Nick Olsen is proud to call himself a decorator

0:02This is Business of Home. I'm your host, Dennis Scully. Every week I'll be speaking to leaders and innovators from all corners of the home industry. My guest this week is Nick Olson. A former protege of design legend Miles Redd, Nick has built a thriving career, blending classical references with bold colors, playful patterns, and a signature sense of wit. His work is a masterclass in making traditional interiors feel fresh, dynamic, and full of personality. I spoke with Nick about how his first apartment ended up on the cover of Domino, why he proudly calls himself a decorator, and why, despite all the pressure to build a social media following, he's perfectly content not being the next Instagram star.

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2:52Let's tell that story and how that part of your career began. Ah, the letter. Yes. So I was at a crossroads in my post-educational life and career, and I had just earned a very expensive and illustrious undergraduate degree. A very impressive degree. Yes. I had graduated from Columbia University with a bachelor's in architecture with the firm knowledge that I would not be an architect. And I was working at a magazine for a former professor of mine named Suzanne Stevens, who is fabulous, was fabulous. And I was an editorial assistant, basically an intern, but also given the opportunity to write some things for the magazine.

3:43And I thought, this could be my career. I could be a journalist now and forget architecture. But I had this lingering memory in my mind of this magazine article that I had seen on an interior decorator named Miles Red. And it just kept me up at night. The photos, the text, and I just thought, he's got it figured out. He's young. He's successful. He has this beautiful house. He's charming. like this is who I want to you know sort of model myself after in my like post-college life so flash forward again to my internship they just weren't going to hire me full-time which is fine you know they didn't have the budget for another full-time editor and I thought well what have you got to lose why don't you reach out to that person in the W article Miles Redd he lives in and works in Manhattan, kind of write him a little fan letter and say, I admire your style so much.

4:45You seem to have basically life figured out at the age of 30 something. I would love to meet you and interview you and understand how you got to this place in your career and your life. And everybody in my life at the time knew that I was writing this letter to Miles and hoping that I would hear back and I printed it out on wood grain paper it's like really thin wood veneer they sell it at Kate's papery which was there back in the day sure and I had to like make the font like 10 or 11 point because there was like the fan letter part and then there was like and a little bit about me that went on for embarrassingly too long just to show kind of like the breadth of my interest, but really thinking that I would never hear back sort of riddled with embarrassment afterwards that, you know, what, what did I just put out into the world?

5:40Oh, and I put it in a giant pale blue, like Tiffany blue envelope and sent it to, um, Miles's house because I thought that's what came up on Google. Um, I didn't know he no longer worked out of his home. Well, to my surprise, two weeks after I sent the letter, I got another pale blue envelope back to my dorm room mail room from Amanda, his lovely office manager at the time saying, Miles received your letter. He would very much like to meet with you. And I almost had a stroke in the middle of the student center because I just, I thought never in my life would I hear back from this person. He's very busy, doesn't have the time for somebody like me.

6:23And I called the office. I set up a meeting. Amanda was lovely on the phone. We set up a time and I go to his then office on Bleecker Street wearing a costume, Dennis. I looked like a crazy person. What were you wearing? I had very long hair at the time. I really wanted to look like the Calvin Klein underwear model, Travis Fimmel, which I had the hair. I didn't have the arms or the stomach, But I was also wearing like a weird like batik blazer and like a J.Crew rep tie. And like it was it was a it was a lot. But Miles was very gracious, as he always is. And he, you know, answered my few questions and I had a list.

7:10And then he turned things back around me and asked me some, you know, who was my favorite designer? Who was my favorite architect? What's, you know, all these things about like, what are your interests? What are your tastes? which I wasn't really prepared for that because I thought I'm the journalist here. I want to know what he's doing. And then he revealed to my surprise that his then assistant had given her notice and was on the way out. And then he was actually in the process of hiring somebody. And I thought, oh, well, I definitely want to be considered for this because I only have an internship.

