“YOU HAVE TO HAVE A BLOG!” That’s the feedback and advice I kept getting from the friends I asked about how to build my interior design client base. Well, it was actually the second thing they said, right after, “Get a decent website!”
So now I’m happy with my new website. Ecstatic really. And of course I’m happy with my first edition blog that included pics of my daughter’s wedding. But it was posted 4 whole months ago. I’m definitely overdue. I am “Living Unpostponed”, as I’ve named the blog, but my blog definitely is not.
Not knowing what to write about or where to start, I turned to my fabulous writer friend, Anne Marie Petersen (“Annie”) who interviews and writes for a living. Plus, we’re always looking for reasons to get together over wine. So we met up at Rise (the restaurant) in Inwood Village, Dallas. We talked over our bowls of “Marshmallow Soup” [spoiler alert: they’re not really marshmallows] and ate copious amounts of their French bread. And butter. What do the French put in their butter anyway? It’s my crack, my soft yellow buddy that makes me abandon my resolve to eradicate carbs. (“Is butter a carb?” – message me if you get this movie reference. Clue: MG) I digress. Back to talking about making sense out of all things pretty…
So here is Annie’s article, picking my brain, day-in-the-life style.
Cowboy Chic: Design Local, Made Local
By Anne Marie Petersen for Faye Smith Interior Design
Saturday, June 10, 2017
The Meeting
On a warm Spring afternoon in late April I arranged a spontaneous meeting with Faye Freeman Smith. Our conversation meant to answer this question with regard to her most recent client who requested a Texas-themed design: How can a cowboy design go modern? To set the mood we sat down at a local French restaurant and ordered some fine wine. She had just rushed in from a showroom that clearly didn’t meet the evolving definition of “cowboy chic.”
Comfortable Cowboy Chic
How Can A Cowboy Go Modern?
“It was just so packed full of leather shades,” Faye said, describing the showroom she had just come from. “The pieces were the wrong shape, and by wrong, I mean not a current look.” Current is key to the development of a cowboy chic design, and it’s central to Faye’s most current design project. When she first met her client, she started with the basics: what colors does he like, what textures, and what materials. As I listened I learned a client won’t know what they like unless they see examples.
“For example, he said he liked neutrals only, but in a showroom where there’s color, he loves color. He likes the comfort of the shag rug, comfortable things, as opposed to the harshness of iron. He doesn’t like stone as much as he likes wood. And, these are answers to questions he could never have told me had I not put him in that environment or given samples.”
As a non-designer, I wondered and then learned that Faye had to ask herself, how do you marry a western design with modern design? I suppose if opposites attract, in this case opposites blend to make a uniquely attractive aesthetic.
“Like most people, I guess, he’s trying to marry a lot of the things he likes into a common theme.”
If You Can Make It Work in Music, How Can You Make It Work in Your Home?
“It’s a ‘mash up’ in either of the two art forms. There’s got to be enough the same but still offer an element of surprise at the combination.” Not everyone will need to hire an interior designer to blend two different styles, so why not ask an expert, an expert who just created a design? I asked Faye for a check-list of sorts:
Faye’s methods must have worked. Client: “[It] was all the special touches that she added that I couldn’t envision myself. These items really made the space come to life!”
This client likes to entertain and wanted a high-functioning bar cabinet not only for liquor, but for cigars. Faye went on the hunt.
“No such thing exists, which led me to design my own. I decided to cover the base cabinet with a faux alligator skin, and the glass display on top is framed in steel,” she paused. “After that, it’s all booze.”
Adding a bit of humor to the finished piece, Faye sneaks in an armadillo made of metal to watch over the libations. “If it’s a Texas theme you want, we’ve gotta include the State’s most prolific small mammal. Just be happy it’s not the roadkill version.”
In the end, our City Cowboy is “over the moon” (his words) with the process and outcome. “Faye was so easy to work with and extremely responsive to my vision and budgetary restrictions. I’d recommend Faye to anyone.”
