Ep. 446: Santa Fe Style & The Art of Layering with French & French Interiors

0:01Welcome to How to Decorate from Ballard Designs, a weekly podcast all about the trials and triumphs of decorating and redecorating your home. I'm Caroline. I'm on the marketing team. And I'm Taryn, and I'm a product designer. I'm Liz. I head up the creative team. We're your hosts. Join the expert team at Ballard Designs for tips, tricks, and tales from interior designers, stylists, and other talents in the design world. Plus, we'll answer your decorating dilemmas at the end of each episode. We love answering your questions, so don't forget to email us at podcast at ballardesigns.net. Now on with the show.

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1:19Ensuring every project is not only beautiful, but built to last together. Their Santa Fe-based design firm, French and French Interiors, creates luxurious yet livable rooms for their clients across the U.S. Heather and Matt, welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. I absolutely loved getting to dive into your portfolio because we have really not had many, many designers on the show who do projects in the Southwest. Like a few here and there, of course, but it was just really like it transports you into this new world where the colors and the patterns and the landscape just all works together so beautifully.

2:00So I just really had like it was so fun to get to check out some of your client projects. Thank you so much. It's a really great and beautiful place to work. Yeah. Why don't we start there? Why don't you tell us, Beau, I know you're both originally from the South, so maybe give us a little primer on how you made it out to Santa Fe and how you started your design business about 15 years ago. How do we make it to Santa Fe? Well, we had fixed up a little house in southwest Florida where Heather's from. I'm from south Alabama, Fairhope. and we knew we wanted to go back out west and we wanted to find somewhere that both of our careers at the time would work.

2:48Heather was in natural medicine and I was in natural building and renewable energy. And, you know, Santa Fe was really one of like maybe three places in the country where both of our careers made sense. And also that somewhere that we could find a piece of property and build our own house on. and uh yeah and you know yeah and then long story short we got out here and decided we wanted to pivot careers and it was the best decision we could have made and yeah and and went on from from there was yeah so was it that first house project in florida that sort of ignited your love for design and then, you know, kind of blossomed there if you were in different careers at that point?

3:38Yeah, I think for me, I was really always naturally interested in it. And now I say to our daughter, like, pay attention to what you pay attention to. Because I, from a really young kid, I think Matt too, you know, my room was really important to me. Space was really important to me. My mom let me design my room. As a child, I did this like black and white Disney themed room for myself. It was hilarious. Now looking back at it, it was cute. And yeah, and then I went to Auburn University, which was where Matt and I met for college. And I remember looking at the interior design building across from my dorm and thinking like, oh, that's so interesting.

4:21But I didn't even understand what the career was or that it was even an option. I think we kind of come from a different time where kids now kind of understand that there's this world out there beyond like doctor, lawyer, engineer, whatever. I guess I just didn't really grasp it, you know? And so it was a natural interest. And then after we got married, we remodeled that house in Florida. And Matt always likes to say that our shelter magazine budget was larger than our mortgage. Yeah, we couldn't afford furniture, but we were stacking things up on our magazines. Side tables were the magazines.

5:03So, okay, in that first house, how did your dynamic, you know, in maybe like what you were bringing to the design project, was that maybe similar to what it is now? Or have you sort of evolved your different skill sets? I think we've evolved pretty significantly. Yeah. And, you know, so growing up in Fairhope, my mom had a store where she would travel and import kind of home goods and collectibles, hot sauces. It was really sort of a really interesting import like Emporium. I don't know. And she we had a lot of interior design designers that would come and buy from her and she would go and she would travel for the shop, would buy for them.

5:48And so, and my grandmother was a painter and, you know, in the South, I feel like it's almost a more like materially aesthetic culture, you know, like just the way, you know, we decorate our homes and people dress. And, you know, I feel like beauty is perhaps maybe because it's a more traditional culture is important. so I feel like that sort of was like my baseline of really sort of appreciating um beauty and things and and um so yeah when we when we were designing that house I feel like we didn't really know all the layers you would build in so like like paint color was really important to us I remember you know I don't know a patchwork of samples trying to figure out paint color and And, you know, we had a lot of pushback from people about everything we did, you know, like, why would you want to tear out the drop ceiling in your in your kitchen?