7:45I don't have a full-time job. And I sent a proper resume. I stayed in touch with Amanda and she called me, I think two weeks after the first interview and said, you've got the job. And I, I was just like, sign me up. I didn't ask about anything. I was just like, I'll, I'll salary negotiations or nothing. Yeah. But, um, there was a, there was a salary and there were full health benefits, which I thought, well, my dad's going to be so happy. I now have a paying job with benefits in New York city. So I felt like I'd won the lottery. And I, I went out that night to dinner my friend lauren and i went out to celebrate and this is so random that i remember this but um we went to our favorite spot and gwyneth paltrow and chris martin walked by and like saw us staring and chris martin turned around and stuck his tongue out and sort of did like you know raspberries on us but i thought somehow i thought that was a sign from uh the design heavens that this was meant to be they were somehow celebrating with you they were in sort of you know, kind of a silly, weird way.

8:48But I just thought I'm going down the path that I'm supposed to be on. Finally, I don't know where it's going to lead. But this dark, the whole architecture pursuit had been my dream since childhood. I was like, you know, we got to we got to take a hard laugh out of this. Well, and and what what happened with with architecture? So what when did you realize that it wasn't the path for you and why wasn't it? You know, my parents were very pro education. You know, my mother was a teacher and my father was a research scientist and inventor who had gotten his master's and PhD. My mother had her master's.

9:27They wanted us to be educated adults, but they didn't care where we went to school or what we did with it as long as it was something, you know, with honor, so to speak. I was ambitious. I was like a little academics freak that wanted to. I mean, I think that's how I got like a lot of my self esteem, because I wasn't very good at sports. Like I was creative, I was always a creative little kid. But I was very good at school. And I thought, well, the kind of culmination of that is going to an Ivy League school. And what better way to combine your passion for old houses and architecture and living and sort of lifestyle than becoming like like a successful residential architect and ended up at Columbia, which is an incredible school, but having done zero research about the architecture department there.

10:17And I just thought, well, I'll pivot, you know, I'll figure out kind of how to be successful here because that's what I do, you know, and it just wasn't a great fit. And it wasn't, I was the square peg in the round hole that couldn't speak the language. I couldn't quite fake what they were expecting in terms of really talking about program. And you weren't really supposed to design anything. It was very theory-based. And you were sort of like this quasi-social scientist who just somehow figured it out from within. And it ended up on paper and in a 3D chipboard model. And my last critique that I had there, we all traveled to Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

10:59and there was an infill site that we were supposed to design, a media center and gallery space. And I turned around and there was this old Spanish bakery called La Villita, which had these old wedding cakes in the store window that were covered with dust and just like cracked. And I thought I was being like, I was like, oh, this is my inspiration. This is speaking to me. Yeah, it did. The old wedding cakes in the window, shocking. And for my final presentation, my final model, I made a giant wedding cake as the structure, you know, like very like googie architecture. And the theater was like a big slice that came out of it with the presenting, you know.

11:42And how and how was this accepted at the school, Nick? How was that received? Well, shockingly, with all of the with all of the staff and the guest critics, it was like a lamb to the slaughter. It was just not, not, I was the first one to present. I basically, I didn't get laughed out of the room, but I got told that I was a failure to my face, which is. You're kidding. So that's really what they said. Oh yeah. They said, this is a failure. You know, I, the guest critic said, you know, this is a waste of your college education, like what you've done here. And I was so crushed because I thought I was being a little, yeah, I thought I was being cheeky and i didn't think it would necessarily go over great but and it really wasn't my middle finger to the program it was me doing something i thought was um kind of clever and sort of an appropriate like kind of critique of gentrification i don't know getting getting real deep in there but what whatever it was like a lead balloon like not happening did not go over okay but um You know, going back to Suzanne Stevens, she was teaching, had taught for decades, the architecture criticism seminar.

12:59And, you know, we would write critical essays of current and 20th century architecture. And she thought that I had some talent in writing and we got along very well. And she was just a glamorous person that I thought, wow, this is a personality. This is a New Yorker. This is another just just like very similar to Miles in that way that like a real character who knows what they're doing, who's successful, who's connected and seems to be enjoying what they do. And I thought more of that, please, in my life, because academia and the pursuit of architecture, at least as far as what little I knew of it up until then, was not working out for me.

13:44So into the welcoming arms of Miles Redd, you run. I ran with abandon and also tons of nerves because I was kind of like a highly educated child. I had had two internships, I think, at that point because my whole career had been making good grades. And I barely knew what an invoice was. I was scared to speak on the phone because it was a long, narrow, open office where everybody was listening. And I didn't want to sound foolish. And, you know, I wanted, I wanted, I thought the stakes were so high because they were, and I wanted to do a great job for Miles and Amanda and their clients. And, but I very quickly learned that it wasn't trial by fire, but Miles worked so quickly and efficiently that there was no kind of sitting down for training.

