Jeffrey Bilhuber and the business of beauty

34:43and tough act to follow, stepping in after Cloda. I sort of learned that on the fly. I asked other people who were in the industry. Obviously, at this point, I started to surround myself with other young, talented people who were in the industry, whether it was Richard Keith-Langham, who was working for Irvin and Fleming. They were my colleagues that I respected, were my peers who were all in this industry as junior designers, senior designers, draftsmen. So I would just ask them, how does your company charge? How do you do business? Or have you ever seen an agreement that went to a client? And I'm like, if they said, yes, I have.

35:30Can you possibly make a copy of that agreement and sneak it out of the office like in a paper bag and then feed it to me in a corner? Which they did. So I would study contracts. I would study agreements from different decorators' offices, and I'd cobble together my own agreement. So all of a sudden, you knew about percentages. And I was a young man, and I think that I was charging 25%, which seems fair to me. Gone are the days I charged 25%, let's be clear. But it was enough to get me behind. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. Okay. So you asked a bunch of people, and I can't remember the timing of when another youngster, Tom Shearer, and if I recall, you guys met back at the Carlisle.

36:24It was before. I mean, Tom was just within my orbit, and I knew Tom socially. It was part of a circle of creative young men. I think Tom was great friends with James LaForest. James LaForest worked for Eleanor Lambert. Oh, and Lambert did public relations, and she was a dynamic force. It was just a circle of young men at a certain period of time in the city who found each other. And as I remember, at some point, he called me and he said, you know, I really don't think I want to be an architect. I actually think I'm going to be a better decorator than an architect. I'm wondering if maybe we can do something together.

37:08I was the only person in the office because I was technically working out of my living room and I needed a sounding board so I said well I didn't really get this any thought I've not been looking for anyone but I but I know you and I know that you're damn good at what you do and let's give it a crack so ding dong he's the next person in the living room you know and we put a partner's desk in the, in the middle of my living room and we faced each other, uh, uh, and got to work. So all of a sudden it was the two of us. And do I, and I recall that, uh, that, that an early Kips Bay show house was also a major turning point for, for you.

37:51And I want to say 1987 or something along those lines. Kips Bay is a badge of honor. Uh, to at some point, Tom and I did a, the maid's room at the top of the house because we were unknown. There was also a show house in Southampton. We were working. We were proud of our work. We were successful. We were bringing in projects. We were growing. People were respecting us. So we needed to announce ourselves to potential clients and to the industry. There was something which I didn't really know about called the Southampton Show House. Tom knew about it because he grew up out in the East End, in East Hampton.

38:37And so he was connected. Medell Summersian was a force out there. And so he said, we have to call Medell and find out if we can get a room at the South Hampton Show House. If that's our goal is to grow and to bring attention to us, we have to do it. And Medell took the call because she knew Tom, not me. And he said, we'd like to do a room. And she said, Jeffrey and Tom, these rooms were spoken for a year ago, if not more. There's no room available or two months or three months away from the June opening. And I brazenly said, well, if there's nothing in the house, how about a room in the garden?

39:18And she said, there are no rooms in the garden. I said, how about we build a room in the garden? But let's build something. We can make something. if there's no room inside we're going to make we're going to build a room outside she said if you can do that more power to you yes you're in so we we designed a tent uh a very big town and we built it and we laid it out on the table the giant cutting table it says tent which must have been a good 18 feet wide and maybe 30 feet long this was a big tent this was no pup town and they cut it and sewed it and made it on the table and we put it in the truck and we went out there and I'll be damned if Tom and I and maybe a couple other people didn't hoist a whole tent up in the garden you know outside the show house right in the driveway as soon as you pulled in you couldn't miss it and what I noticed when I would be there sort of standing at the door with my little card, waiting to hand out my business card, is that people not only stopped, but they stayed.