6:51And like that fluorescent box lighting is so great for a workspace. And while, you know, it just seems like every everything we were doing, we had pushback of like just aesthetic and all of our decisions we're making. And also that like, why would you want to sell now? Because the home prices are going to only go up so much. And, you know, we stuck to our guns. We sold our house ourselves two weeks before the market failed in Florida, which was like 06. So like literally. it all that 08 bubble burst way before in florida yeah we made like right and we made like 125 percent or so profit on the investment of the house and it was you were those people that everyone's like i wish i was those people yeah yeah and it was like just by chance yeah yeah yeah it was like we say it was like it was like a double bubble because we had a hurricane it was 05 and we had a hurricane come through Charlie, came through Punta Gorda and the area where we were.

7:57And like a hundred tornadoes came out of it and just like ripped apart neighborhoods and then left some untouched. And we were lucky enough to be one of the untouched ones. So like, it was like an extra boost of value. But like literally two weeks after we sold the place and packed up like the clampets and we're fooling out West, our house is worth what we paid for it. You know? And so it was just like a validation all the way to the end that to follow our instincts and that we were onto something, you know? Yeah. What an incredible story. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah, no wonder you kept at it. You clearly had a knack for it.

8:36Well, I wanted to talk about Santa Fe. And Liz, please jump in here at any point. Because, like I mentioned before, it's such a, you know, specific landscape and locale. And I think so many people probably have a vision of what the American Southwest looks like and, you know, the colors that are there and the motifs and the architecture. And so I'm curious how that has all influenced your design and, you know, how you've worked with it, how you've maybe, like, worked against it to try to meld the different things that you like into your spaces. Yeah, I think it took me a little while to embrace the traditional aesthetic of Santa Fe.

9:27So I went and worked with a firm before we opened up our own for a few years. And they had a little bit of an East Coast aesthetic. and when I left that firm, I wanted to really make sure that what we were doing was very different and more colorful and I wanted to stand apart from what was happening here in Santa Fe. And so it took me a little while to kind of wrap my head around it. And then we did a show house that it was an incredible house, the Applegate Estate, which we actually, this this was in 2015 I want to say and um we just redid that house for a new client that purchased it and it was just an architectural digest like two weeks ago or something like incredible yeah it was it's great it was fun to get to go back to it because that that so we did one room for a show house there and um it just has this very storied uh the house has this very storied presence about it where Frank Applegate, who's like the father of folk art here in Santa Fe, and it hung out with these really amazing artists, including Georgia O 'Keeffe and Ansel Adams photographed the house.

10:51And those photographs are currently in the Smithsonian. And, you know, it just has this amazing presence about it. And so when you're in it, you really want to honor that. And so Matt and I really pushed to kind of figure out how do we embrace this, you know, like triple Adobe wall, like very, you know, like the walls are like pottery. It's very beautiful. How do we embrace this aesthetic, but also kind of keep it our own? And that was the first time that we really, really pushed hard with multiple colors. Like before we were colorful, but we weren't using a lot of color and we were still figuring out how to layer it and layer pattern.

11:36And so that room and that 2015 show house for us was like pinks and greens and lots of woods and different, you know, case goods that had different patterning on it. And it was just very interesting. And so I think it, and we use these Navajos from the 1930s that had that type of patterning on it. And it really kind of pushed us to bring in that Santa Fe aesthetic into this like very layered kind of back east kind of southern meets English look that we have. I don't know, like to speak widely though on, you know, the West, like say the West versus the Southwest and just the regionality of design.

12:27I feel like, you know, modernism and architecture kind of have lent itself to come into sort of the modern Santa Fe style because of the angularity. And, you know, there wasn't a lot of furniture originally in like Spanish colonial times. They would just have like a chest and maybe like, you know, one chair in the whole house, you know. But there's, you know, there's something about the landscape here that draws in people that, you know, are looking for like a wide horizon, you know, whether it be personally, spiritually, you know, to like expand, you know, their artistic vision. or, you know, like cowboys here.

