Conversation with a Mid-Century Modernist (Christopher Kennedy)

So Christopher, welcome. So glad to have you on the podcast. Thank you, Gail. I’ve been a fan of yours for a long time, as you know, and I’m thrilled to be here. it’s just a delight for us. I want to start off and talk a little bit. We’re going to dive into your background and all of that, but I want to go to your About page on your website. love that About page. So please share that with us.

sure. You mean the one that talks about like I believe in humanity? Is that the copy? Yeah, that’s the one. I happen to have it here. okay, what it says, I’ll just read it for you guys. I believe in humanity. I believe in beauty. I believe in crafting spaces that enhance the lives of my clients. I believe that our physical environments have power. Creating rooms that inspire people, that elevate them, that help them live in the moment, to have meaningful conversations with their loved ones, to get a good night’s sleep. That is what inspires me.

impacting people’s lives for the better. I think that’s such a beautiful statement. And I’d love to know how much wine did you drink when you were writing that? know me. Too much wine or too much coffee, I’m not sure. For me, it’s 2. It’s 9 AM now, so it’s just the coffee kicking in. But yeah, I don’t know. I think I wrote that for my first book. I don’t remember. But I was of the Hemingway School. know, write drunk, edit sober. I wouldn’t say that.

Maybe a glass. But I still think it holds up. that’s so good. Well, I think it’s a beautiful statement. And it was very inspiring to me. And I like the best part about getting a good night’s sleep. I think that was humorous, too. well, we do. I mean, we don’t, you know, we’re not like selling a chair or a pillow. You know, we’re really creating the home where someone’s going to live out their human drama. You know, they’re going to.

you know, fight with their dog and love their kids, probably love their dog and fight with their kids. You know, we’re really setting the stage for where they live their human lives and their human existence. And that’s a really big deal. It really is. And it’s a beautiful thing to be able to inspire people and create that space for that. Yeah. So let’s talk about your mother because she was a big influence on you and how she influenced your direction toward interior design. thank you. My mom, Marilyn had

polio she was born just before the vaccine in 1944 and she was ever supposed to be able to walk but her mother Sela was a nurse and did physical therapy at home on the farm in North Dakota before it was a true discipline and my mom was able to walk she could never run and she wasn’t really supposed to be able to have kids but she had me so we were very close obviously and I’m an only child and I think she could tell that I was creative really early on and she fostered that and you know.

gave me all the art supplies that I wanted and all the books that I could devour. So she definitely inspired me and fostered my creativity. my gosh. And of course you’ve had an interesting journey along the way and you lost your parents at a very early age in their twenties. And how much did that impact the direction of your life and besides leading you to Palm Springs? Yeah, I was in my twenties, my parents passed away and my dad had me when he was 56.

He was about twice my mom’s age. He was in his 50s, she was in her 20s. It was San Francisco in the 70s. You can probably get the whole picture. So he was 82 when he passed away when I was 27 and my mom died a couple of years later. And yeah, you kind of do realize you’re an orphan, you know, and I think like you’re looking for the adults in the room, right? And I think, you know, I’m 48 now, I’m still sometimes looking for the adults in the room. It’s you and you got to boss up and put your big boy or big girl pants on.

and do all the things. I mean, just caring for her as she was dying definitely was a big responsibility and a big privilege. Yeah, I think the thing about it, you’ve lost your parents, right? It’s like you like, like when something good happens, like what do want to do? Like you want to call your mom or something bad happens. You want to call your mom. And it took a good year to like break that habit of picking up the phone. So now we just try to talk to her when I think about it. That’s so cool. I love that. Well, and our mothers do have a big influence on us. I know that

That was in my background and she, my mother was very artistic and had all those skills. And that was part of what led me into design. I think we all have some, something that leads us that direction. So even behind me is a piece of art that she did. She’s right there looking over your shoulder. I she is. I think of her every day. Well, let’s talk a little bit about your background. Now you have a BA in architecture and an MBA.

And you say you’re an interior designer and not an architect, which I find interesting. And you are so much more than that, which we’re going to talk about today. But how important was education to your success and which part was the most impactful, the MBA or the architecture? all the questions, Gail. I mean, I don’t call myself an architect because I’m not a licensed architect. have a bit of a hate-hate relationship with architects that we can talk about later, but or over a glass of wine sometimes. OK.

