Ep. 476: Best of Archives: Parisian Design

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.

0:34Hey, everyone. Welcome back to How to Decorate. We're in summer mode right now, so we're taking a little bit of time away from the podcast, but we did not want to leave you without your weekly design inspiration. So we are resharing a handful of our all-time favorite episodes, the ones that really stuck with us, and that we think are worth a re-listen. Today, we're taking you to Paris with designer David Jimenez. He started his career in retail, then quit his corporate job, moved to Paris, and started his own design studio. He now designs spaces all over the world, and when we spoke, his first book, Parisian by Design, had just come out.

1:08David breaks down what actually makes a room feel Parisian, and it's not what you think, and shares practical tips on using antiques, layering a room with intention, and the very specific colors that hold cultural meaning in Paris. It's part design lesson, part travel fantasy. So let's get to the show. So our guest today is a creative force who got his start at household names like Banana Republic, Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware. But six years ago, he left his corporate job to move to Paris and start his design business. He now designs spaces all over the world for his clients, all in that enigmatic Parisian style.

1:42His spaces are effortless, dripping in antiques, but also livable and fresh. This fall, he's publishing his first book with Rizzoli, Parisian by Design, Interiors by David Jimenez. Welcome to the show, David. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. Such a pleasure to be here. Your book has a very unusual structure, and I absolutely loved it. The first half showcases your homes over, I imagine, the last decade, maybe more. Homes in Paris, the French countryside, Kansas City, San Francisco. And then the second half is all about the artisans and the sources that you use in your design life.

2:20You know, the craftsmen in France. You even have sections about, you know, how to shop at a Parisian flea market. Pink colors, French tabletop, you know, settings, I guess. This book is so incredible. It's a tour guide of Paris. A love letter, too. Yeah. Yeah. so it's we we all just have totally gotten lost in this book it is just fantastic i'm so happy to hear that yeah you hear that and it is so inspiring that i actually restyled some side tables before we started and ran around my house and started grabbing art and moving things around i love that that touches me very much i will say that from the onset of the project, first of all, I feel so incredibly excited and really humbled by this whole experience.

3:13The fact that Rizzoli said yes, the fact that Diane Doran Sachs reached out to me to consider this project, and that along the way, it's all fallen together as seamlessly as it has, has been such a journey of just happiness, honestly. We were putting together the book and the process of COVID unfolding around the world. So if you can imagine, we were up against some pretty big challenges, but always focused on the mission, the mission being very clearly, how do we share a point of view of this place that we love so much, that on a very personal level means so much to me and my heart, and that's profoundly affected not just my design sensibility and evolved my point of view around my appreciation for things that are beautiful and and historic and French or European, but really that's just tugged at my heartstrings because I can't go a day without walking past one of the little bridges that connects to my little Ede San Rui where I live and pause and reflect on how incredibly blessed I am and how lucky as an American living in Paris I am to have this experience.

4:22And so really in the end, the book is a reflection of that. It's a reflection of the passion, the joy, the love. And we started the conversation by saying that it's like a love letter to Paris. It has a very specific lens, but that lens is just full of light. And so I hope readers feel what our intention was in putting it to the book. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I definitely agree. And I just would love for you to tell our listeners just your history, because I think it's so interesting. You've just been such a worldly person, and I love it. Thank you. You know, I started my career very early on. I had to make a decision about whether or not I would go to college or what I would pursue, and it was all a little complicated early on.

5:02And I decided the easiest thing to do would be to take a part-time job and sort it out. And I got on the number two train at the time I was living in the Bronx, got on the number two train, headed to Manhattan, 59th and Lexington, and I started my career as a salesperson at the Gap. It maybe was the most pivotal moment in my journey because there I decided that I would work really hard, get in an hour early, stay two hours late, learn how to fold jeans and sweatshirts really, really, really well. And I caught the attention of the management team and they saw something in me that touched them. And I started to get accolades and eventually became an assistant manager at the store, eventually a store manager.

5:43I segued my career once I was a store manager into visual merchandising because that resonated with my heart. And eventually went from The Gap to Banana Republic to Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, so many of these amazing, amazing brands. And that landed me ultimately in Paris, where I had the beautiful opportunity to be able to arrive and completely reinvent a historic French brand. And after doing that for about three years, I decided that really what I wanted to do was follow my passion, which has always been interior design. And it's funny because, you know, I feel like we all have gifts. I wish I could play the piano.

