Charles de Lisle is a decorator, not a designer

0:03This is Business of Home. I'm your host, Dennis Scully. Every week I'll be speaking with leaders and innovators from all corners of the home industry. My guest this week is interior decorator Charles de Lisle. Born in rural Massachusetts to a family of makers and tinkerers, Charles grew up obsessed with how things work. After finding his way to the San Francisco Bay Area, he got involved with the design scene, first launching a line of lamps, then helping to start a commercial firm. Eventually, Charles went out on his own and earned acclaim for his residential work, including placement on the AD-100.

0:46I spoke with Charles about why he loves clients who are risk-takers, how a chance encounter with a Michael Taylor room changed his life, and why he likes to be called a decorator, not a designer.

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2:42You grew up in rural Massachusetts, if I recall. So tell me a little bit about that and what it was like. I kind of grew up in a town of 1 ,200 people in the woods in kind of the center northern part of Massachusetts, building stuff on my own. And I think that I also kind of grew up around my dad and my grandfather and my mother, for that matter. Like everybody, we kind of all made things. My grandfather was a machinist and a wallpaper hanger and a painter. He did interior painting and my dad built a cabinet shop to work with his dad to build furniture. So I kind of grew up in that world. And there was always this idea of not a fear of getting something done.

3:28I don't know how else to explain it. And maybe it's just kind of a little bit of a New England kind of point of view. It was just like if it's broken, you just fix it and figure out a way to make it work, right? Right. Right. And then, you know, I also grew up in a house that since my dad kind of built it as as we lived in it, and my mother kind of like made do kind of like working through that, like and constantly, I think, having to kind of decorate it in a way to make it feel like it was a finished place to live. When I was little, I would I had like a knife and a hatchet and I would go out and I spent a lot of times in the woods.

4:07And what I did was I built houses. I built forts, but the forts always turned into a house. There was always this kind of, it was a holistic way of looking at whatever I was doing. And so I just, I don't know, that's kind of where my brain was, I think, carried up. And that really hasn't changed at all. And so how did how did decorating and interiors show up in your world and point you in the direction of becoming everything that you have? I mean, I've always been interested in architecture since I was young and started looking at architecture, started digging into all the magazines my mom had on the coffee table.

4:52Definitely was an early Arc Digest fan and was really interested in building and would watch my dad build garages and little buildings or add-ons to people's houses in the summer with his friend. And I would be the assistant. So I was very much involved in like, you know, how do you put up the building? How do you pour the foundation? How do you even clear the land to put it on there and look at where you're doing that? In junior high, I started taking drafting courses that were high school courses. It kind of gradually faded. I ended up going to school and studied ceramics completely by accident.

5:30I just started working in the ceramics lab at the university I went to. kind of fell in love with it and just started making things every night, but was taking all these graphic design classes and all the other things I was supposed to be taking. And then I ended up like majoring in it because I found that it embodied all these things that I loved. You had to make the clay, engineer the clay. You needed to then make the work and that required engineering and process. And then you had to, you know, fire it and glaze it, which also required engineering and also was all very technical and complex and also strangely out of your control.

6:07So I did that for a few years and that kind of pushed me into doing metal work because I love building again. So I started making things, doing steel work, doing small shops for people. And that started leading me into architecture and design again back when I was about 29, 30 years old. I realized that maybe that was a direction I could look at as a career. It took me a little while from when I was growing up. But yeah, I realized that all these things I did my whole life made sense and made sense in the interior world mostly because, again, I love the complexity of it. And I realized that, oh, I understand all these different pieces.

6:48So I started to try to figure out how to get myself into a job and nobody would hire me because I didn't have any skills. Well, so where were you showing up trying to get a job? I was in San Francisco and I had met someone through my dad actually, who she was vice president of Knoll Furniture for the West Coast at the time. And she was very connected and we had lunch and she was like super wary at first. I met your dad and he said I should talk to you. I don't know why, but by the end of the lunch, he was like, you're actually super amazing and I'm going to connect you to all these people and just call them.

7:28And I just started calling them naively, not even knowing anything about the world that I was calling. But a couple of people were super positive and they were like, I think you got something here. You need to dial in on it. And so I did. So I started looking at it and realized, well, if no one's going to hire me, I'm just going to do it on my own. And I realized like I couldn't in order to do an interior, I needed to have an interior. Right. There's this this kind of problem of starting to be an interior designer that you can't show work that you don't have. But you need to show that work to get the job.