40:30They appreciated it. And very memorable and very professional and captivating. And it also was photographed endlessly and brought a lot of attention. I mean, people were now recognizing that this is a team to deal with. This is a force. We were on our way, and we needed to grow. Once again, we had growing pains, and we needed now an architect or draftsperson to realize our ideas. That both of us could draw, both of us could do elevations in furniture plans, but we actually needed a real drafting department. And so we started doing interviews. And the very first person that we hired and our first employee was Stephen Gambrell, who had just graduated from the University of Virginia with an architecture degree.

41:23And he became our architect. Soon to be rising star and legendary figure himself. But we all, again, it was a period of time where there is this great creative energy orbiting around a small group of young men. And those young men found each other. I think after that one, we needed another designer. And I think after that, Tom Felicia was the next hire, another rising star who would go on to greatness. And we've had great fortune as a company to bring on people of enormous talent who have gone on to make great contributions on their own, including Jesse Carrier and others. You know, so there's something we do that attracts the brightest lights.

42:21Well, so what is that? What did you do to attract all of these wildly talented people who would go on to such greatness? What was the attraction? I think we were originals. I think that we were a new school of decorating. We were the next wave of decorator that didn't regurgitate what they saw. They've made something that had not been seen before. And we changed the shape and the language of our industry because we contributed something which was not there before. And we all had that same confidence and that same energy about us. It was at a period of great change. and whether they worked for us or starting their own company, all of a sudden we started to pay attention to great talents out there who were all basically relatively new to the scene, who were all changing the scene simultaneously.

43:29Well, and do you remember to that point, Jeffrey, do you remember the time where you didn't have to court as hard? There was this moment, and I don't know if you can tell me when it was, where you were suddenly just received as this great American designer, that you sort of defined what American style was. And it was as if you spoke for a generation in that way. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. It's very nice to hear that. For people, it's a little ambiguous what is an American designer or what is American design. And I actually see that as a great asset. Being an American designer allows us to source from different locations and different periods and create a very, very unique language.

44:22And when I thought about American design versus other schools, when someone says tell me what a French room looks like, I think they get very distinct images of what a French room looks like. It's very clear. Or what do you define an English room? You see English room. When you close your eyes, you can see them. If you say, what is an American room? If you close your eyes, you can't see them. That's a great opportunity because it means it is malleable. It allows us to put modern art next to 18th century furniture, to put Navajo carpets down and contemporary upholstery on top of that, and to explore creative resources and artistic resources and nurture them and bring new and energy to an American room.

45:21And I think that great American rooms are optimistic. They're rooms that the 20th and the 21st century have given us. I was asking Valentino one day, because we were working with Valentino on the apartment on 70th Street, or beginning the interview. We didn't work on it, but we were interviewing him and we were there. Giancola, Giometti was there. So I had a question when I walked into the 70th Street apartment with Valentino, who lived a grand life and a very rich life. But I couldn't understand what the allure was about New York City for someone who had a wonderful apartment in Paris and a wonderful apartment in Rome and a great big house in the French countryside and a house in Capri, all of which had been documented, which were lavish and luxurious.

46:25And so I said, what is it that brings you to New York when you have all of these other beautiful places to go to? And he, Valentino said, New York is the city that the 20th century gave to us. And that was so clear to me. It's a 20th century city. And I think what we do as American designers is we create 20th century or 21st century decoration. Hmm. Where it's not nostalgic. It's not 18th century. It's not 19th century. It's not 14th century, all of which have historic precedent. We are American directly because we are of our time. We're not ahead of our time. We're of our time. We directly reflect what's happening around us.

47:22Yes. And how did that come to inform how your work evolved once you heard that and it made that kind of impression on you? It just gave it great clarity. I mean, I think that my work has great confidence and great clarity, but it reinforced that we are individuals and we have to embrace that and that we can't be anyone other than who we are, which is what I learned. I had to express it and I had to make it my life's work, and I'll be damned, that's exactly what I did. It took some time. It took some time. And I'm happy. It was very fortunate that I was strong-willed and strong-headed enough to believe that I could do what I set out to do on my own.