6:28I wish that were my gift. I wish I could sing and touch a room with my voice. I can't do either. And I've tried, But I feel like my gift, and I say this with great humility and yet confidence, my gift is what I enjoy doing. I enjoy surrounding myself with beautiful things that make me happy. And over the years, I've seen that what I do resonates with people in a really profound way. And so early on, I started getting noticed and projects were being published. And the more things got published, the more people sought out what I was doing. And then it flipped. For me, it became about, let me show you what I do.

7:11And if you like what I do, then my intention is to try to help you as best as I can so that you get to surround yourself with a space that touches you and that makes you happy. And so through my Instagram post, through the articles that I've been able to be a part of writing or that I've been interviewed for, it's become part of my journey. It's what I love doing, which is this other part of design. It's not just about creating spaces that give my clients pleasure or that make me personally feel good. But it's also this part of educating, but more than educating, just helping people lose some of the fear in something that innately is so clear to them, right?

7:52You know what you like, you know what you don't like. And my position has been, well, let me help you sort of get through the mystery of that and empower you to do it for yourself. Okay. We have so many different directions we can go in. So lead us, Kieran. Okay. All right. Well, I just wanted to start because I found it such an important lesson for anyone reading the book. You know, we're seeing all of these different homes of yours all across the U.S. and then in Paris, different places in Paris as well, and then in the French countryside. And I loved getting to sort of see the same furniture pieces in every single house.

8:33Being like, oh, okay, there's that, that, you know, terracotta bust. I saw that in Kansas City. And then here's the, that black, like ebonized chair. And it has like a different seat cushion on it and fabric. And, and I, I thought that was so important for people to see. And I hope people would, you know, would notice that when they're reading the book, because it really shows how you've invested your dollars and use things that you love over and over and over again in very different ways. So I wonder if you could kind of talk about that. Like, how did you get into like antiques? And then I guess like, what is your philosophy on remixing them and using them in different ways in different spaces?

9:16Yeah, that's such a great question. You know, I'm happy that you noticed the continuity in some of the pieces throughout the book and throughout my spaces. I really feel like if you see something that you love, you make a connection with that piece. And oftentimes it's not just with the piece, but with the person that you purchase that piece from. So there's a story behind what you're buying. And for me, I take great pleasure in that. When I buy an antique, I enjoy learning about that piece. What's a provenance? Where did it come from? Tell me about the style, the specificity of the style. And that creates a level of connection with the person, but also then with that piece that I bring home.

9:53And I got to tell you, when I've got it and I love it, I'm not going to let it go. You know, I don't want to abandon these pieces. And so I have found over the years that I've acquired this selection of antiques that have traveled with me. Some, funny enough, that originated in France or in Europe, which I may have either purchased in Europe or in the United States and brought back with me to Paris. And there's something very reassuring about having familiar pieces around you. You know, certainly, I think there's something to be said for starting fresh. And for anyone that's considering starting fresh, I would never get in the way of that, right?

10:33So it's all about what pleases you and what makes you happy. But what I can say from my own experience is that when I get to start a new project, setting up a new home with some familiar pieces, for me, it's nurturing. There's something that feels good about walking into a room and seeing a familiar piece that has a history with me and that has a story behind it. So I very much enjoy keeping certain pieces and bringing them along with me. And then in terms of how I put things together or the philosophy behind what I do, I will also share that I was very happy to find out later on that the French are all about keeping what they buy.

11:14So they don't have this desire to start fresh each time. And there's something really beautiful about having pieces that have been inherited or pieces that have been handed down through the family and over the years that you get to bring into your projects. And when I understood that, living in France, I thought, you know, I'm more French than I gave myself credit for being. Because I felt like, well, that's always been my philosophy too. And here we are. It's linear to how the French use antiques and appreciate antiques over the years. I personally love rooms that look collected, rooms that are casual enough and comfortable enough for you to put up your feet in so you never feel like you're walking into a stage set or something that feels so pristine that you've got to act a certain way or be a certain way or function a certain way in that room.