13:24I mean, if you sit down next to a belly up next to, you know, a salty old cowboy here, you might find that he was like the dean of classicism at Yale or something. You know what I mean? There's just this unexpected cast of people here that come here for like sort of an expansion of themselves. You know, and you can feel that, you know, and design wise, you know, in the 80s and 90s, you know, kind of like when America like the salsa craze or, you know, like America sort of got, you know, the market craze of all that was kitsch about the Southwest, you know, which I full circle love now. you know what I mean but I feel like we have this comfort with it now with retrospect of sort of like been through this like absorption of our experience here and and what all that means but yeah we you know it's easy as designers here to sort of placate to an expectation of like what is Southwest, you know, and we, we wanted, you know, we were so inspired by sort of the history of design and designers and, you know, thinking about the whole world of design and interiors and went into, to like have a practice and a clientele that was outside of Santa Fe as well as here, because there's really only so much marketplace to be had.

14:59And like one of the things we learned. We love show houses and we recommend to everybody to do, take every opportunity to do a show house because it gives you a chance to be with other designers and see how everyone interprets what they do without a client, you know, and get to know themselves. But, but we realized like how many great designers there were here for such a small town and really wanted to, to one day have a practice that was outside of, of just Santa Fe. So I feel like there was some strategy there, whether we knew it or not, developing our look. Yeah, there was for sure. I feel like I just went on for a really long time there.

15:38I'm sorry. No, not at all. Your work is such a great combination of, I think, your Southern roots and that traditionalism that happens in interiors, definitely here in the Southeast, and that mix of the traditional that you're finding in the Southwest. And I think there's also just this like beautiful, looking at the pictures from the Applegate Estate piece that you did, that's on your website. There's also, and maybe this is just, you know, me leaning into your name a little bit, a little French provincialism happening as well. I mean, that kind of like dustiness and worn French feeling fabrics that are happening in there that are that still feel at home in, you know, a worn, well-worn home like the like the Applegate estate.

16:38Yeah, I think there's a groundedness to Santa Fe. And I think that no matter where we're working in the country, that's kind of a through thread of our work. and I think yeah there's something I think because we do use a lot of color and pattern we have to be really thoughtful with how we layer things so it doesn't feel like clown town or you know super chaotic you know and so really making sure that the way that we layer those colors and that the scaling of pattern is appropriately placed and And is really important, I think, especially in a house like the Applegate Estate, where, you know, the architecture is so soulful and storied that, you know, you couldn't just come in and do, you know, loud murals on the wall.

17:35And, you know, like if you were going to do something like that, it would need to be more muted and a bit more grounded. And, you know, so, yeah, I think, I think Santa Fe really just brings this groundedness to our work for sure. Yeah, there's definitely a sense of place, which is fantastic. And I would never say clown town at all about your work. Your use of color is very sophisticated. it. Thank you. There's been moments. There's been moments. Everybody's getting self-stress. Sometimes it's hard to hold yourself back. Color's just so fun. Well, yeah, it's so funny. If someone had said to me, you know, Southwest mixed with English cottage, I would be like, there's no world in which those two go together.

18:24And then I saw your work and it just, gosh, they complement each other so well. And I know that's really because of your skill in blending them. But maybe start with like what, you know, what about each of those things? Because I think color obviously is a big tool for you because those sepia tones of Santa Fe, you know, really thread through your work. Well, I have to say it took us a long time to get clients to listen to us. and I the the moment for us was was this um it was a project that was in house beautiful um I forget what it was called uh anyway I can't remember um and it it made it in and the client was so happy and um Cindy was her name she was she was amazing and did you know there's a Ballard Designs store near you if you haven't already now is a great time to go check out our store in person.

19:25We've just done a total makeover of all of our showrooms in preparation for spring, and we'd love for you to come see all of our new items in person. You can pick up swatches, test out all of our seating, and talk to one of our free interior design consultants about your latest decorating project. If you're curious where there's a Ballard Designs store near you, just head to our website and look in the top right corner for all of our store locations. And when you come see us in person, be sure to tell them that the podcast send you. All right, let's get back to the show.

19:57You know what, really how I ended up communicating that to, to how I ended up communicating that to people is that the desert is a really harsh place, at least here in Santa Fe. It's a really harsh place. And I think you want your house to be, you want your house to feel cozy and comfortable and a bit of a respite from, from, you know, the wind and the dust and it's so expansive and it can feel a little overwhelming and it's beautiful, but you don't want that necessarily in your home. At least I don't. And so it took a while. I would lay out all of these florals for clients and we'd present it to them and there'd be some geometrics that were in there.

