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Joe Nye - August 2009
Interview by Coleen Rider & Holli Thomas
Photographs by Coleen Rider
After visiting with Joe Nye, you get the sense that you have spent time with a true blue American decorator, someone who loves what he does and loves the people he does it for. He holds himself and those who work for him to the highest standards. You can't help but think if you are paying for a service, this is exactly the way you want to be treated, something Nye never intends to forget.
Inspired by his enjoyment while giving a floral arranging presentation to a garden club, Nye has decided to take the plunge and pen a book on entertaining with style.
He describes his intended reader as "post Martha Stewart." The book, photographed by Edmund Barr, will be filled with visual inspiration, as well as Nye's theories on how to take a somewhat formal approach to everyday living and entertaining. Some hard and fast rules: there are only two colors of candles, cream and black, and anything other than white linen napkins are considered gauche.
After pouring over the mock-up, we truly understand the choosing of the book's title, Flair. With shopping trips to Tiffany's as well as Cost Plus, the book will mix the high and low, a classic Joe Nye combination. We like to call it "Old school style for the 21st Century."
CR: It is widely known that you have very high standards when it comes to your design firm. Can you tell us about some of your "no wire hangers!" rules?
JN: All of the sticky notes in my office have my logo on them and are white. And if I ever see a blue pen or a pink sticky I will kill you.
CR: Black ink only.
JN: Black ink only. No hand addressed envelopes ever, when it's business. If we wrapped fabrics up to send to a client that lives out of town, they're done in tissue with a red or green ribbon around them.
I hate paper clips. And if you double staple any paperwork together with two or three staples, you will be fired. I mean that. That just drives me insane. That's the reason this office is well equipped with staple pullers, everyone will have like five of these at their desk.
CR: You do it properly one time.
JN: Or you can add to it, but I don't want to see two staples there, if you've added a third page. But let's talk about some decorating rules.
CR: O.k., let's.
JN: Properly proportioned lamp shades are very important to me. The materials used to make a lampshade are very important to me. Silk, linen, or colored fabric or whatever.
CR: So you will use pleated or you will use drum, etc., but you put the attention to the correct size and material.
JN: Right. And make sure that they're not too big. I think a lot of people tend to make lampshades way too large. The next thing I am particular about is everything gets a different welt, everything gets a different header on the curtain, everything gets a different something on the leading edge. Even in our modern decorating, it gets complicated in that a single sofa can have a dozen purchase orders written against it. There's the fabric, there's the welt, there's the button, there's the braid at the bottom. If it's an exposed leg, what color is the leg. And so even though some of the things look really simple, they're really quite complicated and it drives my office crazy because we put ourselves through so much trouble. But that's the reason I think we're successful because people pay attention to details, they want them, and that's what they're paying for. And I think a lot of interior designers get really lazy. They push this stuff out the door without a second thought. We look at every single thing before it's delivered to a client personally, to make sure that it's right. We would never have a sofa picked up from a vendor and delivered straight to the client without having seen it first. The delivery company will pick it up and bring it over to the office so I can look at it in the back of the truck. Then I can truthfully say that I've seen it.
CR: So, it's important to you that your client doesn't have that stress of the item being wrong or not what they asked for. That's an added stress to the client that just is unnecessary if you take the time.
JN: Exactly. And if we make a mistake we fix it. We rarely make mistakes. That's one of the real pluses of our firm - that we don't make mistakes. We really don't. Another interesting thing, and I'd say most of the time but not all, we only present one scheme for a room. Generally the client buys it. We don't present ten different schemes, and I'll tell you why. Because we interview the client so well at the beginning, we know that if they hate red we're not gonna bring them a stack of red fabrics. We really want them to do their homework ahead of time, giving us lots of tear sheets from magazines, so that we can know what they want before we show it to them. Like that one Santa Barbara house; it was all one scheme. That was one visit for an hour and a half. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, I don't really like that one, but I'll substitute it. I'm lucky that way. I don't know about other decorating firms, how they do it. There are a couple of people here and there that we don't have that luxury with, they want to see lots of choices.
I'm very proud of that, that we can nail down the client from day one and give them what they want without showing them a plethora of choices. Now, of course, there is going to be that client that wants to see 200 different choices for pillows. We put our foot down and we say there are no more choices. We've shown you every fabric in the world and short of designing a fabric for your pillows, that would be the next step. We kind of put our foot down. But we're really lucky that way. When that really came to my attention was about five-and-a-half years ago. I had this decorator who had moved here from New York who had worked for some very high end firms there. She said, "I can't believe that you don't show your clients three different schemes for a living room." I said, "I just never really had to". And that's good because it doesn't waste their time looking through stuff that they don't want, and it doesn't waste our time trying to put together color schemes that are undesirable. We were in House Beautiful last spring with one of those things called Instant Room. At the time we were doing a house out in the desert. The client came over to the office for a meeting and she brought the magazine with her and she said, "just do this, this is perfect, this is what I want". Because all the fabrics, the rooms were schemed.