12:06I like rooms that are easy. You know, you could wear jeans and shorts and read magazines and be comfortable and live in that space. Or you could dim the lights down, put on some Billie Holiday in the evenings, light all the candles and get dressed up and, you know, gussied up and ready to go out for a beautiful night on the town with friends. and that a room can share your mood and be a part of your mood that way, I think is important. So a big part of that for me is using antiques because they add a little history, a little patina, a little bit of grit, you know, to a room in a way that feels like there's highs and lows.

12:51And of course, I've got a lot of things that are newer. I love Maison Janssen, for example, beautiful sort of antique brass finishes that I pair with framed artwork or charcoals. But there's a, I think there's a really good chemistry in the balance. And I think it's a mix that makes it interesting. So it doesn't all feel like you're walking into a period room. Right. I mean, we love a good layered room here at Ballard, but I feel like you take it to a really fantastic, luxurious level where everything feels really, really special. I think because of the stories behind every piece, like you can tell that there's a story and there's travel, but there's a layering that I think is really very special in the work in rooms that you have, whether it's layering artwork with a vase in front of it or a lamp.

13:51So how can we do this at home? One of the things that I love is the casual nature of assembling a space. And so at this point, because I've been doing it this way for so long, it becomes intuitive. And I would say that for anyone that's listening, you know, when you do anything that you love, that brings you joy often, it becomes second nature, right? And so when I'm assembling a room, I'll start with the key pieces and pads of furniture and the relationship of those pieces of furniture. If I'm going to set up a seating area, then I'm very careful to ensure that there's a good distance, a comfortable distance between the sofa and the chairs, for example, right?

14:39Because you don't want a situation where you've got a real life situation where you're entertaining and you feel like you're really distanced from the person you're having a conversation with. So intimacy in groupings is really important. And so I lay out the pads of furniture and the flow and the experience of the room. And then I take so much joy in layering. It usually starts with putting on the music low. If I'm doing the space for myself, I'm setting up a room of my own. It usually happens in the afternoons because I'm usually best in the afternoon, evening hours. I'll turn on the music, something that makes me really, really happy And I'll sometimes pour myself a gin and tonic And I will start layering my room And, you know, it's not always exactly intuitive, right?

15:24So you'll have a sense for, okay, I want to put a beautiful piece of art On a wall or on a dresser And then I'll layer that piece with another piece It's the layers that make things look more interesting or more collected Making a choice between taking a piece and setting it on top of a dresser or setting it on top of a mantel or setting it on top of a console versus hanging that piece sometimes can make all the difference in how a room feels because it's more casual when it's placed versus on the wall. And so I'll usually go around the room and start layering pieces where I feel like they feel best based on scale and then the piece of art.

16:03And then there's a refining process. I'll walk away from the room. I'll go into the kitchen. I'll come back, I'll look at it again. I'll think, okay, well, that color isn't exactly right and I'll change it or that frame doesn't feel exactly right in that spot. But you sort of get this feeling for it over the course of a day or two of setting out. The other thing that I love doing and that you may notice throughout the book is that I also enjoy putting together gallery walls very much. And I think, honestly, that started as a result of my passion for gallery walls in France And, you know, walking through the Louvre Museum is such an incredible experience in those wings that have those incredible, incredible walls worth of paintings.

16:44And all of them are hung with these beautiful, thin metal rods. And so early on, you know, I'm very perceptive and aware of my spaces early on that resonated with me. And I thought, I want to do that at home. I want to take a little bit of that magic and bring it back to my space. and so I in most all of my homes there's at least one significant gallery wall that starts with like a salon style presentation where there's a little rod that gets that gets just under the molding on the wall and then from that I spend these metal hangers that then support each one of the pieces of art and what I love about that is that it's instant soul in a room you know just it just gives a room a great striking point of view, but also just adds a really great emotion to the space.

17:39Do you change your gallery walls often or do you sort of like hang it and like it's just right so you don't touch it? Occasionally I'll mix it up. When I'm assembling the gallery wall, I'm usually doing it one of two ways. I'll either layer or lay out all of the pieces on the floor in front of the wall so that I have a good sense for the relationship of the wall to the floor. And then based on how it looks on the floor, I start putting it up on the wall. But sometimes on my travels, I'll find something that I fall in love with. And I feel like, wow, that really would look great on the wall. And I'll come home and swap it out with something on the wall because it's my new favorite find or it's a new piece that now has a really great memory.