I mean, I wanted to be an architect since I was like seven. It’s really all I ever wanted to do. I was drawing floor plans and furniture layouts as a kid. My dad gave me my first book on Franklin Wright, I think when I was nine or 10. And as I was looking at colleges, really, I was only looking at schools with an architecture school. So I always wanted to do that. And I chose Drury, which is a five year bachelor of architecture program. about halfway through school, like in my third year, I kind of realized I didn’t really want to follow the typical architecture path.

Not sure why. I want us to be a brand, which is weird. And then I just sort of didn’t want to like draw bathrooms for five years and then sit for this really hard exam. could get sued. I know it just didn’t sound what I wanted to do. So I decided to get my MBA. Seemed like a good idea. I was really into Martha Stewart at the time. Reading all about her in the late 90s and early 2000s. And I went to work for Disney. Actually, what I wanted to do was be a Disney Imagineer. I spent summers at the Walt Disney World College program in Florida.

wanted to be an Imagineer, that didn’t quite work out. It’s a long, sad story. I guess the ending turned out okay. But I moved to LA to work for Disney corporate, long story short, and at the last second turned down Disney in LA and went to work in business and finance. It was the year 2000 and I had a new MBA and the tech bubble was high and I just went to work in business and finance. Shocked everyone, including myself.

Then the technical burst, the minute I graduated and I stuck it out for a few years, working in business, but obviously it wasn’t my calling. And then my parents passed away and I realized life’s too short not to do what you love. And that caused me to move from LA to Palm Springs and reinvent myself. So I guess early on to answer your question, finally, I think as the architecture helps and then as the business grows, you realize, okay, I’m running a business and let me brush off those books from business school, which I paid a bit more attention.

And then it came, you know, I said the business side comes into play a bit later. Although having it dialed in early on, of course, is crucial that we can talk about that. You’re very lucky that you had that because a lot of designers don’t and they don’t really treat it as a business when they’re, when they get into it. So very helpful. Luckily, think there’s so many great coaches out there like yourself and so much information that we didn’t really have 20 years ago. Now I saw like, well, back in my day, didn’t have fail teaching us, but

You know, we didn’t have the information necessarily. We didn’t have it online. We didn’t have the coaching. We weren’t maybe sharing information as an industry like we do now. So, but now I think you can just, you know, learn so much more other people and panels at high points. And yes, I’m very lucky, but I think I’m still going to panels and working with coaches like yourself and, and still figuring out all the things. Cause our business isn’t, it is like a lot of others, but yet it also isn’t at the same time. Absolutely.

Well, and you have a multifaceted business. We’re going to dive into that a little bit. But before we do, I want to talk to you about the books you’ve been reading. What’s on your nightstand? Unreasonable Hospitality, which is amazing about the restaurants in New York. And what else? I’m a Gemini, so I think I have like five half-finished books at any given time on my nightstand. It’s not new, but it’s new to me. You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero. I’m usually reading something by

by Abraham Hicks at any given time and listening to their Rampages online as well. Reading Forever Strong, my new gym has like a book of the month. So of course I love that. I think a new book just nothing inspires me more than like a new book gives me more promise. I’ll just be a whole new person by the time I finish this book. I love a new book. Like I love it just, you know, a blank notepad or

you know, fresh pack of pencils or crayons. So we’re reading Forever Strong about sort of weightlifting, both for men and women. something with health, something with spirituality, and something with business. I like that. I like the variety that you’re reading. And one of my favorites of late is Arrata, which is just amazing. It’s a great book. It’s about that thick. And it is delightful. You can read two or three pages at a time.

Is that like based on like the French word for stop or? No, not actually. I’m sorry, I can’t remember the definition of art. But the man that wrote this is very spiritual. And it also each of these chapters are so short and you can just read one and it has a little red ribbon in it. You can just flip it over and read another chapter another night. And it’s just beautiful. I would highly recommend it. Very inspiring.

Good. You will enjoy that. and you write, you have two books. So tell us a little bit about those two books. Sure. So my first book is called California Modern. It’s out of print and has little tip, a little behind the scenes. well, we actually, as a company, like when I was in my third or fourth year, a small company, like had a retreat and sat down and said, like, what do we want to do? Like, you know, what do I want to be?

