Mother/Daughter Design Q&A

Marjorie Johnston and Wendy Barze, mother and daughter decorators for our April Dwelling house, answer a few more of our questions.

How did you get you get started in design?

Marjorie: I solved my midlife crisis by going into another career at age 40. [laughs] I was a nutritionist at UAB. I have a B.S. and M.S. in nutrition and I had a friend who was a nurse, and she said I’m not going to be a nurse anymore, I’m going to go to the Southern Institute [now Southern Institute School of Interior Design at Virginia College]. I said, what a great idea. I want to go too … So, off I went in the fall of 1982 … I went to work first for King’s House Interiors for Donna Rogers and then she moved that business up to English Village to be a part of the Briarcliff Shop. Then she changed the format, and so I went to Timeless Interiors and freelanced out of there. And then we opened this shop a year and a half ago.

Wendy: I graduated from college with an art history degree. At one point I had a little business that I called “Jane of All Trades” because my middle name is Jane. I was literally catering a party for lunch and then doing the flowers and then helping Mom on the side and then working at an advertising agency in PR and graphic design, so I had all these creative [businesses]. Then I started this little stationery business out of my home which was actually crazily successful, oddly successful.

Our collaborative effort has really developed and grown and morphed into this fun thing where we’re a great creative team. I did not go to the Southern Institute so technically she’s the expert, but I’d say my design aesthetic is just a little more risky.

How would you describe your style?

Marjorie: I would describe my style as fairly simple … Some decorators sell a look. We don’t sell a look or have a look. Ours is always interpreted based on what we find in the home and based on what the person wants. If people hire us, I guess they really don’t know what they’re getting because most people we work with don’t want to throw everything out and start over. That’s not really an economic thing, that’s just who seems to come to us. They already have things that are precious to them and that’s what they want to incorporate.

This is not an original quote but I believe this: “Taste is acquired and style is inherent in all of us.” I’ve always interpreted what we do to be helping our clients to express themselves. If you go with my look, all green, all white, all purple, all contemporary, the problem with that is that all of these spaces are alive in the best interpretation of decorating. It has to change. It’s going to change because your mother-in-law gives you something. It’s going to change because of the season. It’s going to change because something wears out. It’s going to change because you just live in the space. People are going to travel and buy things for their home. It’s such a process what we do. It’s like exploratory surgery every time we go out into someone’s home.

Wendy: [With] almost every client we have, our goal is to bring out what style they have or make it personal to them. Not make it a reflection of the two of us but a reflection of who lives there.

Marjorie: Part of our service, if people are interested, is to take the home from the decorating of it to the living in it which involves entertaining, it involves your family, it involves your space, your collections and all of that should be alive and happening. It should not be static. Are you finished? You’re never finished. That would be a terrible thing.

In 2009, what do you think your clients are after?

Marjorie: I think everybody is looking for value, we’re still sort of in shock mode. But, I do believe that the business was already changing. It was going more retail. I thought Stephen Druker (editor of House Beautiful) had a really good comment about a year ago when he said that our business will be protected because people will be home more and they’re not going to be traveling and they’re going to be looking at their ugly sofa and they’re going to be thinking, I can’t get away from this thing, so I do need to cover it.

Wendy: I have a client who is very budget conscious. This is 2009, and we don’t know what will happen. I continue to say to her, use grandma’s buffet, use your dining room table. You have one; it has chairs that go around it. But you do not have a den sofa, so spend your money where things are literally missing in the project and then let’s buy one really expensive lamp, but then let’s take those vases and make lamps out of them.

I think in ’09 it’s not as simple as, well everything I buy is going to come from Target for my home or I’m going to go to IKEA for everything because I think that’s actually very difficult to pull off.

Do you have a favorite room in a home to design and why?