You know what, let me go get Grace (Nye's assistant) for one second.
(Nye and Grace return) I think that one thing too, is we never forget that we are a service business. People pay us to provide the service, and we do. Tomorrow, we need to go drill some holes in an 18th century desk to accommodate computer wires. I'm going to go out there with the guy that's going to drill the holes and stand there and watch him do it. Because I don't want to see a maze of wires hanging down the side of this desk. I'm going to do that myself. I'm not sending Grace, I'm not sending Meredith, I'm doing it on my own. The clients get a lot of me hands on.
Grace: That's what I was going to say. I feel like a lot of design firms, the client pays for the designer's design, but then they don't ever see the designer after the first three meetings. Here, Joe stays involved throughout the whole process.
JN: I mean, I handle 85% of the client meetings, that's what I like to do. I do it because I like it. I pride myself on the fact that, naturally I have excellent help, but I still do the decorating. I go out and I shop the fabrics, and if I ever stopped doing that, then I want out of the business, I don't want to do it anymore. Of course, Grace does get involved.
CR: (to Grace) So to what extent are you involved in the projects?
Grace: Paperwork and organization.
JN: Which is huge. She pulled off a huge project. We did a beautiful job that Grace was on, for a previous client from San Marino. They bought another house last Labor Day, 7500 square foot house in Sun Valley. She had it delivered by December 23rd. Done. Down to the ashtrays.
CR: My God.
JN: Accessories, books, magazines, lamps, every single thing was done by the time the client moved in.
CR: So, Joe, you come up with the scheme, you present everything that goes into the design, and Grace, you take care of all the ordering, all the details, follow up on everyone, make sure everything's on time, make sure everybody has what they need to make it all happen.
JN: The same thing happened two and a half, three weeks ago. We had an 11,000 square foot house in Pasadena that we've been working on for three years. I came in the last two days to move the ashtrays around --
Grace: And that's when I want him there. I don't want him there when they're taking the furniture off the truck, when the cleaners are sweeping the floors to put the area rug down. I know how to put an area rug down, I know where the furniture goes. I need him for the accessories, placing the ashtrays.....
JN: Grace knows that everything gets measured. We don't go into a house and just put the living room rug where we think it looks good. She knows that if you put a console in the middle of a wall and it's not exactly in the middle of the wall, I will pick it up and it will be moved again. Even if it's a half an inch.
CR: (to Grace) You must be so aware that you want it to be right when he comes in.
Grace: It also saves a lot of time.
JN: The services we use know without being asked, because they've done so many installations with us. If a lamp gets put on an end table in a living room, and I can see that cord when I walk in the room, they're fired. They already know to take little fine hair wire and wrap it around the leg of the thing.
I'm also going to say, I'm not above getting my hands dirty. I mean, I did an installation a couple of weeks ago for a client's family room. I'm on my hands and knees with a sponge and vinegar cleaning  the baseboards in the bedroom because the bed hadn't been pulled away from the wall in a year. I mean, I want it perfect.
CR: Now do you do the big thing where the client's away for the day and they get to come home to everything?
JN: Yes. The unveiling. This client in Pasadena, I told her not to be there for the last three days of the install. She goes, "Well, I really kinda want to look at it," and I said, "No, no, no." So I'm driving from this neighbor's house, past the new house, and I see her driving down the street. I kind of steered toward her like I'm gonna hit her. And I say, "No!" I got out of the car, she rolled down her window. I said, "No. When I said no, I meant no."
CR: Wow.
JN: I don't know if she went back and then drove away again. But, it's not because of the drama we're trying to create, although we like that dramatic moment when the client can have seen it completely not done, and then they see it transformed. We enjoy that, and that ego boosting.
CR: It's the pay off.
JN: But, when the clients are there and they're looking over your shoulder at everything that your doing, number one, it makes you nervous. Number two, things do go wrong in an installation. It gives us a chance to fix it before they ever even knew it happened. For example, if a grandfather clock's face gets broken or something like that. We can take care of those things before the client sees it. Grace is phenomenal. I've never in 25 years of business had an employee like her.
Grace: We also deliver a finished product. Where I think a lot of decorators don't.
JN: They sort of wimp out at the last 10 to 15 percent.
CR: Lose interest a little bit?
JN: You know, I had someone complaining about their decorator the other day. They said they have been waiting three years for their family room pillows. We don't do that.
CR: (to Grace) Now did you come in with a certain aesthetic or did you learn from Joe?
Grace: I have taken on Joe's aesthetic, I think. He's taught me a lot.