8:03The catch 22 of the whole thing. It's yeah, it was super challenging. And so I decided I was going to just make some product and see how that works. So I started designing some lamps and took about a year to produce one and put it in a box, made some labels, and then went to New York and decided, well, I just want to find out what the best stores are, where I want it, and see what happens. And I took my lamp and shopped it around and picked out a couple stores. And one of them was a store named Troy, which at the time was the cool news store. And Troy happened to be sitting at the front desk when I walked in.

8:37And I pulled out my little box and pulled out the lamp. He's like, these are great. He's like, I'll take 20. And in a month, I'll probably order 20 more. And I was just like, absolutely. And you're like, great. I have like two that I've made. Yeah, so I had to go back and start like a full production. I made 100 at once and wired them in my kitchen. So it got out there. It started selling. And then it landed in a New York Times spread on cool new lamps and the Sunday magazine. And then it got in a MTV video. Wow. Yeah, it kind of made the routes. Like it was super fun. And then this company in San Francisco bought 40 of them to go in a hotel on the coast of California.

9:23And in that process, I met them. And they asked me if I wanted to come work for them. And they had just started this small interiors firm. And I called them back and said, yeah, I don't know what that job is. But sure, let's like, I'm on board. So it was really kind of just serendipity. My whole world and my life, there was no plan. I was super fortunate because I landed with my old business partners, Jonathan and Marion, who started, they were cousins and they started this company together. And they immediately got very busy because it was that first kind of internet boom where everybody in the Bay Area was starting to be successful.

10:05and we started getting calls from all these like new entrepreneurs that wanted a new loft or a new apartment or redo the house and they within a month of me being there couldn't handle the work and they just started giving me jobs I said well I've never done this before and they they were just like you know what just ask us questions when you have them and that's what we did and I within a month I had three of my own clients and was running these jobs like with no assistants no computer like we were using paper grocery bags to put our samples in and I learned very quickly because I had to there was pressure um which I loved and uh I did that for 11 years I became partners with both of them and we ran a really great company that started doing a lot of hospitality work uh and then around 2008 to 2010 I was starting to realize that the commercial work wasn't my favorite because it was very kind of management based.

11:05And I really like connecting with people and being in a more like dreamy space of imagining things. And I really enjoyed the residential work more. So I decided to kind of leave the partnership and start my own company. And I had one client. So it allowed me to focus on that one job because I didn't need all of the energy floating around many jobs to distract me and focus on building a business. So things just started picking up and I landed clients who connected me to their friends. And those clients I find are always the people who are kind of more risk takers. And I think that's why I love the Bay Area in a way, because there's something about this place that has a spirit of change.

11:52And so I have a lot of younger clients who have changed the world by things that they've considered. And the way they considered those things was not based on kind of history necessarily. It was like, well, how can we change this radically? And because of that, they were okay with the process that I like to work in, which is to jump in, kind of think about like the big picture, dial in like 40 % of it, but then leave it open. So organically, as you're working through the project, you learn and you can get maybe somewhere you didn't imagine when you started. So that takes a little bit more of a leap of faith.

12:31And that's not for everyone. It's a very specific type of client who's excited about the possibility versus wanting to know what is my house going to look like. And I just happened to land in the right place, I guess, with the right people who supported it. Exactly. And I want to understand that better. And I'm so glad you mentioned about the Bay Area, because I'm trying to understand better what the decorating culture is and what those clients are like. They seem like they have a very different sensibility, to your point, than somebody who has seen a bunch of images on Instagram or Pinterest and kind of knows exactly what they want.

13:13Yes and no. I think they're still looking at all the same things, but they're not interested in both being super on board with taste or trend, and they're also not interested in the traditional piece of it, the history part. But when they are engaging in either, they're fascinated by it. So there's something in this part of the world that is interesting. I think a lot of things have happened here. When you look at California, especially in this part of California, there's radical changes in music have happened here, in government, in even just the nature of the gold rush, in architecture, in the city burning down.

13:53There's this strange 10 to 20-year cycle that San Francisco and the Bay Area kind of burns itself out and then starts something totally new. And you can look at almost every 10-year period in San Francisco and there's something kind of almost radical that bubbles up in it. And there's a certain energy in that. And I think it definitely happened. It happened in architecture. There was a moment where there was this whole Bay Area style that took this shingle style, but then it morphed into this other weird radical style that Charles Moore started doing. It was very early pop, deconstructed things.

14:34There's an interior history here that is also strangely radical that created people like Michael Taylor. That happened, I think, because he was in the Bay Area. There was the space to create this really weird California style that made sense and that was really different. And so for me, I look up to all of those people, especially in the field that I'm in, because it's fascinating that this area produced that.

