Leyden Lewis: 'Interior design is not a list of vendors'

0:02This 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 designer Layden Lewis. Layden is a New Yorker. He grew up in Brooklyn, went to Parsons, and made his way into the design industry, where his work quickly found an audience through a room in the Kips Bay Showhouse. Today, Layden is an AD100 designer. His widely published work draws on modernism, traditional craft, and an obsession with art in all its forms. I spoke with Leighton about why he doesn't believe in project minimums, the difference between media visibility and financial success, and why he's not afraid of AI in the slightest.

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1:48Ernesta was built to fix exactly that. With rugs cut to your client's exact dimensions and delivered in as little as two weeks, Ernesta helps everything run smoothly from order to placement. Join Ernesta's trade program for dedicated one-on-one support, preferred pricing, and unlimited samples, ensuring a beautiful finish for your next project. Apply today at ernesta.com slash boh. That's ernesta.com slash boh. And now, on with the show. I feel like a lot of social media influencers are coming for the design space and are giving, I don't know, are giving interior design tips and tricks and talking about sort of to the trade materials.

2:40But they have these giveaways that reveal that they're not really in the trade. Like sometimes if I hear someone use the word couch, I think, oh, really? Are you a designer with that word couch? I'm thinking, no, you're not. And sometimes I feel like when people say curtains versus window treatments or like, I feel - Or draperies. Or draperies, yes. The draperies. Exactly. I feel like there are just all these sort of giveaways. Speaking of which, the other day, a fabric line was sort of showing me some of their new introductions and they were showing, oh, this is going to be incredible window treatments.

3:18And I'm thinking like, are there still designers that spend a gazillion dollars on window treatments? Like I think of Scott Salvatore or somebody of that ilk, but I feel like no one does that at that level these days. Or am I wrong? Are there still like people who are doing that? I think there's a bunch of swags and jabos being produced that are not in editorial at the moment. It's just not being shown? It's just not being shown. But I trust that$200 ,000 window treatments are absolutely being produced somewhere on the Gold Coast. Well, that's the thing. Michael Cohen at Samuelson tells me he's doing terribly well.

3:59So I feel like he must be. Well, I honestly think that what seems to be the published and what is the industry are two different things. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like in editorial, hopefully editorial is producing a series of images, vignettes, and directives that show where the industry is and where it's going versus the meat of this industry, which is, I think, traditional design. Do you feel that way? The meat of the industry is traditional design? Absolutely. You know, I think that's where the billion dollar industry in textiles is. That's how it's being supported. You know, not with, certainly not with some of our interiors that take, you know, two fabrics.

4:48and a rug. Well, exactly. You're not carrying, see, you're not carrying the fabric industry, Leighton, and I feel like you're letting them down. And this is really what I've called you in today to discuss. Oh, dear. Oh, forgive me. Yes. Forgive me. Because I feel like for you, fabric is almost an afterthought. And I want to understand that. I want to understand that better. It actually isn't. Okay. I think of things so architecturally that – so I'm just thinking when you mentioned the couch or the sofa, I see it as a mass. I see it as this wonderful object. Of course, it's practical. But I see – is it going to be drenched in all oxblood?

5:32Is it going to be a beautiful avocado green? There's that one fabric. We don't tend to gravitate to many patterns. I love patterns. I adore patterns. Our library is stacked with pattern fabrics. we go to solids and textures in our studio. That's just the way we roll here at Leighton Lewis Designs. And I want to understand better what informs that sensibility. So take me back to family origins and what began to educate your sensibility and train your eye. Hmm. So I am a son. The first of my family legacy in the United States is born in the U.S. from Trinidad and Tobago. My parents came over in 67.

6:24Several years later, Leighton arrives, and I'm the fifth child and the youngest of my parents' children. and you know thinking of pattern my mother was so colorful i remember times where i was like impressed by what she bought but a little bit like is that you know the flower shoes and the flower dress shirley are we wow really um but and you know so i grew up where you know is the first generation coming over from trinidad and tobago or from trinidad and and and buying their the first set of furniture, probably from maybe Pitkin Avenue, and it all being Baroque with, you know, faux gilded frames and velvet brocade wall coverings in green and velvet couches.