JN: Grace is very different. And I mean this; I'll say it in front of her. I've had a lot of people come in with preconceived notions about the way things are done or about the way they ought to be done. And I've had great success with some people and terrible with others, who wanted to do it their way. Grace is not afraid to say Joe's my boss and we're gonna do it his way.
The client interaction is the fun part. These people become your best friends. Every one of our clients -- and our client list is very long and I'm not gonna tell you how many, but every single one of our clients has an overlapping relationship with another client. Most of these people are friends with each other. Very few of our clients don't know someone who else has been a client of ours.
CR: They're having great experiences.
JN: Yes.
CR: So that's a testament to you.
JN: An architect I was talking to the other day was complaining about the amount of construction jobs he had going on. And I said, "Oh, I know". And we're in this one job right now where I call it design dread. You've been doing it so long, the job has gotten so old, that you're burnt out on it. I guess in the mergers and acquisitions business the you call it "deal dread," where you've been working on the deal so long that you kind of can't see the forest for the trees anymore. And this job has been somewhat difficult that we're finishing up here. It's design dread. You can't -- Grace is good at this too -- you can't get lazy at the end of the job. Why are you going to start just kind of passing things off at the end when you spent three years trying to create the perfect home for somebody?
CR: Do you think when clients come to you with a new project, they come to you for that level of service? Do they come to you strictly for a style that you're known for? Or do they come to you saying, this is what I want and I know you can give it to me?
JN: I think it's a combination of all of those things. One client that hired us several years ago, hired me strictly because she heard that I got the job done. She said, "I've heard that you finish".
CR: What are you thoughts on "the budget"?
JN: People are already nervous about the money from day one. One thing that we do that other people don't do, we will not work without a budget. Even if the client says there is no budget, we will not work without one.
CR: There's always a budget, even when they say there's not. If someone came to you today and asked you to do a 4500 square foot house with a $200,000 budget would you take it on?
JN: We're being asked for that right now.
CR: And you'll take it on?
JN: Sure. Those jobs are fun. We did a job like that in Bel Air. The client was really the husband. He was the decision maker on almost everything. He said, " Joe, it doesn't have to be published, good enough is good enough for me. Just make it look pretty." This was a client who had been through the real high end decorating thing twice. And he just wasn't into it this time. We did a really good job. It's actually very fun.
I think sometimes when you're forced to be resourceful, you can do a better job. Like that table we bought from you. That client slashed their budget at the end of last year, I mean by $800,000. We had to get into resourceful mode. So a table that I might have bought for five grand, suddenly became a $712 table from Coleen and Company.
CR: Yes, Coleen and Company's good for that.
JN: I mean I think it causes you to do better work. That being said, all of our work is filled with high and low.
CR: So do you find that a client will say they have a million dollar budget and they want really fine pieces?
JN: Oh yeah.
CR: Or do you have people that just say, spend it wherever you think it's important?
JN: Most people say this is my dollar amount. And most people say you decide how to spend it. They don't really care to know what each lamp costs or each wastepaper basket. They just want you to come in at that bottom line. I tell people, fine, give me a budget, I can do that. But let me be the decision maker on where to splurge and spend the money on the signature pieces. Let me be the judge.
CR: What do you feel the show houses have done for you?
JN: A lot of people claim that the show houses don't get them any business. I would say most complain about that. I've gotten one of my biggest jobs I've ever had from a House Beautiful show house I did in Bel Air. An aqua sofa, coral-colored silk curtains, the walls were upholstered in gray linen. Anyway, I went over to that client's house and she's got a picture of that room on her screen saver. They've turned out to be one of the biggest clients I've ever had. And it was strictly because of that room.
I did another show house where that same client bought the room. She said, "Just bring it over." That same client. In other words, the first time, she admired the work, but that's not what she wanted to do. The second time she was so enthralled with the room, she said, "Just bring it over, just deliver it."
It was this little ladies reading room on Bristol. And it was all blue and brown, blue and chocolate, chintz, and acid green.
CR: So we've seen you do the saturated clear color, and then you also do the neutral and understated. What do you prefer to do?
JN: Well, I like to do something different every time, if I can. Right now we're doing what I call a modern traditional house. What that means is the clients have collected antiques over the years, beautiful, beautiful furniture. They've moved into a very modern building. Beautiful building, but it's very stark. So what we're doing is we're re-covering their Colefax & Fowler prints into more beigey, neutrally kinds of fabrics. Frankly, the furniture looks prettier because it looks like sculpture.
CR: The lines show more?
JN: It's amazing how this incredibly ornate mahogany cabinet, which was beautiful in their old house, in their very traditional Pasadena home. It's amazing how sculptural and singular those pieces look. This beautiful mahogany cabinet on a stark white wall with a beautiful mirror hanging above it, and that's it.
Most people too, would go into a modern apartment like that, and I see this in the Wilshire Corridor all the time, and I just hate it. I hate when people buy a modern ranch house that was built in the 50's and they try to put crown moldings all over it and try to make it into Colonial Williamsburg. Leave it alone.