14:40It was like, you will figure this out because we have these XYZ jobs that are ongoing and it's urgent. I mean, everything was kind of urgent, which is instilled in me to this day about decorating where it feels like Miles is very good about answering the phone, responding to every phone call and email, you know, staying on top of things. And it was a very good example of how to not only be an extremely talented designer, which I already knew. I'm like, that's a given. I knew Miles had the gift. turns out he is very good at business and very good at running an office. So that was invaluable. Talk a little bit about your apartment and the first time that Miles finally comes over to your apartment.

15:35Because that's a big turning point, it turns out, for you as well. It was. And another nerve-wracking experience because I had somehow convinced a female friend, my friend Amy that I'm still close with to this day to live with me in a grand studio apartment on Fifth Avenue and 22nd Street. It was a very steep walk up that kept me in great physical shape. And she had gone home to California and trusted me to find the real estate, which is a huge mistake because I will never operate practically. But we made it work for, I think, a year. And she decorate. And I was like, do we divide? She made it work as long as she could with all of your experimentation.

16:21She did. She paid half the rent for as long as she could. It basically subsidized my fantasy of having this 12-foot ceilings with a fireplace and a big bathroom and beautiful windows overlooking the Flatiron Building. But I mean, you did a lot of experimenting in that apartment, if I recall. I did experiment. And I was taking things home from the flea market, and I painted the walls. And I would ask Miles his opinion on certain things. And he just said, well, I need to see. I want to see it. Like, when can we all see your apartment? I said, it's not done yet. It's not done yet. It's not done. I think like two years into working for him, I finally had a housewarming party for Miles and friends from the office and my friends from life.

17:02And everybody walked up to my third, felt like fifth floor studio apartment and had champagne and had little snacks and miles was so kind and very very very positive and just wanted to see everything and like check out all my little crafts my loving hands at home projects but at the party he called his friend sarah ruffin costello who was at the time creative director of domino magazine and you know domino was the magazine for it was like made such a splash and yes i knew that all you know he was so close with the people working there and he said sarah you have to come see this apartment like nikki's done an amazing job you just have to see it i was like oh that's so nice and she did she came and scouted the apartment and very it feels like it was like back to back uh sarah and her husband paul costello came the brilliant photographer Paul Costello genius shot on film with Polaroids of my little studio and with me and then Miles comes over um um but the photos I thought were beautiful and I mean it just the kids would now say like vibey it was it was a vibe that I'm like oh this is what I've been after like this is what I wanted to create in this apartment this is how I wanted to feel this is how I wanted to live and it made me so happy and then when i guess when deborah needleman the editor-in-chief had seen the film they thought it was a possibility for a cover and so they sent back a whole new bigger team for a cover try with dara capa negro and melanie acevedo and lauren goodman the fashion you know director and they had me in little tom brown suits i was just like i that i asked for I felt like, wow, this is, I couldn't believe it was happening.

18:57And they did a cover try with me, a real model wearing an Oscar de la Renta gown, and then my friend to make it more personal because they'd never put a man on the cover. That's right. It was all the barefoot women at the time. It was all the barefoot stylish ladies as they deserve to be. And I thought, well, I never imagined that i would physically be on the cover of anything so i was not embarrassed when they put the beautiful blonde model um who looked like like a taller jessica simpson like on the cover in the beautiful gown on my sofa that i upholstered myself um and it made the cover i think it was the november 2006 cover of domino which still blows my mind to this day because i was 24 years old getting off at the print street station to go to work and seeing my tiny home on the cover of a national design magazine so that was very special and that i'm not kidding was all thanks to miles because i would not have the chutzpah to do that well and and out of that cover also came the opportunity for you to do a column for for domino the the deal hunter column oh this was the you know the the beginning of the blog era and they domino had their own blog and i get i forget who was on staff that suggested that i do sort of like a deal hunter blog column and i got to write which is fun i still i love i love to write i love the sound of my own voice dennis this just in yeah exactly nick likes hearing from himself right um i thought it was clever and i was immensely flattered that they asked me to do that as well as write actual articles for the magazine.