7:13So I grew up in a kind of a, you know, a faux Louis XIV environment in a three-bedroom apartment in East New York. And why were they drawn to that? Because it reflected riches, right? Okay. My mother was a domestic and worked for families on the Upper East Side, and I'm very proud to say that. So she came back with information. She didn't come back with the magazine, but she came back with a kind of a sort of a memory of what wealth might look like. And then she interpreted, you know, everybody up on the Upper East Side is buying things that like, I don't know where they were buying it at the fancy department stores at that time in the 60s.

8:02But my mother interpreted her version of it on Pitkin Avenue. And tell people Pitkin Avenue for those that don't have that wonderful context. Lincoln Avenue, historically, if anybody knows New York, maybe before 1990, maybe 1985, it was the core of a Brooklyn marketplace where you could both buy wonderful furniture and you could lay it away. But you could put your furniture on layaway. And we grew up in the tradition. My mother literally bought lace from Borough Park at Christmastime every year, bought beautiful fabric. and it's a part of the tradition of being in the Caribbean, and she made draperies every Christmas and every Easter.

8:48Really? And so, yeah, so we had these hours and days of window treatment. Well, draperies. Draperies, exactly. Drapery preparations. And, of course, you know, little Layden was there, like, falling asleep and helping pull the lace or the shears through and through the sewing machine. And yeah, I grew up with that pride, the pride of creating what appeared to be a solid home, sumptuous, and I wouldn't even call it the word wealthy is not it. It's abundant, abundant home. That's what my mother wanted to create for us. And it sounds like she did because here she is working on the Upper East Side, as you say, and with five children and a lot to manage.

9:42A lot to manage. A lot to manage. My father refinished furniture. He is an artist in his own right, still kind of adjacent to the industry that I'll eventually kind of inhabit. And did he in any way inform your sensibility? Was he? Absolutely. My mother is the core, let's say, color, cultivation of the idea of building home and how important that is. And my father is dropping me off at the Brooklyn Museum on a Saturday or Sunday if they had to work or the Met children's program. like do not hand me a football but a paintbrush I can handle you know what I mean no no way I mean I just like I don't know what to do with a football or basketball but um and I was just immersed in those museum environments so and and what do you remember about that what would that be like for you when you'd be dropped off at the museums two things one is a greek urn and drawing a greek urn like that that just that that flashes in my mind as something to you know the kind of Roman classical part of the Met and, you know, sitting there with my pad and whatever kind of, you know, tradition that was of like having the kids draw these Greco-Roman classics.

11:01And then the other part is maybe being 10 or 11 and being in the college section of the studio painting class and watching someone get completely naked and being asked to draw them. And I don't know why they allowed me to, they dropped everything, the birthday suit and all, and I'm here painting. And you were such a young child still. Oh, I was 10. I was 10 and 11 years old. And so your eyes must have gone wide. I was like, oh, well, my eyes and my body. So many things were responding to this. Absolutely. It was very much stern. And I was like, ooh, what is this? So dad is exposing you to the world of art and culture.

11:46And how do you end up at the high school of art and design? Because he sits there while I'm taking my test in the auditorium. And he says, you go there and I'll be waiting for you when you go and sit down for the exam. That's how that happens. And I did go out for, apply for the High School of Art and Design. I was accepted and I studied in that high school. Interior design at that particular time was not on my radar at all. I had grown up looking at a lot of W magazines and I was obsessed with the seven to one head of like a Green Hill drawing or Antonio. So I was a fashion illustration, if you can call it, major in high school.

