It was a good time to begin. New York was flush with Yuppies, who were the first wave of buyers in the co-op conversions that were just beginning to happen in the mid-eighties. Women were entering the job market in force — which gave them a justification for not having the decorating gene or shop endlessly for wallpapaer.For those of you who think of 1985 as history, I’ll remind you that almost all of the New York apartments were rentals. People don’t put in a new kitchen or bath or renovate for a landlord; it’s something they do for themselves. So for the first time in history, there was a new group of people who were hiring interior designers en masse to decorate the apartments coming onto the market, Many of these Yuppies were in their mid-thirties or younger, very well educated, and hiring an interior designer for the first time. I didn’t make the timing: the time made me and I was very lucky to be standing there! The idea of being a design matchmaker was so new that it was written up by New York Magazine, the New York Times, Interior Design, and House Beautiful in the first month. The rest is history. In short order, I opened offices in Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Franciso and Chicago. Then luck struck again: the Internet. It enabled us to tell our story around the world and to work with clients from Saudi Arabia to Shanghai from our private site.
This is a world away from when I started editing. Then, one of the grand perks was to be invited to a Bloomingdale’s model room opening. The A-list was invited the first night; I was a B-lister but I dressed up in my mini-skirted best and oogled those wonderfully done-to-death rooms, praying that one day I could live in such a glorious place where there was always a (faux) banana plant in the corner.
The other great decorating event was and still remains The Kips Bay Boys & Girls Showhouse, which is now 38 years old. It’s the premier platform for showing their stuff. Two of my favorite rooms were John Saladino’s Kips Bay salon in 1986 where he used such a luscious shade of French blue in his taffeta curtains that I had a Scarlett moment of visualizing them as a ball gown. The other greatest room, I think, was Juan Montoya’s at Villa Maria in Bridgehampton, which was an updated Moroccan chic with huge white slip covered upholstered pieces set off against dark polished woods. I’d show these rooms but I don’t have rights for either of these pictures; but everyone in the decorating world remembers them.
Beginning in the late 80’s, the notion of hiring an interior designer started becoming a middle class perk. This is totally different from the 70’s, when I started at Woman’s Wear as an editor. Then, interior designers were a reward for marrying well or being born with a silver spoon in one’s mouth.
The shelter magazines did for interior designers what the fashion magazines had always done for clothing designers – show their work, bring their personalities to a wider circle. For the first time, interior designers and decorating became an interesting subject of conversation at dinner tables in New York. You were nobody if you couldn’t complain about your decorator.
The rising interest in decorating proved the Law of Unintended Consequences. Many of the designers began to get so famous that they were able to license their products. Now you could live in Peoria and have a Mark Hampton sofa; very shortly thereafter one could shop at Target or K-Mart and find the Architectural Digest designers smiling from the hang tag. This has been terrific for the industry. To put it in fashion terms: it’s the DKNY customer who yearns to become a Donna Karan customer.
Our design styles have always been fostered by the magazines. We have an image of an Architectural Digest house or an Elle Décor look. The magazines are concentrated enough to make their message known. Although television sometimes shows rooms of these qualities, their viewership is too diverse to create looks. In fact, what HGTV has done best is give their audience the idea that your decorator will help you paint your house.
The more people who are interested in decorating and aspire to hiring interior designers or doing a fabulous decorating job themselves using ideas from the magazines or the showhouses or HGTV, the better it’s going to be for the industry. We’re on a roll and it can only get better!