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21:53So here you are, all of this is coming to you, such a young age. At the same time, unfortunately, here comes the financial crisis, sadly, which sounds the death knell for Domino in 2009 when the magazine closes and the world changed in a huge way. It sounds like it also had an impact for Miles and his business at the time. And it seems to coincide with you ultimately leaving and starting your own firm without bringing back unpleasant memories of the day. Tell me about that time and what happened. I believed so much in Miles's talent that I knew all the things that were coming for him would, I knew he would have a book.

22:47I knew he would have a line of fabrics and wallpapers. I knew he would do furniture. I knew he would do all these collaborations. And I thought, I want to be around for that because that feels so exciting. And I know he's going to do it better than anybody. And how fabulous will that be? Well, 2008 financial crisis hits and it just pushed, it kind of kicked the can down the road. And I thought, well, I'm so impatient. I know I eventually want to do this for myself. It would be fun to see it all happen for him. But maybe this is the time that I try to do this for myself. But I thought, well, when is there a good time to leave a comfortable, enriching, well-paying, full-time job with benefits?

23:33Is there ever a good time to do that? You don't want to leave at the height of boom times. so and I didn't want to leave Miles in the lurch because you know he had David and he had some more help at the time and it was it was a conversation and it was a it was a difficult conversation because I thought it was my time to go but I didn't want to end the friendship and I didn't want to hurt him at 29 years old I was freaking out because I thought yeah you know he Miles is a gentleman and he understood and he not only wished me well he sent me eventually referred me to clients for jobs that he couldn't take on um he like the the the font of of the miles you know the drip not only drippings from the pan but just like true referrals like i you go work for these people i know you're going to do a great job that did help me help set me on my way in my own career.

24:29So I'm forever grateful to that too. Well, and you, and you talked about Miles being the savvy business person in addition to being such a sophisticated and talented decorator. What, what do you feel you, you learned and took away as you were thinking about starting your, your own business uh first off keep the overhead low he would not over invest in you know his office space at the time was very inexpensive he didn't really pay for marketing because he could do that himself he didn't he didn't even really throw too much investment into client presentations because I think the sheer confidence he had in his ideas, but also knowing if you've paid to digitally render the entire house and do these beautiful boards and the client says, I don't like any of it, then you've lost money that you can't necessarily bill back.

25:32And there was this kind of like understanding that you've hired, people had hired miles and now people hire me for a service. and also what I can bring to the table. And there should be an initial trust there that I will show you things that you like. So I'm not going to do this giant dog and pony show to convince you that some of my ideas will work for your home. If you're not billing on an hourly structure, which you wasn't, and the whole point is to get from A to B to C, then don't waste your time on the curtain sketches. Let's get approval from the clients. Let's get the curtains made. Let's be on to the next thing.

26:15Let's deliver on what was promised. And the momentum that he kept as a business person was incredible. And it still inspires me because there's no guarantee that that next job is going to come along. So you need to kind of work quickly enough to finish what you've got. So you have time to take on more. Well, and it couldn't have been easy in the very beginning with your new firm, just because of the economic climate at the time. And even in 2010, everyone was still very much feeling the impact of the financial crisis still. And I wonder, did you start with relatively small jobs? And I'm curious about how you grew to take on bigger jobs.

27:04I was working for my second apartment, which was a walk up in Nolito on Spring Street. And when I was still working for Miles, I had one client on my own that I was able to run through. He let me run the project through his company with the accounts and everything, which was very kind of him. And through the blog, through the Domino blog, I had been getting inquiries for, I guess, what we call e-decorating now. like I have two rooms. Can you do the furniture plan and then do a itemized list of what I should buy on the internet for my home? And that made me some money, but it's not very satisfying if the person lives in Chicago and you can't go see the room that you've just specked out.

27:48Right. But I would say it was a combination of referrals from both Miles and some friends. it was additional press that I got by designing friends apartments my friend Rebecca's studio in Brooklyn was in house beautiful and it was just still showing people out there who might want to hire a designer okay yeah this is what I can do this is what I'm capable of and at some point I met a client on the east side on 72nd street and her family had a duplex and she basically was interviewing me. And I think I know now that she was also interviewing Ashley Whitaker, who's now my friend, and it was between us.

