Wisdom in age-old ways

An article from 2010 about my wife's parallel career (we met when she was studying at OCA).

Wisdom in age-old ways

Simply, don’t work for a client you don’t like

By Kelvin Browne, National Post

There are talented interior designers that fly below the media radar – Toronto’s Candace Shaw is one. Clients of these intentionally low-profile designers like it this way. Many with the means to live nicely don’t want their names – or homes – in print, on TV, or otherwise devoured by voyeurs who need something new to envy or deride.

            As fascinating for me as Candace’s obviousness to personal PR (in a time when everyone is desperate for celebrity) is her attitude about clients. It harkens back to Bob Dirstein’s approach, whom she worked for in the 1970s. The mantra is: It’s about the client, not the designer. I haven’t heard many designers express this other than those of Bob’s generation. On the contrary, many designers today, often those who appear regularly in print, eagerly want to impose their look. Decor becomes the commodity clients buy rather than the unique outcome of a joint effort.

            “It’s a personal business,” says Candace on the topic of residential design. “You’re invested in the lives of your clients. I only work for people I have a rapport with. Otherwise, it never turns out well.” She has another caveat: She hopes clients have “congenial spaces.” How awkward to have a client you love who owns a house you hate, and you have to help him or her furnish it.

            As she phrases it, a designer has a “client” and a “space” and both have to talk to you. I agree that, regardless of trend and budget, good designers are able to converse with their clients and rooms, and this dialogue is what creates memorable spaces, not to mention spaces in which clients feel at home. She also knows that certain spatial relationships work. For instance, the distance between chairs if you’re going to have a good conversation in a living room. If you ignore these realities for a look you arbitrarily want, the room will never be inviting. She also has immense amounts of technical knowledge about what good upholstery is and how curtains should be made. I wonder how many young designers know or care about these details?

            Candace’s family were painters and artists, and she was raised in a creative environment, attuned to the spaces around her. She says, “from an early age, spaces were living things for me.”  She recalls making drawings of rooms, and that, in retrospect, which must have appeared as “an odd thing for a young girl to be doing.” She attended OCA, and her first job after school was in the space-planning department of a large company. Not exactly creative work.

            Then she got a job with Dirstein. “I couldn’t figure out why he paid me, I loved what I was doing so much. I finally was where I always wanted to be.” Since then, she has never doubted her career choice. “There were lots of antiques, beautiful houses to work with, and I particularly enjoyed meeting the clients.” From that moment, it was clear to Candace how important it was to work well with a client, if a project was to be successful. When she opened her own business, she says, “nothing much changed other than I didn’t go into a shop every day. I like being my own boss.”

            I ask what’s different about her approach to rooms today, compared with the 1970s. Her response startled me because it wasn’t about technology, brave new lifestyles or trends in colour or design. “Nothing’s different,” she says. “The most important change is when 20th-century interiors stopped being historic creations.” And modern design? “The juxtaposition of styles and unexpected materials remains the essence of a contemporary approach.” The rest? “Doesn’t really matter that much.” How shocking, but I agree.

            As for her own preferences, she is a fan of mixing 18th-century English and French antiques (“the high water mark of furniture”) with contemporary, comfortable upholstered furniture as per the English country house style. For an elegant room, nothing beats French antiques paired with sofas and armchairs covered with simple but sensuous materials, all on a great carpet, although I’d throw in a modern into the mix, too.

            Candace has never wavered. She knew what was good then, and she knows it now, which reminds me that classic never goes out of style, and classy designers never do, either.