12:29So tell me what would be involved in that. Well, you know, they were, you know, they just like, I guess, as an echo of like a mirroring college, we all kind of arrived at these, when someone was doing fine art painting, someone was studying architecture. And I think in that case, architecture was maybe more, maybe drafting. That's what I kind of remember architecture being. I think interior design was a little bit more evolved. I remember a really good friend of mine, Monica Joy, drawing furniture. And I'm like, ooh, that's interesting. But, you know, we had, I was in the fashion illustration program and I studied it and I did well at it.

13:11And then when I started to realize getting up to like the 12th grade, I thought, and I was coming to graduate, I was like, what is this going to, you know? And then I got a job at working for a designer and kind of like a guy Friday, as I was referred to at that time. And started working for her, Joan Reagan, after school. And then it came an opportunity. I was starting to apply for colleges in Parsons. I had done some kind of weekend programs at Parsons as well for high school students getting ready for college. Done more studio painting and studio drawing there. And so it was an easy one for me.

13:58I always had this idea of going to Parsons. And then I went to Parsons. And I started with an associate's degree in interior design and then eventually transferred it to an undergraduate degree in environmental design. Now the architecture department at Parsons. And is that where you start to form this notion about seeing or appreciating the architecture before the design? Absolutely. Yeah? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, even when you think about kind of like tutorial books that even went where you would be looking at plans by Parrish Hadley, Billy Baldwin, there was a real understanding.

14:44Like, do you remember they used to print the floor plan with the project in editorial? Do you remember that? Yes. Exactly. Back in the day. That is not something that happens today. And so we would have to study the plan, even in that process. And I always thought that was interesting. When that left, I thought, oh, we're starting to really focus on image and not really understanding what's going on. So anyway, the program back in the 90s was very conceptual, a lot of deconstruction. I love talking about Derrida, semantics, symbology. I wanted that conversation to happen. Listeners at home, Google all of that and you're going to discover a rich world that you'll want to spend more time with as well.

15:37Yeah, exactly. Interior design is not a list of vendors. Those vendors are amazing. It's completely supportive in my career, but the practice and the craft of interior design is beyond vendors. I just want to say that. It's a whole body of ideas and conceptualization. So tell me how your practice gets started. And you've shared with me recently, I love that you described your career as a laboratory of learning. And you said, any mistakes people feel badly about having made? You just say, no, no. Don't. Don't. I was very committed. Some people might say stubborn. I spent, through my own, I don't know what it was, I spent a significant amount of time with that first job.

16:35And after that job, I didn't want another job. And I went to work for a couple of other designers, Barbara Hoban Ross, Edward Knowles Architects. I did do some, but I was like, oof. I really – and naively, I thought, oh, I'm so, you know, total ego. I'm so talented. The work will just gravitate towards me. I had absolutely no business plan whatsoever. A big ego and no business plan by Leighton Lewis. All right, here we go. Success, come get me. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So the business of home, guys, pay attention. So whatever. It's been my life, right? So I don't have any regrets, but I do know that I spent a disproportionate amount of time catching up where I could have learned on someone else's dime in someone else's office.

17:26And I had to learn those things on my own. And I had a lot of people who, despite being really stubborn, loved me anyway. And, you know, while I was crashing and burning for maybe the third or the fourth time that they were still supportive.

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18:29That's Ernesta.com slash B-O-H. And now, back to the show.

18:41What I'm curious about is, so you, again, with the big ego and the no business plan, you go out on your own. And tell me about some of the early days and the early projects that did come your way. Oh, well, I think one of the things that I've been very grateful for is that I had a partner. We were great friends. She's now passed. Catherine Kim, who I had my first business with, she worked with me at my office. We found each other at Parsons. We started a business together. And I did Kip's Bay when I was 29 years old. And I was in the house with Eric Kohler, Dakota Jackson. It was Alexa Hampton's first year.

19:24Wow. So I've been really grateful. So how did that happen? How did that come about? Well, I did the Harlem United show house the year before. And who walks into the Harlem United show house but Harry Hinson. And he says, I want you to do a room at Kips Bay. And we did a room that was called – I'm always calling room salons because that's just a way of saying a room for talking – a room for having conversation and discussions. That's not the living room. Right. Okay. Okay. Yes, the salon, of course. The salon. Yes, yes, yes, yes. You know, where the draperies are happening. So then, you know, we do this room.

