On what one item should home-owners always splurge? Why? Anything that’s built into the architecture—never a throw pillow or a cheap sofa. If you cheap out when you’re building your kitchen, you have to live with it for a very long time. Even painting your house. It’s an expensive proposition. Do the right thing.
Where do you like to shop locally for yourself? I always try to shop at independently owned businesses rather than big-box stores. For Midcentury furniture, I go to Century Design; for 18th- and 19th-century, Jules Pass does a great job. For linens, Sallie Home. And then there are all our antique malls. There are great finds in there.
Get a weekly dose of home and style inspiration
Subscribe to the St. Louis Design+Home newsletter to explore the latest stories from the local interior design, fashion, and retail scene.
How would you describe the St. Louis design aesthetic? What influences the look here? How has it changed? We now live in a global society, which means that cities and places don’t have their own looks any more. Gone are the days, for instance, when Palm Beach looked like Palm Beach, or the Upper East Side looked like the Upper East Side. With the internet, everyone everywhere is influenced by everything. But looking back, St. Louis has always been influenced by 18th-century England—patterned carpets, mahogany, a heavy use of chintz. It was with ’50s and ’60s architects like William Bernoudy, influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, and Harris Armstrong that things started to get interesting here.
What’s been your biggest design challenge, and what did you learn from it? The biggest design challenge is always the execution—finding the right tradespeople to bring the thing into being. In 1999, I was one of the design firms selected to create a special vehicle for the papal visit. We had a very short 30-day window in which to completely transform a catering truck, but by identifying the right craftsmen, we got it done in half the time. That’s the secret.
Describe your dream project? Of course it’s any project where the client is happy. It’s finding design that makes the house seem like a natural extension of who the client is. In other words, if they open the door and look like they live, rather than work, there, you know you’ve done a good job. That’s a dream project for me.