48:19And I didn't intern at John Saladino's office or at Mark Hampton's office or at Parrish that I didn't intern or I didn't get a summer job or I didn't work for three years as a design assistant within the industry because I think I would have pulled their interpretations, their direction into mine and absorbed it. And I would have been a different version of them. So I think it was really fortunate that I didn't go to school to study design. I didn't go to school to study decoration, that I learned it, sometimes the hard way.

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49:52recently we've been having this conversation about taste and whether one can learn taste and i wonder where you come down on that notion because here you are saying you are so relieved that you didn't go to school that you weren't influenced by big name firms that you interned for and that you found your own way. So tell me about that and what you think about it. Well, I did go to school, but you have to remember when I went, I went to business school. Yes, yes. And that's something I cannot undervalue. And for everyone at New York School of Interior Design or any other design school, pay attention to the business of beauty, Pay attention to the structure of how we build a company.

50:46And really, if you are blessed with great creative talent and you know it and motivated to work within that industry and believe you have a real message that people will want to hear and see, don't ever doubt yourself. But do doubt your ability to deliver on those promises, both to you and to your client, and learn how to do business better. So taste. Yeah, I have it. How did you get it? Where did it come from? How did you acquire it? Tell us more. I paid somebody$10 on a corner. That's the thing. Did you just buy it on the street? Yep. Had we only known it was that easy. uh i am genetically predisposed okay do you think that's the thing do you think you're genetically disposed i know that my my creative talent i can see it in my father i can see it in my grandfather there you go but you can make it better just so you know you can you know so i don't want anyone to say that i don't have it oh my grandfather wasn't a painter therefore i never will have taste.

51:57It gets better with practice. You can nurture it. You can fine-tune it. You can educate and enlighten yourself through observation. I'm a voracious reader. I travel as often as I can, and I observe. And the art of observation and articulation will contribute to your level of taste and we'll fine-tune it. I am better at what I do today than I did 20 or 30 years ago because I have taken care of educating myself and enlightening myself. No, I'm really glad to hear you talk about that. Okay, so you were just talking about, And I love the way you're referring to the business of beauty. And I very much appreciate the language that you're bringing forth about the business side of all of this, because this is one of the centerpieces of this show and what we talk about and what I want, as you referenced, design students everywhere.

53:14but even those just starting out in the industry or even those who feel they could be doing more to manage the business side. Tell me how you think about it. And this is not just academic. It's not, we're not just talking about academic enlightenment. No. Even though it is the core, you know, to running a good business. You know, there are craftspeople, there are work rooms, fabric houses, all of which have things to share with you. You need to know to be a great decorator. decorator. And I don't really care about good decorators. I have no interest in good decorators. I only care about great decorators.

53:51If you're average, if you're middle of the room, I'm not interested. I'm really not. You can be better. Come back to me when you're better. But what you need to know as a designer is when you go into a workroom, all the different details of craft, You need to know what a box pleat is. You need to know what a kiss pleat is. You need to know what a haplik pleat is. You need to know what a top stitch is. You need to know what saddle stitching is. You need to know how long a hem should be. You need to know how long a break should be on the floor if it's a curtain or tight something should be sewn if it's a bed skirt.

54:29You need to know the content and the fill of every cushion and every pillow of every headboard you make. You need to know that. That comes to being in workroom, watching someone cut fabric, helping them cut fabric, giving them direction. Talk about the size of a welt. Is it a micro welt? Is it a single welt? Is it a braided welt? Is it a cord? Is it a contrast welt? This is our language. And that's where people and students need to grow and to learn. I mean, I tell everyone coming out of school, the best job they can get right out of school is to go work for a fabric house in the library and stand at the window when a decorator comes in and said, I'm looking for a claret-colored mohair.

55:19And you have to know what claret is and mohair and how mohair is different from velvet and how velvet is different from suede cotton. And if you don't know, you're going to learn right there. That's the best job out of school. I mean, anyone that I interviewed as a potential employee, at one point, I believe we had 21 or 22 employees. Is that right? You were that big at one point? Correct. Correct. And this is when it took, we had three design teams, three full-time design teams. But it took more energy and more people to actually create things back then. I mean, bigger spaces, bigger offices, more paperwork.