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15:51You mentioned Michael Taylor, and I know he had a big impact on you. And he seems to be having a moment in part because RH recently purchased, I guess, some of the intellectual property and some of the historical pieces. And wanting to bring that style back, his name and his work seem to be top of mind for a lot of people. Well, I mean, I think it definitely tells a very specific story. but it was unique. And he also was a master of marketing that information. And so he also, you know, this, this whole game of what we do, it's not, it's not just one piece, right. And I think that he was really good at selling something to a broader audience that in the eighties where they were ready for it, right.

16:38That, that there was a need for that kind of over the top, you know, extravagance. And I think it was happening in different ways, but, you know, There is a language there that isn't in the renaissance of his work right now. I think right now people are, again, because of technology and image-based systems that we're in that are just, you know, obsessing about certain looks. I think the look is what is kind of getting captured right now because we're in one of those cycles. But I think that the kind of the true extravagance of what he was doing is not there. I had the good fortune of going into many of his projects when I was working or before I started my own business, just out in the world in San Francisco.

17:22And seeing some of these projects was pivotal for me because they were more like life events than they were interiors. There was something in them that was visceral and, like, for me, really were kind of life-changing because they showed me that an interior just isn't a functional place, you know, that has to be pretty or look good or be on trend or have taste. His interiors were about this kind of ability to have a moment that was about that experience, like truly like you experienced really what those rooms felt like. Because it took all this stuff that was in my head about how I felt as myself as an artist and then made me realize, well, this is a palette and a toolbox.

18:09but it's also there's a way of showing art in a different way that's human and it's interactive and I think that that kind of beauty that separates you from your world a little bit and makes you take a breath or you know feel something like that to me is that's what drives me to do all of this and I saw that in those rooms and I think that that's what's really frustrating to me now is because everything is so image-based, but the photographs don't do those rooms justice. They never do. Well, it's interesting because often when I talk to San Francisco designers, they say, oh, Dennis, I wish I could share more of the work with you, but so much of it is under NDAs and I'm working for these, obviously these big tech giants.

18:57And so often people don't want to share their intimate lives and the privacy issue. And I completely understand. But so often it means that we're not seeing so much of that work. Yeah. And also, you know, it's also hard because I know my peers are also doing cool work that I don't get to see. And it's not shared information. But there are people who visit those places. And as it has always been historically, like there's work out there that you have to visit to see it And some of it's private and some of it's public. And, you know, the irony is that a lot of the clients that are doing this work in the Bay Area have created the world that we're in.

19:41Yes. That also has created this, like, there's a world that you don't want to put yourself in all of a sudden, right? The press has become a thing that's different than it used to be. you know being in a magazine had a gravitas to it you know being published in having your house in a magazine had value and now it's almost like there's so much information out there visually that it's hard to know what that value is but there's also this other you know selfie-ism world that some people don't want to participate in right like they don't want that to be seen as that. And so it's ironic that that has been created.

20:24But that's kind of the way the world works too. Well, it's interesting because, I mean, to your point, and we've been having a lot of conversation recently about, it's such a different world today with all of that, right? So the effort to get published, and I had so many designers reach out to me just about all of the expense and effort that goes into the publicist and the stylist and the photographers and all of the expense and all to just hopefully make it look as if it was effortless and someone discovered just how fabulous you were and decided to publish your work. And that became a whole conversation.

21:04But also, as you say, and we don't talk about this enough, perhaps, for the client, it's a very different sort of experience as well. Well, I think that, I mean, photographing a project is definitely important to me because it's your space to actually get a document of what this whole thing was. I find that it always still keeps changing and the interior keeps evolving after the photograph. But you have to commit at some point to do that. To do that, it's like we were talking about, it's a huge amount of work to prep, photograph. and it also means you have to ask for clients to give you that space to do that and and then um you know disrupt their life a little bit because doing photography is is a big it's a big process it's not as simple as just going in and shooting for a couple hours it's a couple day adventure yeah um and requires a lot a lot of work for me i still you know push to photograph it for my own documentation and that is kind of my main objective there was a time where magazines would come in and they would bring an editor, a photographer, a stylist.

22:17It was a really great experience because all that was covered. And then you would get these beautiful photographs and you would get published. And it felt really a different experience than it is now where now we have to photograph everything ourselves and then kind of pitch it. Because again, And there's so much content out there that the value of that content has changed. Just a dollar value for the people who are publishing it. So yeah, the world has definitely changed. And I think that also somehow connects to the client's attachment to it as well, right? It all is an ecosystem together. And I think I'm just floating through it the best I can.