20:38And every client for years would say, I want more geometric. I don't want floral. And it's really those florals that soften everything. And that was kind of the pivot and the push of being able to show a client and show houses. And then with these houses that we've done, that it works. And it really is important to be able to layer both the geometric and harsher patterns with florals and that softness, you know. Yeah. Or even wallpaper. I remember sort of before, you know, because I would say like what, 2018 or so, I would say maybe pushed by some British designers is botanicals and florals and wallpaper was all of a sudden back, you know.

21:36And I feel like that never stopped in the South, perhaps, so much. But it was almost like an apostate. I remember people being appalled by us using wallpaper and layering pattern. And I feel that like we were working out how, cause we loved all of that. And we were figuring out how to make all that work that by the time it started to hit and designers were sort of getting curious, you know, cause there was like the era of like high G, you know, everything was like high, high G or high Z or whatever and gray and, and pale and tone on tone, light sort of tone on tone and, um, or glam. Right. And we were so outside of that that people thought we were crazy.

22:29You're never going to have clients, you know. And I feel like, you know, we also have tried to have like, I don't want to say like an old fashioned or traditional career arc, you know. And when everyone was saying that, you know, Instagram was going to kill print and all these things. And like, why do people need print magazines when there's this thing called Pinterest, you know. we were like leaning as hard as we could or like how do we get in print like if it is going to be if it is going to go away how do we get in print before it's gone you know and we didn't want to like hire you know a publicist early on or someone that was going to like all right you got to go to every event you got to be in everyone's face and just sort of like push ourselves real hard out there, we were just sort of wanting to like build a clientele and build a business and just like a good interiors business first.

23:27I mean, and then, and then when, um, HGTV had the, uh, the big, uh, the fixer upper show, right. They were looking for like, we want the next husband and wife, like, like now, like, you know, what we could do with you guys, you know, you're just this, like whatever you are and we're going to make you something else or whatever. And like, I'm so thankful that like none of that worked out and it took us enough time to realize that we didn't, we didn't want to go that route or whatever, that we wanted to keep developing what we were and figure out a way to, to make our vision, you know, create a clientele.

24:07And print has really been, you know, the recognition of national print has really brought clients to us that are coming to us to have, you know, our interpretation and vision of what they want for their homes, you know? Yeah, I think we're kind of like traditionalists through and through and, you know, with a bit of a twist. And I think when people were saying to us, you know, you're crazy, don't do that. I think we were really confident in the fact that when you put something out into the world, you're going to get clients and people back that really relate to you. And I think that really has been our career arch for us, is that we have clients that come in and really trust us because they want what we want and we really think similarly.

24:59There's a calmness to our clients and a comfort that they usually come in with because they they get it you know and so I think when you're really kind of true to yourself and true to your aesthetic that it makes those client relationships easier and and um allows you to you know get in things like print and you know yeah well it's you mentioned Matt that um the I guess the draw of Santa Pe is is sort of like this expansion of your you know creativity or your mind or your spirituality or whatever and i wonder if that does make your clients more open to creative choices right like they maybe they have more of a acceptance of that because that's kind of what santa fe what the draw of it is maybe maybe there's something there yeah there definitely is i mean you know just moving out you know somewhere where you're not from is an act of courage you know and creativity is an act of courage I feel like in a lot of ways you're you know you're tapping into whether it be like a consciousness field or something that is like transcendental and bigger than you but it takes like courage to do that and sometimes that means like leaving your hometown or your home region.

26:26And there is that feeling of adventure. I feel like people come here with, you know, and, you know, the courage of creativity is like, you know, it's an adventure. And I feel like a lot of our clients come in just excited to come in and see, like, you see part of our library back out here and, you know, like being so far away from, you know, big, uh, multi-line showrooms and all of that, you know, for our clients to come in here and see, you know, 10 ,000 fabrics and all these choices and to know that like they're not going to have the like decision exhaustion of, you know, you know, figuring all the, you know, that we we take all of this and narrow it down to something that, you know, resonates with them.