56:05You know, it's very, very labor intensive. So you needed more people. The way we do business now is different. It's faster. It's more efficient. You know, there's no paper, you know, limited paper. But you understand the business has changed for the better. It was just a very labor intensive business. but you know coming out of school and just going to work for someone and believing that you're going to learn because you uh have access to the principle it's a stretch you've had so many extraordinary clients and i wonder if you if you think of being such a huge david bowie fan i don't know if you if you have any wonderful stories about getting to work with the legendary david Bowie and his beautiful and talented wife Iman.

57:00Iman and David. We did one project together in Los Angeles, but they're both very smart people and very curious in their exploration of the world. It was a summer that David and Iman and I cruised along the French and Italian coast on his boat and gave it being very, very intelligent and very inquisitive about history. He wanted to go to every museum and every port that we would stop. And I said, you know, honestly this is, you know, France and Italy, there's an awful lot of history here. I don't know how we're going to get to any of these museums, let alone 20 of them, and learn anything. How do we come out of this exploration better than we went in.

57:59And David, this will give you insight into his personality, David said, you know what? You're right. Why don't we limit what we're looking at so we learn more? And I said, how do we limit it? And he said, let's narrow the field. Let's only focus on the late 14th and early 15th century and the advent of perspective. And I'm like, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. the advent of perspective changed art forever. Let's just focus on that slice of the cake. So that was really important for me to hear because it meant that you really do have to be detail-driven. You really do have to focus out of all the beauty in the world.

58:44You have to narrow your field and focus on how it will inform you and make you a better craftsperson and a better artist and a better creative. I mean, that was really helpful. Beauty surrounds us. It's everywhere. And if you're visually driven, it's impossible to turn off. But how do you make it produce. Anyone can make beautiful. Anyone. Anyone can make a room beautiful. But our job is to make a beautiful room better. That's hard work. So tell me what that means. It means that through your education, through your vision, things have been merged together in a unique way that no one's ever seen before.

59:41It takes confidence, craftsmanship, skill, determination, clarity, courage. It takes great courage to do what we do well. Anyone can buy a lampshade. Anyone can buy a pillow. Anyone can buy a carpet. But you put it all together and they're still not happy. Anyone can buy anything they want. But they'll sit in the room and say, I don't understand why I'm not happy in these rooms. It's decorator's math. One plus one equals three. The objects when put together are better when combined than when taken individually. And that's what we do. And no one else does it better. One plus one equals three. Well, there you go.

1:00:36There's an important lesson right there. I wonder, Jeffrey, we've talked about so many of the great talents that came through your office, Stephen Gambrell and Tom Shearer and Tom Felicia and Jesse Carrier and others. Was it hard for you to let people go? How did you manage that process? It's often challenging when someone comes and says, I want to go out on my own. Yeah. Basically, I open the door, tell them to get out. Don't let the door hit you, Nia, on the way out. And I never talk to them again. Stop it. I know that is not true.

1:01:21You know when it's time for someone to move on. You can feel it. You can't stop it. No one ever stopped me, and I'll be damned I'll never stop another person. It is their turn. You must embrace it. You must encourage it. And you can do what you can, whether it's saying, here's a client I think that you're working with really well. We're in the home stretch here. Why don't you work with that client if that helps you start? Just the way, Maria, go. You helped me by saying I'll hold a job open for you. I can then maybe share a client with someone if it helps them. You must encourage their growth.

1:02:06And you know, you can't hold back a person who wants to go forward. You can get rid of people who don't do their job well, but if they do it well, they will naturally want to go on and do it for themselves. That's just a human survival instinct. So you embrace it. Yeah. Well, it's nice to hear you say that because I know that often it is challenging for people to... It took some convincing. When Tom Felicia told me that he was going to leave the world of interior decorating to go on air on Queer Eye, I wasn't convinced. But he really wanted to do it. And I asked him about it. And he said, I think it would be great.