20:09It's April 1999. New York Times and Wall Street Journal and Interior Design Magazine amazingly loves the room. Leather floors from Edelman. I designed the ghost screen, which is sheet silicone and steel. Royer sofa that we borrowed from Alan Moss for that show house gets covered in a gorgeous iridescent silk from Dongia. I mean, it's just a beautiful room. Absolutely. You know, I'm still creating a painting. And maybe in my mind, I'm still creating a painting in my mind where paintings and sculptures are included in that painting. Well, and as you just described, and I feel badly that there isn't the level of coverage.

20:55So you talked about April 1999 and the Kips Bay Showhouse opens, and then within the week is all the massive coverage of it back in the day in the New York Times and interior design and Wall Street Journal. Yeah, Washington Post. And of course, I didn't know what to do with that either. Because we didn't have social media or I didn't have a PR machine. So you get a great response. We get a great response. And what happens? A couple little jobs, a couple little inquiries. And of course, I'm also breaking up with my business partner because we've decided that we cannot work together, which is really sad.

21:37I'm sorry. So what happened there? I mean, I don't want to bring up bad memories. No, we're on the business of home. I think at 29 years old, I did not know that I needed or what I really needed was a business partner if I needed a partner at all. I did not need another designer to be my partner. And she needed a business partner. So we were both designers. And neither of you could represent the business side of it. Exactly. I mean, I still had another 20 years ahead of me attempting and creating that representation of the business side. It's still ahead of me. So a painful breakup, it sounds like.

22:22A painful breakup, yet it was this amazing visibility, which is just incredible. and um what follows about five years after that is i was invited by felma golden to be in the plaque the the first ever black architecture show at the studio museum and i'm just i'm just i'm just just a series of graceful lucky moments that and it always tears me up um that when um you got such big heavy hitters in the show in the black art and herbert mouchamp writes this review and says but if there's a heart of the show it's found in layton lewis's project wow yeah so i mean it was very moving and powerful and that was also in the in the new york times and i did not have a pr machine right then once again could not capitalize on this publicity coming our way hustle hustle hustle hustle hustle and you know and the story continues it's a series of huge visibility moments and hustling and you know and then then then i'm starting to understand oh i need a network i need i need to understand that you know there are there are agents who put you in contact there are there are design referral services there are all of these different ways that actually get you in front, you know, because many people, thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people read the New York Times, who's going to hire you?

23:59Well, that's why, I mean, one of the things that you said to me not too long ago was this difference between visibility and solvency and abundance, which stuck with me because I think you're so right. So here you are, to your point, people are saying wonderful things, You're getting wonderful write-ups in the Times and elsewhere, but how does that translate to you getting work and paying the bills? It really doesn't for a while, to be very direct. What it does, though, however, is when the time is right, I'm able to pull out some of those accolades and those articles and say, hey, I was in the New York Times and things like that in my portfolio when I started to get a little bit more traction for those opportunities.

24:49And even to this day, I think any designer, and I speak with many of them on the AD100 list and so on and so forth, we are always mindful of where are the next opportunities coming from and how are those opportunities going to manifest themselves. And I think there are many different strategies. Some people have personal networks. Some people come from big, you know, who are involved, but maybe, you know, sometimes I think to myself, oh, and I see it with some friends who went to like, let's say Cornell versus Parsons. Like, you know, Parsons is an echo chamber of amazing creative talent, but we're all talking to each other.

25:33We don't have a business department at the new school. Right. Right. So if I had children and gave them a direction, I would say, oh, you want to just be mindful that you start laying out what you can is a landscape of your future business opportunities with your colleagues in college. And that's part of what I'm trying to understand better, this whole notion of the business side of it and what you – not only what you wish you had learned and to your point, you didn't go work for somebody else and so you could have gained a much greater perhaps understanding of that whole structure of the business side of it.

