Designer Spotlight Series
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- Tribal-inspired living room with brown limestone floor and African cocktail table. Michael Stratton Photography.
The publications Gail Shields-Miller’s work has been featured in read like a who’s who in shelter mags with projects of her New York City based company Shields and Company Interiors in Architectural Digest, Veranda, New York Spaces, Interior Design and many others. Gail’s work caught our eye for the eclecticism and fearlessness with which she creates her stylish compositions. Her designs are warm, inviting and comfortable but never predictable.
When I spoke to her recently I started by asking Gail about how she blends surprising elements with otherwise traditional pieces. “I do get clients to mix it up.” she says. “Furniture should be comfortable and pleasing to the eyes but there should be things of interest, things that make a room stand out. It becomes a theater for me, a place to create a feeling. And every little thing counts.” As she speaks her enthusiasm is apparent. “When I see things I know if they will work, my brain works like that. I am always looking for something new.” For the last year many of her finds can bee seen on her successful blog Dezignlicious. Started because she wanted the stimulation of a new challenge, the blog tends to feature 21st century furniture and new design, of which Gail considers herself to be a supporter. “It is just a baby blog right now” says Gail, “But I love the feedback I’ve been getting and its going to get a lot bigger.” Continue Reading…
Posted by admin on January 24th, 2012 at 7:10 am.
- Grand room of 5,000 sq. ft. full-floor apartment. The loft style space has living, dining and study areas all in one large room with 13 ft ceilings. Previously featured on Modenus
French food can be a wonderful thing but it can also be a little too much. All those rich sauces, layer after layer of flavours and textures can be, well, a little heavy. Back in the seventies Michele Gerard came up with Cuisine Mincer, French food but lighter. You still got the flavours and the textures but without the stodge. And that’s what Jerry Jacobs seems to do. You get rich textures, fine furniture and wonderful textures, you get luxury, but you also get light and space. Continue Reading…
Posted by admin on January 9th, 2012 at 6:41 am.
“You know how Justin Timberlake brought ‘sexy’ back to music? Well I want to bring ‘sexy and intimate’ back to interior design.” So says Jeffrey Brooks of Jeffrey Brooks Interior Design. And then he laughs. And throughout the interview we keep finding things to laugh and to smile about.
Jeffrey Brooks is a man who understands emotions and the role of art and, indeed, interior design in eliciting emotions. It is, perhaps, no surprise that Jeffrey is a practiced artist. He comes from an artsy family with a father who worked as a designer for an ornamental hardware company and an aunt who worked for Balenciaga and who would take the young Jeffrey to see, and appreciate, their fabric collections. He was happiest at school when he had the opportunity to use his hands to make something. Indeed as a child every empty box presented a challenge to transform into whatever his fertile imagination demanded. Continue Reading…
Posted by admin on January 5th, 2012 at 1:32 am.
(Lori Andrews Photography)
Nyla Free is a designer who gets the details right. When you look at her work there is a sense of nothing being left to be done. Her mastery of finishing touches combines with a sense of balance and a love of light that make her designs sparkle with life.
Nyla has worked her way up through the interior design industry. She started at age 17 by attending a local college. From there she joined a local retail store as a design assistant. The store offered an interior design service to its clients some of whom remained loyal to Nyla when, while expecting her first child, she set up her own business from home.
She tells us that her hometown of Calgary, weathered the recession well. She describes it as – “very sophisticated and quite modern – full of well traveled people – a good source of clients”. Continue Reading…
Posted by admin on December 19th, 2011 at 3:46 pm.
There is something very distinctive about interiors designed by Donna Grace McAlear. It is instantly apparent but it took me a while to define. Her rooms have a remarkable confidence; the space is balanced, comfortable and functions well. In her own words, Donna “allows space to breathe”. It is as if the furniture is set out like art exhibits in a very well thought out, user friendly gallery. And that makes sense because, before she became a design consultant and opened a business as New Mood Design Donna was, indeed, a fine art museum curator. The picture above is the family room of the Peak 8 Ski House – 6,000 square feet on three levels designed by Breckenridge architect Michael F. Gallagher. Continue Reading…
Posted by admin on December 9th, 2011 at 6:52 am.
Ashton Kutcher Showhouse
Erinn Valencich bristles with energy. “I always wanted a big life” she told us during a recent interview, ”I wanted to make people’s lives better. And interior design is how she does it. “I never would have believed what an impact designing spaces can have on people’s lives.”
Erin’s work is notable for a sense of fun, for color and pattern. Her designs are varied but with a common intent. Her philosophy is perhaps best illustrated by what she describes as her favorite part of the job.
Continue Reading…
Posted by admin on November 14th, 2011 at 3:57 pm.
Modenus is proud to share this post by ACHICA Living, the UK based blog for ACHICA, the members-only luxury lifestyle site. The talented team of journalists and design writers at ACHICA living frequently feature interviews with celebrity designers and are always looking for an opportunity to speak with talented people that make design happen.
Continue Reading…
Posted by admin on September 19th, 2011 at 3:46 am.
Picture this: a long winding road leads up to a perfectly appointed house set on six lovely acres near a pond in Lincoln, MA. Outside it’s raining and dark, inside it’s sunny and warm because we are in the home of one Mally Skok; interior designer and more recently textile designer extraordinaire. Upbeat, engaging, colorful – these are the adjectives that describe Mally AND her collection. Continue Reading…
Posted by JocelynHutt on June 26th, 2011 at 6:00 am.
Jamie Beckwith is many things; mother to three young children, interior designer (Beckwith Interiors), showroom owner, designer and manufacturer of exquisite wood flooring – all rolled into one gorgeous Southern gal package. Jamie’s flooring products are fairly new to the market – just about 3 years old as of this writing, and we were intrigued as to why an interior designer would move from fabrics and furnishings to owning her own factory and discovering an enthusiasm and love for the manufacturing world. When we spoke, Jamie was in New York City (in fact during the interview her 3 children were enjoying a playground in Central Park.)
Looking at your body of work as a designer, it strikes us that your style is quite varied- in fact it’s almost impossible to ‘peg’ any one of your rooms as having been designed by you. How are you able to be so diverse?
It really comes down to my ability to listen and interpret what the client wants. It’s not my role to impose any preconceived ideas onto them – it’s my role to translate and distill what they are saying into a cohesive design that will work for them. It has to be a very collaborative process – that’s the only way to work.
Perhaps it’s also that I’m still a fairly young designer, so I’m not set in my ways. Like most designers, I never want to repeat myself, so I try to be as fresh as possible.
Continue Reading…
Posted by JocelynHutt on June 10th, 2011 at 12:32 pm.
…but this isn’t about Marcel, I promise we will follow up very soon with a blog about or even an interview with the stunningly gorgeous, stunningly talented Marcel Wanders; this is about his equally swoon worthy Jardin d’Eden flatware collection for Cristofle.
It’s both masculine and feminine, so superbly detailed yet with a shape that’s strong, confident and most of all something I’d actually want to use every day despite the glamour of it all, or, maybe because of it.
Posted by admin on June 8th, 2011 at 1:28 am.
