10 Milestone Moments Over 10 Years

#3: Chicago Bound

February, 2010: Lincoln Park, IL

I lived and breathed for design in New York. I was among the greats of the greats. I can’t tell you how many days I would skip class to attend a seminar at the D&D only to find Bunny Williams and Albert Hadley leading a group of thirty people. I wanted to hear how it was done straight from the racehorse’s mouths. 

I spent a spring interning for Celerie Kemble, who shared the elite design world’s ins and outs with the fullest transparency and enthusiasm of a professor…a brief apprenticeship that I will never take for granted to this day. 

I would run to go grab a sample and meet John Robshaw. I would bump into editors everywhere. New York was no doubt the epicenter of design. 

Only one small problem - my heart and soul still resided in the Midwest. I always knew New York was just a for-now thing and well….and could sense the time was up. There are not many things scarier than moving a private practice to an entirely fresh city but I could sense that it was now or never. 

A fortuitous phone call from my best college friend and I had my first Chicago project - a single family in Lincoln Park, Chicago. 

10 Milestone Moments Over 10 Years

#2: the big leagues

August, 2009: Richmond, Virginia 

It all started with a meeting in the cafe of the mid-town Bloomingdale’s, just around the corner from the D&D. I was meeting a client, who had just bought a parcel of an old plantation outside Richmond and was on the hunt for an interior designer to help build her dream country home.

It’s amazing how you remember milestone places in your life like they happened yesterday. I could still point to the exact table where we sat and had coffee.

We hit it off immediately. I was humbled to be meeting with this client. I was still marveled that she and her husband would entrust a designer with such a small portfolio to lead such a big project. I had seen the project’s architect and builder in Veranda a number of times. It was no small endeavor. She wanted someone young and eager who would really dive into the project and her vision. I couldn’t have been more eager.

Fast forward eighteen months….

….One Nor’easter later, I had foraged south down 95 with a car full of fourteen foot drapes.

….Made sourcing trips all over the country to find the perfect pieces.

…Hauled more than one piece of furniture down the quarter mile driveway (It’s no joke when the freight truckers say “only to the end of the driveway”….I only later learned of this line item called white glove delivery.)

…I had done the NYC to Richmond drive in more Zip cars than I’d like to admit.

….Filled 18 meandering rooms with Scalamandre velvets, Farrow & Ball greens, Swedish antiques, Turkish rugs and family heirlooms from Vermont.

…Added four more guests to my future wedding. 

I officially had a project in the portfolio. And one very happy client.