18:19In fact, there's something that just happened recently. I was in Brussels. I'd never been to Brussels before. I'd heard a lot about some Brussels antique shops and there's an antique district in Brussels. And online, I had purchased some pieces from this particular destination, and I was so blown away by their assortment. I thought, I'll make a trip. And I was coming back home from a European trip, and I stopped in Brussels. It was amazing. And the antique district is incredibly impressive and rich. Beyond that, there's an elevated, more sophisticated part of Brussels antiquing. And I walked into a shop and saw some of the most incredible pieces of art.

19:00I bought several, brought one back home with me on the train, and immediately placed it on my wall when I got home. I'm also feeling like if I want to get that look of a French salon style hanging, I need to raise all of my pictures up and start really close to the molding, right? for for gallery wall is to really just start very high up work down i know i'm i'm now raising all of my artwork behind liz i've got to say you have a beautiful home i love that we we can actually look into into your interior space and i i think your gallery wall looks pretty perfect to me it's got a lot of work to do but okay one of the things that i noticed about your your brand and I imagine this is sort of a French like style as well is you mix wood tones with abandon like there's something mahogany there's oak there's a painted finish there's like ebonized wood it's all mixed together and I feel like that's something that people hear or even just you know lay people really worry about and feel uncertain around.

20:20So maybe you could talk a little bit about mixing wood finishes and if that's something we should be concerned about. Yeah, you know, it's really funny. I think you need to know the rules in order to be afraid of breaking them. And I think because I never grew up in this environment, in a formal environment of design, I was never limited by any rules. And in fact, part of the pleasure of putting my spaces together is not following rules. And so the idea that all of the wood tones should be consistent in a space or that all of the metal tones and finishes should be consistent within a space, you'll see over and over throughout all of my projects that it's not the case at all.

21:05I'm very careful and mindful of when I'm putting spaces together, you know, how the woods or the wood finishes or the metal finishes might complement each other, but I'm not limited by it. And so I would share that if you're putting together a space at home and you feel like you want to combine, you know, wood tones or wood finishes, it's really okay. Light with dark, dark with light, you know, silver with metal, nickel, with brass. I think the thing that you always want to consider in a room is having things that have highlights, right? So what are the contrasts? A rough surface with a smooth surface, you know, a light surface with a dark surface, something with a patina and something that has great sheen.

21:48Those are the things that make a room feel like they've got energy and they're alive. And the thing that you don't want is a space that feels so monotone and so dialed in that it feels overly thought through or overly planned. There's something to the spontaneity of a space that feels like I put this together and it makes me happy and it gives me pleasure and it's not something that looks like out of a page of a magazine, you know, it feels, it feels, or a catalog, it feels, it feels like it's got a really great level of warmth and personality. And so for me, mixing old and new and mixing of finishes, I think helps do that.

22:31The other thing I noticed is that scale is really important in all of your rooms. Like, not just the scale of the furniture pieces, but the scale of the lamps or the artwork or the mirrors And going oversized and layering things in front of them tends to be something that you do. And it ends up feeling very collected and pulled together, but still, gosh, I don't even know how to explain it. It still feels really clean and crisp because of the scale. Right. Yeah, I think scale is a really important part of assembling a space. A lot of that has to do with wanting to make sure that there's things that feel like they have highlights, like they have energy in the room, right?

23:21And so they bring your eye towards them. For me, that might be a pedestal with an incredible piece of sculpture that sits on top of it in front of a window or next to a sofa, or the way a large piece of artwork might anchor a corner of a room, or how a really tall secretary might get placed on a wall adjacent to, say, a bed in a bedroom. What it does is that it creates these moments of hierarchy in the room where you have highs and lows visually. And it creates, I also think, different moods for the space, right? Because if you walk in and everything is at the same level, to the point that we were talking about earlier about hanging artwork, you know, if everything is at the same level, it starts to not feel as interesting as if there are these moments where you have pieces that really highlight a room and create a little bit of drama and a little bit of theater, you know?