I looked at designers who I admired and they tended to have books, tended to have product lines and all the things. So we really made a strategy plan on how to do that. And a few years later, I had done some good work and actually invested to take pictures of it, photograph it. And I was about to hire a new publicist, or I had, and I was meeting her in High Point and I wanted to bring something. And I just went online to one of those websites like Shutterfly or something and uploaded the photos. a couple of days later, I had a little

book in my hands to take to High Point and she said, Christopher, this could be a book. I’m like, well, okay, who’s gonna publish it? She’s like, well, I will. So we just literally had my graphic designer lay it out. We had it printed in Asia. Two months later, I had 300 books and I got to do book signings in High Points and give them to clients and no one really cared. In this day and age, everyone’s a content creator. You don’t have to have someone.

You know, you can record on your own and put it on the TikTok and no one asked to publish. No one cared that it wasn’t Rizzoli. No one cared. I just kind of did it myself. And sometimes I’m told I don’t know what I shouldn’t do. And so I just do it. And it was great. So that was called California Modern. And then that led to a proper book deal with Gibbs Smith. My second book is called Making Mid-Century Modern with Gibbs Smith. Well, and that is definitely obviously something that you’re passionate about is mid-century modern.

So tell us a little bit about that. Why is it so appealing to you? Can I tell you a secret? Sure. I didn’t really like set out to be the mid-century guy. We did have strategy sessions. That just kind of happened. And my take on it, now that I’ve been in business 20 years and we’re a bit even on the other side of like the mid-century Renaissance, I would say I was, you know, I to school for architecture. Like we talked about, I went to Europe to study the Bauhaus and the modern masters.

I loved Michael Graves and Robert Stern, some were actually postmodern architects when I was in school and of course they built things for Disney in Florida, so was studying that. And I always loved modern design and when I found my way to Palm Springs and I was 27 and then I went to work for the firm for nine months, was Steve Chase Associates. Steve Chase, if you guys don’t know, was an icon of modern design, that high 80s, 90s glam. I think he still has more covers of AD than anybody. Martin could be getting close.

Huge and his pieces still sell on first dibs. So amazing, amazing designer. He had passed away of AIDS in the nineties, but his firm was still carrying on. And it was always very contemporary, very eighties modern. And I worked there for nine months and then I had a couple of jobs on the side and I just opened my own doors. like, okay, I have two of my own clients. I’ve worked for this firm for eight months. I was a project assistant. Let’s just do this. And of course to say, I didn’t know what I didn’t know would be a vast understatement, but.

So I, my point was I was doing modern and this is like 2003 and Gale modern wasn’t really popular in California in 2003. Like pop quiz, you guys, what was, what was popular? Okay. I’ll tell you. It was like Spanish and Tuscan and like that Diane Lane movie had come out and Tuscany and like everything was Italian eight fake Spanish. And I was just here. This little, this young guy in his 20s doing my modern thing and convincing clients to do modern. And then

A couple of years later, a TV show called Mad Men came out and like the world kind of rediscovered this furniture and people began coming to Palm Springs and restoring these houses. And I was kind of just in the right place at the right time. And that’s my take on it. Looking, looking back, I guess, in the review. And of course I love it. And I always loved the principles of modern design. I might’ve loved the architecture. I never really, even though I wrote a book on it, I never wanted to do time capsules. One of my first clients, can I tell you a story?

Sure. was this guy from Chicago. Well, actually, his sister was my early on client and we were just redoing a 70s tract house for her in Palm Springs. were having, she was Italian. She loved to cook. She always made me meals. So I’m over at her house planning something, having dinner and her brother walks in and said, Hey, I just bought a house in Palm Springs. Well, they were from Chicago and he just bought a new house in Palm Springs. Like it was the Jack Webb house and Jack Webb was the star of Dragnet. He was the star and creator of Dragnet in the 1960s.

And it’s the house that he built at the height of his fame, with Sergeant Joe Friday. And this brother who looks at me is like, hey, would you take a look at it? I’m like, yes, I’ll do that. And so we go, and he was in his late 50s, maybe 60 at the time. And so they had lived through the 1960s. He’s like, you know, I love it, but I don’t want to feel like I’m living in my parents’ house. That was his parents’ style, right? So it was for me always about how do we be inspired by the best of the past, but not create a time capsule.