1:02:55I think I'm more than capable of being an entertainer. I've learned a lot here, and I can apply that in a different way, in a different medium. So he convinced me that he could do it, because I didn't want him to lose what traction he had within the industry, because he had worked for Robert Metzger, he'd worked for Paris Hadley, and he'd worked for me. Yes, yes. And he was true to himself. So I didn't discourage him. I just said, you know, it was an untested medium. And this was, you know, basically when those kind of shows, which were design driven, you know, were at their infancy. So there really wasn't a clear path.

1:03:40So it was a very smart move on this part. It turned out to be so. But as you were suggesting, it certainly could have gone the other way. I was always worried, knowing Tom at the time, I was always worried that his work would be debased or devalued. Correct. That's exactly what that was exactly my concern. Yes, because he really is an extraordinary talent. And yes, he's funny. And yes, he's a great personality. And I love that America got to know him and love him. But also, he really is an extraordinary decorator. He's a great decorator. He's a fully formed personality. He's an enormous, enormous entertainer.

1:04:23He's comedic. He's focused. when we were working with Michael Douglas, the actor, Tom was the senior designer on the project when we were working in Bermuda on the Michael Douglas' resort named Ariel Sands, which I was taking very seriously, A, that we were working with Michael Douglas, and B, that we were working on a hospitality project in Bermuda. And I was waiting at Kennedy Airport for him. Tom was running late and I was waiting and waiting and waiting. And I'm like, I can't wait anymore. I'm getting on the plane. So I got on the plane and they were just about getting ready to close the door.

1:05:07And in came Tom, you know, scrambling. He was in full drag as an American tourist in Bermuda. You know, he was dressed in Bermuda shorts with big white sneakers and a camera, you know, slung over his shoulder and, you know, madras plaid shirt and a big straw hat. But it was done as a kind of hilarious send up of stereotypes of what, you know, tourists in Bermuda look like. And it was just so completely Tom. And it made me smile from ear to ear. And that was true to his personality. Well, I love that. and he is such a great personality and talent. I can't help but imagine that he learned a lot from you, Jeff.

1:05:57A lot of people have learned a lot from me, and that's very important to know. I'm very proud of the careers that I've contributed to, that I've helped a lot, that the industry respects what I do. I'm proud of how I communicate, of the five books that I've written and the six book that I'm working on that have enormous audiences and people. My books are more than design books. They're books of knowledge. They're books of learning. Absolutely. And I'm so thrilled that another book is coming out and that you still have things that you want to share. And I think I want to learn more about how you are imagining this industry evolving and you've seen so much change in the design world over the years.

1:06:51And I'm curious to hear how you're thinking about it going forward. And I love the fact that you're thinking long term about all of this. There are no mythical plans of slowing down or retiring. I'm passionate about what I do, and I'm going to do it until I can do it no more. So there's plenty left in me and many more projects to go and many clients who are out there who are excited to work with us. Well, I'm thrilled to hear you say that. And I really can't wait for the book, and we'll have to have you back to talk about it when it comes out. The bigger question, who's going to play me in the movie?

1:07:40What casting would you like to suggest there? It's definitely Brad Pitt. It's definitely Brad Pitt. I think that seems appropriate. I think that seems appropriate. It's a great pleasure to get to speak with you, and I thank you so much for making the time. I'm thrilled this conversation finally happened. Thank you. It's a pleasure for me, too. Thanks for listening. If you'd like to keep up with the latest design industry news, visit us online at businessofhome.com, where you can sign up for our newsletter, browse job listings, and join our BOH Insider community for access to online workshops, a free print subscription, and much more.

1:08:19If you have a note for the podcast, drop us a line at podcast at businessofhome.com. If you're enjoying these conversations, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps others to discover the show. This show was produced by Fred Nikolaus and edited by Michael Castaneda I'm Dennis Scully Thanks again for listening And I'll see you next week