26:18But also, what role should that play in education and informing people coming into this industry? Well, I think I see myself as being an idea person, right? So if I had to do it again, I would position myself to go and work for one of the big houses where I'm a senior level designer. So I don't have to bear the weight of any of the administrative shenanigans, but I get to exercise what I'm really good at in my craft. A lot of people want to be recognized, and I teach the MFA thesis at New York School of Interior Design, and I love it. But I would say be honest with yourself and know what your value is and what you truly are committed to.

27:17Because some people, everybody thinks they want to be the, let's say, the Andy Warhol, the Basquiat of the design office, the Billy Baldwin, the big idea person. But they really are really amazingly great at organizing a project on a project managerial level. And that is an amazing talent to be celebrated. it like they're not so much interested in in messing around with doing drawings and cultivating the ideas they really love they want to be the executors right versus the the other the other part of that is the idea person like as an idea person i do not want to be like if i could do it completely the way i want to do it i would never i'd go to the job site once a month i would make my drawings i tell everybody what what what you know which i i'm getting closer to doing which is put together the cd sets the construction documents i'll see you go out i'll hang out with the clients i'll come to the job sites while it's being executed i'll be there when you know it's being photographed okay so i'll go away and i will come back when it's all done you've got my ideas here you go here you go go forth and execute i'll check out i'll check it at every level because I'm detail-oriented to make sure that the ideas are getting translated into the execution package.

28:46But really, I want to be in the studio cultivating ideas. And I make it really clear to my clients and to my team, this cannot happen at all without you, without a team. This is, it's late. My name happens to be on the door. And it is, I've worked on it. I've worked for that to happen. But truly, this is an absolute team in a village operation, including the contractors and the vendors and the craftsmen. It's a real collage of different minds and bodies and spirits in order for things to happen. But again, to your point, when the editorial hits, it's a single note about who did it. Right. That's a force of nature.

29:47I cannot – I can't – I don't know what to say about that. It's just the way our society is designed. Sure. And we want to celebrate the individual, and we have to put someone's actual name on that list and point to this. Right, so they know who to call. Yeah, right. Exactly. And that all makes sense, but it's important to not lose sight of everything that you were just describing. But I want to come back to you mastering and better understanding the business of design and learning. Another thing that I find myself talking about a lot recently is learning how to value yourself and appreciate your worth and not only convey that to a client but actually demand that from a client and how you have learned that over time.

30:42I think mentorship is really important to keep your ear on the street to see. I think, first of all, there's a market rate. There's a standard. What ends up making one person choose one designer or the other might be personality, the kind of work that they do, the style and their approach creatively. But I really think it's important that there is a general single or maybe two or three version. There's the flat fee, there's the hourly fee, and then there's some hybrid of both of those things and a percentage over the cost of construction and FF &E. So what I would say is that stay within the template and within that template, use different templates to see what works.

31:40And you might have to manipulate the template for different clients and for the different type of job. Well, so tell me what the template is and how you think – you're talking about how you divide up your hours versus your design fee and your markups. So talking about value, right now, I'm fortunate to be an AD100 L-decor A-list designer. So what do I do? I call up and I keep those friends from that particular cohort of talented individuals. And I say, hey, what are you charging? I think at the very least, if I call up, I don't need to name names, but if I refer to this person or that person and say, what are you charging?

32:24What is your current hourly fee? And I can go, oh, okay. Well, I'm in the range, right? Like I'm in the range. I'm not, you know, I'm$5 ,000 an hour. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I want you to be$5 ,000 an hour. I want to be$5 ,000 an hour too, but I want, but I don't, I want to be working on jobs and, and, and I also want to have clients. I also want to have clients, right? So I have to also be realistic. Certain designers have exposure to certain clienteles. My clientele is within a certain financial bracket. All of these things, really sober conversations. One of the principles that I've really learned over this 20-year mastering is that we don't say no to money.