CR: Right. It's a wonderful California ranch house.
JN: That's what it was, that's what it is. I have these clients in Santa Barbara who bought a Cliff May house. They had an architect that was ready to put in 14 inch moldings. They're friends of mine that I've done two houses for. I said, "If you want to do that, I really don't want to do this job." I said, "Your antiques are gonna look great in here. Your old furniture's gonna look beautiful." I said, "Let's just work with the vocabulary that has already been established and we'll make it look nice." So what we're doing is sort of rustic interiors for their very fine antiques. Then it just brings the antiques down, if you know what I mean?
CR: Yes, I do.
JN: In other words, everything doesn't have to look black tie.
CR: Just more livable.
JN: More comfortable using easier fabrics. Stark modern, I'm not into. I'm not into a living room that's got two pieces of furniture in it. I think it's cold and icy and rooms need to be cozy and comfortable. So if you have that big beautiful dining room, I say, let's order some of those big plastic table pads that people buy and let the kids do homework right there.
I have a client in the Palisades. They have a 15,000 square foot house and they have manicure rooms, pedicure rooms, massage rooms, they have a room for every single thing that you can do in life, and it's just dumb. And you can quote me on that. It's just dumb.
Thank God we're trending towards smaller houses mostly for economic reasons.
The client complains that it's gonna cost X number of dollars to do their living room. I'm just standing there saying, "Well you're the one that wanted a 30 by 60 living room." I mean, what am I gonna do with all this space? I don't want to make it look like the lobby of the Peninsula, with just a bunch of seating arrangements everywhere.
You know, soulless decorating. How many times are you really going to have 40 people over for cocktails? Do your house based upon the 350 day rule. How do you really live 350 days of the year? What do you really do? I live in a very small condominium in Beverly Hills. I bought it small because I don't have a lot of dinner parties, I don't have a lot of cocktail parties. I do entertain, but generally have drinks and then we go out for dinner. I used to be a big entertainer. My partner and I used to have parties for 50, 60 people all the time. My life has changed. I don't do that anymore. So I bought this really small apartment. And people said, "Where are you gonna put your guests?" Up at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, which is exactly one block and a half down the street, or the Beverly Hilton Because I don't have guests. So why pay for a guest room? "Don't you want a home office?" No, I don't. When I come home, I don't want to be working all night long. I'll use my laptop in my kitchen, I'll answer some emails and that's about it. So in other words, for the occasions like Christmas and Thanksgiving and guests and those 14 days of the year that are an aberration to the way you really live, focus on the 350, don't worry about the 14.
CR: I love the phrase "don't build the church for Easter Sunday."
JN: That's exactly what I'm talking about.
CR: You get the grandiose idea in your head of what you want those times to be. But real life times are every day.
JN: Yes, the real life times are every day.
CR: And the things your kids remember are every day.
JN: I always did my homework at the card table in the living room. And we'd play games and cards and homework and everything at that beautiful mahogany square table with a green leather top. And I still have it actually. It's in storage. I love it, because I look at the leather and it's all scarred up where someone was writing with a pen too hard. You know, museum decorating is over.
What's interesting about this house in Pasadena moving into this modern apartment, was they now don't have a family room. But they used to have a family room. So now their living room, with their very kind of dressy furniture, is their room to watch TV in. So we're re-covering all this furniture in soft fabrics and much more casual fabrics and linens and things that are much more livable. It's amazing how even though we've just gotten started, it's amazing how we have transformed their lifestyle. Because they eat with their sterling silver every day, they eat on their good dishes every day, which is another thing I love. I mean what are you saving that shit for?
CR: Well, it's the same as not using certain rooms.
JN: I get so much joy out of getting take-out, coming home and putting it on one of my blue Canton plates with my sterling fork and knife and a real linen napkin. You know, I learned something many years ago, just kind of by osmosis. When you go to Europe and you go to these castles and palaces that were built in the 16th, 17th, 18th, century, they didn't put 10 foot sofas with arms this big in those rooms to fill them up. They filled them up with furniture. You know what I mean?
We have this aesthetic thing, especially here in L.A., where you'll go into someone's home and it's a giant living room and everybody thinks you've gotta scale everything up to fill this big room. There's some validity to that, yes, if it's got a real high ceiling you're probably going to want to use some tall chairs, but you don't take this chair and make an arm that's that fat and this high, and have this just completely disproportionate piece of furniture. This big thing that you can get lost in. With the Europeans, it's just breathtaking. You want to sit there, because you don't feel like you're in the wrong size chair.
That's what I'm talking about. I want people to sit in their living rooms every day. People should feel when in their home, that they're in the right place.
To contact Joe Nye, Inc.:
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310.550.7557
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