24:14And I think people sometimes might be hesitant with the idea of creating a little theater. But in fact, the intention is never to make a space look unlivable or unrealistic. The intention is, and by the way, if you're doing this through your own filter, it would never feel that way because it's all things that you love anyway, right? But really what it does is that it just creates a little bit of excitement in the room so that when you walk into the room, there's a little bit of a surprise. You know, there's a great gallery wall that happens to start up a little higher on the wall. There's this cool piece of art or sculpture that anchors the space.

24:52I think those are the things that create interest. Yeah, I always think of it like drama. It's like imagine a movie without the drama or like the climax. You have to have something that is really special. And I feel like over scaled pieces, a lamp, mirror, art wall, whatever. That's like the perfect way to do that. I mean, you're going to have to have a lamp anyway. Why not have it like be extra? yeah draw it draw your eyes to it it's really amazing and it's not just a lamp it's not just a light fixture it's a sculpture or a painting you know it's like an art piece okay another thing that i've seen that you use throughout our room dividers the oh yeah you have you have some really fantastic screen yes and you repeat one often i feel like but you do it in many different colors True or false?

25:48True. You have a great, tell us how to use screens too. How do we use them? These room dividers and screens correctly? I love screens. Screens have a terrific way of adding a wonderful layer to the room, to any room. And it's really funny, you know, to fall back in a really comfortable way on certain things or pieces or ideas that I enjoy. and I enjoy repeating very much. And so to your point, there is a screen design. It's a very classical screen design that I had custom made that's been charcoal gray, light gray, a beautiful shade of cream, a striking turquoise color in a dining room. And I don't tire of reusing that screen and having it repainted based on the room that it might be going in.

26:37But in general, one of the reasons I like screens is that they do a couple of things. Number one is that they have the ability to create privacy and can be really useful. So here's a great example of that. When I moved into my apartment in Knob Hill in San Francisco, which was an incredible apartment because I happened to be on one of the hills on the corner of Jones Street in Washington, one of the hills that was right where the cable car stop was. So if you can imagine starting every morning, every day with the clang of the trolley on the street corner, it just made me smile, right? So that was a huge selling feature for this particular apartment.

27:17And it was just such a pleasure to be in that spot. The living room of that particular space was a nice size, generous size living room for San Francisco homes or apartments. And I had three windows. Two of them were symmetrical behind the sofa and phased directly into a neighbor's apartment. not an appealing moment right lovely neighbor but not someone that i really wanted to share my space with and so i had this idea i i purchased these these really striking a really beautiful 1920s screens a pair of them in kansas city missouri at a really cool shop called modern love and brought them into the space and i placed them in front of the windows and immediately they allowed all the light into the space.

28:06But I now had an anchor to the back of the sofa that added great interest to the seating area, but that eliminated that awkward situation of looking directly into my neighbor's home. And so in that way, screens can be really functional. But you'll see that I use screens a lot. I like them to separate spaces. I love screens, sometimes just leaning up against a wall or in front of a wall and then layer it in front of that piece of furniture, whether that might be a dresser or a bar or a secretary. And what they do is that they add a great layer of color, sometimes an additional layer of texture in the room.

28:46And it's subtle. It's very subtle, but it's super, super effective. Okay. Another thing that I saw, you use the same black and white striped curtains in multiple multiple different spaces. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is, I mean. That's because they're fantastic drama. They're amazing. They are. They totally are. I just, I mean, it just, I think is so, it's, I hate to use the word thrifty, but like, I don't think people think of curtains as things to reuse. So I loved seeing it, you know? They went all the way from San Francisco to back to Paris. Yeah. So the striped curtains, really touched by the striped curtains.

29:27I don't know why I have this feeling, but I've always, maybe it's because of the awnings of the cafes. That might be it in Paris. You know, there's so many awnings in cafes that have stripes in them. But to me, a classic black and white stripe is very European, very, very French. And it's funny. Sometimes you do things and you don't even realize, you know, why you do them. But I've always loved the classic nature of their seven centimeters wide black and white stripes. So I learned this early on in France, that the very traditional width of the stripes is seven centimeters. And so it's pretty consistent.