? You know, so you've got sofas on either, chairs on either side. You've got some chairs facing the sofa so that if you have friends over, it makes sense. They all have a place to sit down. And when they sit down, they should have a table next to them to put their drink on or their coffee. I always say I started Bunny Williams home because I couldn't find drinks tables because it drives me crazy when I go someplace and I've got a glass of water or, you know, a drink or a glass of wine and I sit down and there's no place to put it. It that's not comfortable. So it's thinking like, thinking things like that, thinking about things.
- [50:42]
Interviewer
And has this sort of. You mentioned working from home. Is there anything in the sort of post pandemic world of design that you feel has shifted beyond just knowing where to place a laptop? Is that kind of, do you sense a shift in what your clients are looking for and kind of what they need at home?
- [50:57]
Bunny Williams
Well, I think, I think what happened is a lot more people stayed at home and they, I mean, our clients are, you know, they're, you know, they're, they, it's not so much they've shifted, but they really care about their homes because they spend a lot of time in it and they're like this, this could be improved. This. Maybe we should really spend some money on this because we understand. I think it got people to use their homes.
- [51:27]
Interviewer
So they're looking closer, basically.
- [51:29]
Bunny Williams
Yes. Yes.
- [51:30]
Interviewer
Oh, okay.
- [51:31]
Bunny Williams
I hope.
- [51:32]
Interviewer
Sounds like a good thing and a bad thing. I don't know at the same time. And there are a lot of younger folks, you know, in the emerging design world listening to this, I'm sure. And I'm wondering what kind of advice you have to the sort of next generation of interior designer.
- [51:48]
Bunny Williams
I think the most important thing is that when you have a client, that client is coming to you for information and your knowledge and you got to know what you're talking about. You can't fluff it because they're going to figure it out right away. You also have a responsibility to help them make the right decisions. And it was funny. I was talking to an old client yesterday. I went to see her and she Had. I'd done this apartment, and she decided to make some changes in it because she's got a divorce, she's now got grandchildren. So a lot of the things that I had done for her originally weren't there. Like, wasn't her lifestyle. And she said, I've made a big mistake. And I said what? She said, well, I went. I went to somebody, you know, that I knew. And we ordered all this furniture from such and such a place, which I won't mention. And it's been a nightmare. The things came in scratched. I'm waiting. I've been waiting four months for whatever we have a. This is what I hear over and over again. And deliveries and schedules are harder all the time. Everybody knows that. But part of the staff I have is checking on that. We have what is called coordinators. They're to me, as important as I am. They're the ones who follow up on it, who make sure that the fabric's the right color, who make sure that they make 400 calls to make sure that that table is going to come in as planned so that your clients aren't disappointed. And I think it's very hard for clients when you get things piecemeal. I mean, we have. I always say to a client, this is going to take six months, a year, whatever it's going to take. And we should plan at the end to have what I call an installation. It's not going to do you any good to have a sofa and nothing else. So let's order it, plan it. We know how to allow for the time, the delays that are going to come in. And then when you install it, the client goes, wow, I get it. But it's the follow up that's just as important as all your design ideas. And I think we don't realize how much time that takes. And that's where you can lose a client, and that's where things can really go wrong if you're not on top of the follow up. Up all the time.
- [54:19]
Interviewer
And what's next for you? You've got an anniversary of this book coming up.
- [54:23]
Bunny Williams
Yep, we have this fall. It's 20 years since we did An Affair with the House, and they're launching a sort of updated edition. And they're also, which I'm very excited about, doing a box set of three of my design books that have worked. Printed Point of View, which is one of my favorites, is really informational. I mean, it's written about, you know, electrical plans, floor plans, it's color, it's, you know, It's a couple years ago, but it's basic philosophy of design. So they're reissuing the. The design books in a box set, which I'm excited about. And then Elizabeth and I are working on another book which will come out next fall. Williams Lawrence. And it's the projects that we've done together over the last five years.
- [55:18]
Interviewer
Oh, amazing. And of all the updates that you've had to make to these books that I would say are kind of classic, is there anything that kind of sticks out in your mind that really needed to be updated from when you first worked on them?
- [55:31]
Bunny Williams
No, it was interesting because again, I think good classic information is, you know, each designer is going to put their vibe into it, which they should. Why should somebody copy me? The only thing I could do is to give them some footprints to help things, to help them planning it. But I'm not gonna. I'm not. I don't want to totally influence them on color. I talk about it, you know, and I've had, you know, I've had designers who've worked for me who have a much more neutral palette and some who have a much more flamboyant palette. But that makes them stand out for their personality. You know, you want you. I think again, if you. It's like anything. If you, if you are. If you're going to be good at anything, you got to practice and you've got to know the basics and then you give it the flare that you bring to it as a creative person.
- [56:34]
Dan Rubenstein
Thank you to my guest, Bunny Williams, as well as to Nicole Nicholson and everyone at Blitzer & Co. For making this episode happen. The editor of the Grand Tourist is Stan Hall. To keep this going, don't forget to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter, the Grand Tourist curator@thegrandtourist.net and follow me on Instagram DanRubenstein. Don't forget, you can purchase the first ever print issue of the Grand Tourist online now on our website. Just a few copies left. And follow the Grand Tourists on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen. And leave us a rating or comment. Every little bit helps. Till next time.