27:09I think it's a relief, you know, but it's still like they come in here with like a sense of adventure. You know, I definitely think there is something to that. for sure. I want to get back to color a little bit more because I do just love the colors you choose. And I imagine they do work so well with that desert sort of landscape. And is that something that has been with you from the beginning? Is that something, you know, that's sort of like evolved more? And also maybe you could speak a little bit to how you're building your color palettes because they're very layered. You know, you mentioned earlier kind of doing less color per room.

27:52Is that what you're saying? Like maybe one color and now there's like... Yes. So for us, I always start with, I call it a keystone fabric. So people start from all sorts of places, you know, whether it's a, you know, painting or a rug or, you know, whatever. I I generally start with a fabric and I'll find some fabric that I think that the client will really resonate with and it has a lot of different color in it. I've got all these fabrics right next to you. I was going to pull one. And so that, I think, is really the jumping off point for me creatively. But before that, we have really in-depth conversations with our clients.

28:40So we do like a concept phase where it's a much more educated presentation than what you would get on Pinterest. So we're really showing our clients all of these different ways that we can go in different options and really hearing what they have to say. And so we get to know them really well in that process, you know, and that's the time for us where they'll say things like, oh, I hate orange. That reminds me of whatever as a kid. I can't do that. No orange or, you know, whatever. And so by the time we're going into our design development phase, we're really kind of niched into what the client is wanting to see and how we're interpreting that for them.

29:24and so when we find that that um keystone fabric with all of the colors that is really defining what those tones and how that house is going to read you know if that makes sense and then from there um we're layering in i'll play with pattern uh from there and so we'll have like a large scale small scale medium scale something like that to to make sure that it it reads really well um And, yeah, that's kind of how I do it. You know, talking about fabrics, it's kind of, I feel like, is a point to make is that we really love the industry of design. And all of us do, right? And to your average person would have no idea how many unbelievable fabrics there are in the whole industry at large.

30:17and so many of them are a piece of art, an incredible piece of art in themselves. And so to use the library, I love her technique of doing that to flush a color palette out of is amazing. And that's something, you know, we're looking at design schools for our daughter right now and I'm sort of meeting more young people that are studying design or young designers that are, you know, wondering how, okay, I got this education and how do I get started? And it made me really realize like part of our history and how we got to where we are was like just a love of the industry itself. And so wanting to know everything we can find out about all the heroes of design, that if you ask a lot of these kids coming out of school and, you know, and in our hiring process, have really found like, who are your inspirations of designers?

31:14and they can't think of anybody. They might say Kelly Wurstler or something. And I would say that like, you know, not to take anything away from like going to school. One of the great things about this industry is that it's all there. It's in the books, it's in the magazines and you can like just do the materials of this business, get such an education and how people put it all together. And, you know, without really going through sort of the history of design and figuring out, you know, like who are all these greats and how did they do it, then you really would be figuring it out on your own.

31:54You know what I mean? I think that that's like what stops a lot of people from being successful in this business is that they're starting from scratch instead of like, you know, flipping through like a Murray Boat or David Higg or like any of these people that have like just stacks of books and like really finding out what it is they love about it and why it works and why it doesn't work is like the start. You know what I mean? It should be like the start of interior design schools, but it's really not, you know, it's really not, you know, having like a library where they go through all the great stacks of all the greatest designs in history.

32:33They don't get that in school. You know what I mean? That's why a lot of people can be successful in this business without an education is because, you know, you develop your eye and then all the rest of it is just being a good business person, you know? and um just like just thinking about the fabrics and seeing our stack of fabrics here i mean it's just fabrics are the great last or not last but example of like a to the trade um you know beautiful example of what this industry has produced yeah well it is interesting you know so many fabrics now i think especially with digital printing they can do smaller batches And so it sort of spawned this world where you could create a fabric line on your own.

33:22And, you know, so that creates all of these new artists, right? Because they can, it's a little bit easier to create the fabrics. And then they can find people like you who are looking for really like small batch artisan made type of things. So I think that's been really so interesting. And, you know, there's all sorts of options, which is great. We do a lot of custom colorways for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I also love the idea of like an art school just having a class that's just interior design books 101. Right. Throw some cushions on the floor and just dig in. I'm signing up for that right now. What are some of your favorite design books?