Million Dollar Designer: Designer Stereotypes vs Wise Design Advocates
I love being an interior designer out here in the burbs of Philadelphia. I love what i do and I love what I get to do for clients. And most days, I’m proud to be called an interior designer. But when i brush up against a designer who exemplifies some of the worst of the stereotypical designer….well…it certainly takes a little wind out of my fabric bolt.
Million Dollar Decorator! Are you watching it???
I sure am and I have to say i really love it! Bravo, BRAVO, on your newest show. Its my guilty pleasure. I get an admitted vicarious thrill to see that the problems and challenges faced by the million dollar show designers are pretty much identical to the challenges i face with my wonderful clients. Only, perhaps on the show, the problems have a few extra zeros after them! I also love seeing great design and the designers on Million Dollar Decorator are great masters of their craft.
But there is one beautiful designer, whose work is lovely too, that reliably makes me cringe when out of her perfectly painted lips things like this are said:
Everything has to go (when surveying a clients home) It’s all ugly (same) What do you mean you won’t spend $100,000? Clients don’t know that they want: I DO.
Its not so much the whining or the hubris that makes me want to throw a paint deck. Its the sentiments themselves. These are the worst reinforcements of the VERY worst stereotypes people have about designers. The same stereotypes that i have to battle in my earliest encounters with a new client as I work to garner their trust and confidence and dispel the preconceived misconceptions some of them have about people in my industry. Dare I name the stereotypes in questions?
1. Designers are judgmental of a home or a clients taste and said designers will look down their noses at both.
2. Designers are reliably disrespectful of budget
3. Designers will just take over the creative design process and your home will reflect her. taste not yours.
Without naming names on the show, let me just say with the utmost respect…Lady! You’re killing me!
We live in serious times. Your home as sanctuary, haven and refuge is serious business. And if you’ve had the unlucky luck to have found an interior designer who doesn’t get that, get you, or get the responsibility she carries in being selected by you to help craft home and hearth…I say this. You need to run, do not walk, to the nearest exit.
Fine design requires a wise, well developed and generous spirit on the part of a designer. Among other important things …like real design skill and talent. But if you can find this unique combination of qualities in a designer in your own backyard…Then you will have your very own million dollar designer!
Meanwhile,,,,I can’t wait to see nest week’s episode…And how cute was Martyn Lawrence-Brullard as he helplessly devoured a box of chocolate? Martyn…you had me at ganache….