23:01Well, and as many people are, and as you say, you've been very fortunate in that there has been this interest in your work and interest in you. And I wonder, thinking about how you ended up structuring your firm, I would love to learn a little bit about how you decided to charge and how you decided to think about how big a firm you wanted to have and all of that. You came in to the industry and this sort of, not sort of, you came in through an unconventional path. And did you also start to think unconventionally about how to structure a firm? So when I started my own business, I kind of was fortunate where I got some of that base information.

23:52So I wasn't starting from scratch, but I did want to build a company that was smaller. At that time, we had about 12 to 13 employees. And I realized that I wanted to be a smaller company because I wanted to be more agile. I still wanted to be involved in the projects. For me, it wasn't about this big legacy machine. It was about, I just like doing this, right? And what kind of system is going to support that? And so, again, I didn't have a plan. I've just been taking it like one year at a time. I've worked with a lot of consultants, which is really great. again my curiosity like I look at the business just like any other you know process or problem and I take it apart once in a while and figure out how to put it back together again and to do that I have hired really great people to help me yeah so it's it's been an adventure and an ongoing one I think that I was actually just reading recently that like no business that looks like it's doing really well on the surface is actually doing really well.

24:54And that anyone who runs a business is the type of person who is okay with constantly having to put out fires, restructure. It's the nature of someone who owns a business. It's not just entrepreneurial. It's also a certain kind of character, a person who doesn't give up. And that there really is no such thing as a smooth running business because it's just constantly in flux. Well, and I know that you have shared with me that you think that there's a certain personality type that is best suited to this industry, right? I mean, you've mentioned the curiosity, but also a slightly obsessive, compulsive, like somebody who really is just in this 110%.

25:40Yeah, I think when I first started, I think I mentioned a story that writer Diane Sakes was the first person to write about my work when I was doing the lamps. I sent her a photo of the lamp and a little press release trying to be all professional. And she called me and said, you know, she loves the lamp, but there was no story there. And she told me two things in that conversation. One was that, you know, people love a story and it doesn't matter how good something is. Like you got it. You got to tell a great story. And the other thing is that to do this job is not for everybody because the people who succeed at doing great interior design, they wake up in the morning and they're thinking about drapery.

26:24And when they go to bed at night, they're thinking about drapery. And she said, it's a certain person who that's what they are excited about. And they're excited about it all the time because it is not glamorous. She was so great because it was literally, you know, I just started working with John and Marion. and was super excited that I finally got a job. And that was my first kind of like feedback loop because I was learning very quickly that it's a very challenging job and to do it, you have to love it. And it's, yeah, it's just the way it is. It's maybe rewarding in so much of having the ability to create these beautiful things more than it is the day-to-day world.

27:08It's just a lot, it's a lot of work. How did that influence how you ultimately figured out how to charge? Like many people sort of have decided, oh, I've got to charge hourly because I'm just spending so much time. Or I've got to have some huge design fee going in to just cover what I know is going to be an insane amount of work. And how did you end up figuring that part of it out? I think that - Or have you? you know it's it's still moving um again like my because my clients are coming from this place of change and their world is all about change you know often i get clients that want to challenge the system and say oh well i want to do it this way instead it's going to be better and i was like well no um and only because i've been now i can say i've been in it for 25 years i've tried a a couple of different options.

28:04I think doing the commercial work taught me a lot because it was flat fee. It was based on phases and it was very budget driven and you had to track all your hours to make sure that you stayed afloat during that whole process, right? You had to understand where you're projecting the work as well as what you're billing against yourself. And I realized that that model doesn't really work for residential work. And I think the classic model of hourly plus markup makes the most sense because it basically allows the client to sit in the space where they need to some clients are more hands-off and they're trust you and they're like just go do it and then other clients want to be involved in that process and they know that there's a certain cost involved with that and then some clients want something that's simple and kind of just like plug and play they're you know just tell me i want to approve everything and just install it some clients want to do it piecemeal and be part, again, part of that dialogue.

29:02So I think the hourly plus markup allows each individual client to work the way that is best for them. That billing system may not work for everyone, but we need to have, we need a consistent system on our side, right? Right. So what I realized after all trying many different things is that this is the way it's been. it seems to work the best across the board. The other systems are harder and they require different management system that I don't want to build at this point because I'm pretty confident in how I work with that. I've always been super upfront with clients how that we're fully transparent.