Marjorie: I guess it would probably be the living room which I would interpret as a space that you actually live in. One of the last show houses we did was really fun, to put a TV in the living room in a formal house. Whoa. I like to make the biggest and the most gracious space in the home, particularly in an older home it can be the only room with a fireplace, and it’s certainly the biggest in traditional homes. Now living rooms are shrinking or becoming extinct in newer construction.

Wendy: I probably like to decorate a bedroom, really the master. I make my bed every morning because at least I’ve accomplished one thing with my day. I pray for my kids when I make their beds in the morning. I think a bedroom can be personal and can be really simple. It’s important, and I think linens are really beautiful.

Marjorie: The worst space to decorate, in my opinion, is unused space. Like guest rooms if people don’t have any guests and they want us to redecorate rooms that will never be used. That’s one of the most impossible of all to me, just because it’s not going to have purpose, and it’s lifeless.

Wendy: Or rooms that have 14 purposes. I have my desk and my computer and have to have a bed that someone can sleep in, my husband likes to sit here and change his shoes, the cat box has to be in here and six people watch TV in here and they all need to be able to see the TV at the same time and it’s a 14 by 12 foot bedroom on the second floor.

Marjorie: That would be in the category of awkward spaces. [laughs]

What is your favorite place to go in Birmingham for inspiration?

Marjorie: We have great shopping and there’s a lot of talent in choices of merchandise. I think all the way from places like At Home are presenting new merchandise and then the antique market is just rich with businesses that do a fabulous job of presenting. Shopping I guess would be my biggest inspiration.

Wendy: I can get keenly inspired at Anthropologie, at Whole Foods, maybe just a big bowl of tomatoes at Whole Foods and you think new season, let’s freshen up.

Marjorie: Fortunately, today we have sophisticated shopping. You don’t need to go to Atlanta. You don’t need to go to New Orleans … Anthropologie is hugely imaginative and youthful and fun. I think if there’s anything that characterizes our work, it is that we are in a serious business but we also want our spaces and the rooms we work on and the people we work with to really enjoy their homes and not be afraid of them, but that the spaces have energy and they’re understood and that they can have a good time.

Going back to the 2009 question, I think one thing is away from trendy. The aspects of the room that require less of expenditure, accessories, they can be trendy. But I think if we’re going into a period where life is going to be changing, not only is luxury teeter tottering but [so is] this notion of everything being thrown out, and so you go out and buy all new stuff and it has a shelf life of maybe a year. You need to buy things that are going to last and then liven it up with the things that will give it some energy and make it current but not be hugely expensive. For example, you don’t want to buy a sofa that has some extreme design to it: really high back, huge arms, oversized because that is a look and it’s very trendy and that’s a major investment no matter if it costs $500 or $5,000. Once you own that, it’s very hard to change that because you can’t sell it, you can’t throw it out because you’ve got x amount of dollars in it. We’re very conscious of where you put your money and really trying to advise people to not buy things that they are going to dislike.

Do you have any favorite color combinations right now?

Marjorie: Neutrals are always the backbone of a project because they’re the least frightening. So, the colors that I like to use in small doses are, I love green and I like yellow. I have a little trouble with red except in really small doses. I would say my favorite color would probably be green and all the colors of green. I think that if you were to study color and ask 100 women what their favorite color is, they’d say, what do you think?

Blue?

Marjorie: Blue is everybody’s favorite color.

Wendy: That Robin’s egg, Swedish gray blue. It’s soothing and really beautiful but it’s so pretty with lavender. I think that’s my new favorite.

Marjorie: Lavender is really a neutral. Anything is neutral if you use enough of it. It becomes a neutral. I think it’s easy to be afraid of color and it can be so trendy.

I think in order to be successful you have to be thoughtful. We’re all sales people. We’re selling a service. You’re selling magazines, selling your writing. I think in order to be good at that, you have to be real observant and be able to change. It’s never the same challenges or problems. It’s always exciting.

Marjorie Johnston and Wendy Barze; Marjorie Johnston & Co., interiors and design 2710 Culver Rd., 414-7860, mhjinteriors.com