28:33And the client eventually told me, I'm going to hire you, but you have to tone it down on the flea market stuff. Okay. Ouch. But I knew what she was saying. It wasn't a dig. And I just thought, but I, no one's ever given me a budget that has been beyond that. I mean, really, I mean, I was working with okay budgets, but if we're going to do Park Avenue and 72nd street, then yes, the, the gauntlet has been thrown. Like let's ditch the flea market. Let's do some real Luther Quintana sofas. So, and you know, that's what we did. Um, and I'm still working with that person to this day. She's referred me to many of her friends, but that, that was a turning point because that apartment was in Veranda.

29:18When that came out, Mark Sykes put it on his blog. Thank you, Mark Sykes. I know. And it just got a good kind of following. And it built from there. And it still blows my mind because that feels like it was two or three years ago. And it was probably 10 or 12 years ago. But here we are. Well, and so as your firm began to grow, you talked about staying lean and you talked about being very mindful. How did you think about staffing? How did you think about working with PR people or marketing yourself? I mean, tell me about it. I knew I had the marketing part down because of the Miles example of just making your own relationships with editors and vendors and PR people and having a pretty wide network just organically.

30:10The business part was harder because I was doing it all myself and sending out invoices in the middle of the night and working from home was a pain. So I finally went on the search for an office space and found one little room. But I do like to keep it lean. I don't want to manage a big staff. To me, I'm scattered enough as it is wondering what six, seven, eight people are doing at any given time, even if you can sort of create teams and do all that stuff. I'm also just clearly too controlling to do it because I am picking out every fringe and every welt that goes into these projects and obsessing over the scale of things, which I think is the almost nine-tenths of the job to get the proportions right and the scale.

31:03So that's really still all on me but you know as a business you can't take these big swings uh all that often with your your business's funds you have to kind of be mindful of you know where where are we at for the quarter for the year like do we want to do we want to spend money on another photo shoot or try to do a book or do the development for xyz um and instead it's like instead i bought two houses oh yeah and we're gonna and we're gonna talk about the duchess folly and oh gosh and uh shifting gears a little bit there are a couple different things i wanted to ask you about so you use the term decorator and i wonder how do you think about this whole debate around decorator versus designer.

32:00Recently, when I asked a lot of people, some people got quite animated about what they think the difference is in those words. And I'm curious how you see it or think about it. And some of the greats that you've admired refer to themselves as decorators. Of course. Right? I proudly embrace decorator. I was told decades ago that to be an interior designer, You have to have like a license and, you know, like I don't, I'm not an interior designer. I'm an interior decorator and I take the box and I decorate it. I love collaborating with brilliant architects and artisans and kind of builders and people who move walls around and have a vision for that.

32:41And I have my own opinions, but by and large, I'm taking like a set of given conditions and decorating them and decorating around them and filling these spaces with things that make a home. So I am a decorator and I love it. I think interior designer sounds a bit more maybe established or respectable. And if people have their own issues about that, then so be it. But we're all sort of like working towards the same end. semantics don't keep me up at night. Do you ever whip out with clients that you've got an architecture degree from Columbia? Oh, no, but it's like when their kids are trying to get into these schools, it just makes me think, thank God I did it when I did it because it's so much harder these days.

33:34And it does sound good at cocktail parties. And it does, you know, sometimes I'll drop that, like, you know, like, oh, drop that name, pick that up off the ground. Wow, Columbia. Sounds good. But when in reality, I am shilling lampshades and like sofas and all of the above. Well, it's interesting. And I ask in part because we seem to be in another one of these moments where many are wondering if there is too low of a barrier to entry in the world of interior design. And you touched on many of the designers who reached out to me said, I got a design degree, I got an education in this, and I passed that wretched exam.

34:24Sure. Right? And so I call myself an interior designer to recognize that. Of course, as they should. Exactly. And I stand with that. And I spend a bunch of time over at the New York School of Interior Design, and I'm eager for people to get a great design education. But I also speak to an awful lot of great designers who don't have that kind of education and have found remarkable success. It used to be that Ralph Lauren was a pretty good design school for many of the greats in our industry. The magnet of talent, so much talent still comes through Ralph Lauren. In a perfect world, you would have all three, a liberal arts education, a design school education, and on-the-job experience.