Like not create a museum because these great mid-century designers, were futurists, right? They were innovators. They were using new technology. They were reinventing things. They were inventing things that didn’t exist. Like if they were here today, they wouldn’t be resting on their 70 year old laurels. So I don’t really think it’s an honor to their legacy just to do what they were doing. Like I want to push it forward. Like, yes, let’s take the best of the past, but filter it through the modern lens of modern technology and look optimistically towards the future.

Well, and you’ve gone down the path of creating products to talk a little bit about that. How did you start doing that? Again, it goes back to that retreat that we very specifically had and said, okay, what do want to do? And people that I admired, had to the trade furniture lines. This is probably in 2007. So we sought it out. I designed pieces. we launched a high end to the trade furniture line. got carried in probably

four or five showrooms across the country. was great. It served its job. You also realize this is a whole other business. I don’t know a ton about manufacturing. I didn’t own the workshop, so the financials were tricky, but it was never really just about the money either. It was about the brand growth and the strategy, so it definitely did its job. We no longer have that, which is totally fine. I still consider it a success because it led me to what I wanted to do.

to where I wanted to be. And so now we do some licensing, which is great. It’s a lot less onus, obviously, and investment upfront. So my main licensing collection is with Wendover Art Group out of Florida, a great company that produces artwork in Florida. We have about 500 SKUs for Wendover Art. that’s great. Well, so interesting. So you’ve done furniture, you’ve done artwork. What else do you want to design?

all the things go right. So I know we should probably focus on expanding our licensing a bit. mean, I fabric is tricky. Probably lighting or fabrics or maybe like, think maybe like even looking at a smaller category, think for us, like you don’t necessarily have to do, you’re not, know, not everyone’s going to go out and get, you know, a big collection for century. Like that’s going to be rare. But can you do, you know, 10 mirrors for somebody like made goods? I think maybe looking at.

You know, something smaller that’s kind of fun, that’s easier to produce, you know, not the whole, not the whole shebang. So maybe something, you know, smaller, like occasional mirrors, lighting, who knows. All right. We’ll be looking for the Christopher Kennedy collection. That’s great. Let me, let me do, you know, another strategy session. That was a good idea 15 years ago. I think now that I should, I should do that again. Well, if it’s been 15 years for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it sounds like you that.

really propelled you down a direction that most people don’t even think about in their early stages of their business. So you were prescient and when you were thinking that, right? I was, and I was always precocious, I guess, being an only child and, having a dad who was older. mean, I was sort of always a bit mature for my age and,

I blame my mom for liking older guys. That’s too much about my personal life, but I never really liked people my age, even my 20s when I was in LA, I wasn’t dating actor models. I was dating people that were interesting and doing things and successful. yeah, I guess I was always sort of wanted to look ahead and think about, I’ve always been ambitious, I guess I’d say today. And a visionary. Well, that’s very kind of you, but. Yes, you are.

Well, you’re also very active and you give back a lot. So how did you get involved in philanthropy and how has that affected your business?

Our biggest philanthropy first was the show house. guess we should talk about that, right? That’s the answer. So we did. It’s been 10 years. Can you believe it? Since our first Kennedy compound show house. So I think I mentioned that I sometimes told I don’t just I don’t know what I shouldn’t do. I just figure like I’m going to figure it out. Like if you go into something with good intentions and the right energy, you know, generally these things have been done before. Like these.

Generally, these trails have been blazed. Like, we can look to people that have done it, that have gone there, asked questions. Like, we can figure it out, you know? So when I was in ASID about 14 years ago, I president of the chapter in Palm Springs, and people were talking for years about, why don’t we have a decorator showcase house in Palm Springs, right? It’s such fertile ground. By that point, know, Mad Men was on TV, like I was saying. We have this great history of architecture. mean, Pasadena, Denver, Dallas has a showhouse, Omaha.

For God’s sakes, why not Palm Springs? And it just wasn’t happening. So I bought a house and I figured I’m just going to do it myself. And but I give full credit where it’s due Windsor Smith, great designer had just built a house in Los Angeles, called it the House of Windsor, got, you know, magazines to be involved like, well, if Windsor can do it, so can I. And if she can call it the House of Windsor, I can call it the Christopher Kennedy compound. And we did. And all you can do is just like call.

your friends, right? So I just called brands I knew and loved, like Wolf Sub Zero and Cozentino, and I didn’t think they’d say yes, and they did. And I called a few designers who I knew, like Atrina Turk and Udwitson and Bummerfields and Thomas Lyvin. I called designers I didn’t know, like Celery, just approached her at High Point, went to see her. She said yes. I’m like, well, crap, I guess now I got to do it. And so we did. And my husband and I paid for it. We did the whole remodel.

