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The Journal

Decorating as Autobiography

Gloria Vanderbilt called decorating a form of autobiography. It is the idea this studio is built on: a home should read like the life of the person inside it.

An artful home studio with a crystal chandelier, painter's easel and antique writing desk by Hallie Goodman

Most design projects begin with a mood board. Ours begin with a conversation. Before there is a palette, a plan, or a single fabric on the table, I want to know how you actually live, where you have been, and what you reach for on a slow Sunday morning. My central goal as a designer is to create interiors that tell the stories of my remarkable clients, spaces that say who they are, where they have been and what they most love.

Start with a question, not a colour

I spent years as a professional writer and editor before I designed rooms for a living, and that work taught me something I use every single day: how to ask the right questions, and how to listen for the connective threads inside the answers. A collection of seashells from a childhood coast. A grandmother's recipe box. The way you always end up reading in the same corner of the house. These are not footnotes. They are the outline of the whole story.

When a room is drawn from those threads, it feels inevitable rather than decorated. Nothing is there to impress a stranger. Everything is there because it belongs to you.

An overhead moodboard of gilt frames, textiles and collected objects
The atelier  ·  where the story becomes a palette

The eye follows the ear

People assume interior design is a purely visual craft. In practice, the best rooms are the ones we heard before we saw. A client mentions, almost in passing, that their happiest hours are spent at a long table with friends and too much wine, and suddenly the whole plan reorganises itself around gathering. The dining room grows. The lighting softens. The chairs become the kind you sink into and forget to leave.

A home should read like the life of the person inside it.

Rooms that hold a life

The reward for all of this listening is a home that gives something back. It is deeply personal, emotionally resonant, and quietly distinctive, impossible to copy because it was never based on anyone else. Some of our clients have told us they no longer want to go on vacation, because nothing feels as restorative and luxurious as their own home. That, to me, is the whole point. A house should not be a place you escape. It should be the place you have been trying to get back to all along.

Begin Your Story

Let's design a home that sounds like you.