I mean, it was, so it was, we did sell tickets. We’ve had 5,000 people tour it for a modernism week, raise money for preservation. You know, it did help me as well. So it’s like, it wasn’t about just what can I get, but like, what can I give and how can we do this as a win-win? So that was our first philanthropy and it, we had Lux magazine. It exceeded everyone’s expectations. And then we did it a second year. My husband and I owned the house the second year too. I will tell you that we like spent so much money making the event.

class and the success that we did sell both houses. I had planned on keeping them as our forever homes, but we actually did sell them because we invested a lot into it. so it wasn’t necessarily a short term win, but it definitely propelled me in the long run. And so that’s how we started. I guess that was a long answer. And we’re still involved. Two years ago, we did house tours for the Palm Springs Animal Shelter during a modernism week. So I think we all have ways that

We can give, you I don’t have as much money as the next guy, but I have a platform. have clients who have beautiful houses. Like we can all give back in ways, even if we don’t have just the cash resources, we all have something that we can give. And I was like, how can I leverage that to do something good? Yeah, I love that. Well, you’ve been very generous with your time and I’m just going to ask you one last question. And that is what are three takeaways that you’d like to share with our listeners? We didn’t talk to much about inspiration, but,

You know, if I hear one more designer get on a panel and they ask like, what inspires you? And they say travel. I’m like, okay, you know, travel inspires you. But I think we have to be inspired. can’t just wait for that annual vacation to be inspired. So I think for me, something I’ve been learning and having done all these things that we talked about, I’m kind of tired thinking about it, having some white space and giving ourselves that like, because I’ve been looking back on how can I

be inspired and like how can I refill my cup? It’s just about saying no a bit. It’s about like actually all the inspiration is inside of us or in my library at the studio or on the computer. I can find anything if I give myself that that time. And for me right now, that’s about often like coming in on a Saturday and I might start. I’m not saying you should work on the weekends, but like when the phones aren’t ringing and dinging and you know, like I might listen to a podcast at first like this one.

And I’ll do that. I’ll kind of like, like actually clean off my desk, my layout tables. And then then I can, okay, I can now focus on the Smith project and just really like give it my full energy. So it’s about, I think it takes for me lately, it takes so long to get into the act creative. Like you mentioned earlier, like in a really nine tenths of its business, 10 % creative, but our clients are hiring us for that 10 % and we really have to give ourselves a time to show up and to do that. So the second thing, these are, I’m rambling.

is I don’t know who said it. might’ve been you, but I heard it recently. And that was if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no. I agree with that. Yeah. didn’t say it every time I’ve taken on a project that, there was a bit of a red flag or the client and I just weren’t this, or it didn’t meet, you know, our minimum budget, which we do have nowadays. Every time I’ve sort of like maybe been in that scarcity mentality of like, better take this job to feed this machine. It’s like, I’ve regretted it. So if it’s not.

Yes, I want to do this. I love these clients. I love this house where I love this licensing deal. If it isn’t a hell yes, it’s a hell no, because that just gives yourself the time to serve the clients who are the right fit that I mentioned earlier to refill that cup and just to align with what you really want. And there’s going to be the next thing. So that’s something that I’ve been doing lately. And I guess the third takeaway is we could do a whole other podcast, but like charge what you’re worth and just

Don’t overcharge. don’t think, I mean, designers aren’t greedy. Like I think the clients out there who make people feel bad about themselves, that they’re overcharged, like, we’re not the greedy ones. Like generally we’re not the rich ones. Like we’re doing a good job. We’re doing this because we love it. We would do it for free. And for many years we do it for free. Like when I started. you know, charge what you’re worth, charge reasonable retail pricing. If we could just not ever say markup again as a business, I’d be very happy as industry.

Yeah, those are my takeaways. I hope that answered your question. that. Those are great takeaways and a little extra sauce on top of a great interview. So thank you so much, Christopher. As always, you are delightful and it was a pleasure having you. The pleasure was all mine. Thank you, Gail.