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Meet The Designer: Jonathan Adler
Image courtesy Jonathan Adler
Mix Master
Call him kitschy, he doesn't care. Designer Jonathan Adler - kingpin of a budding design empire and lead judge on a new reality TV makeover show - happily admits to loving many styles and pledging allegiance to none. Meet the mix master.
Jonathan Adler's embroidered pillows say style: "I believe there's something to be learned from every period."
Elements of style: Among Adler's favorite things, rooms with a sense of playfulness and exuberance, right, and
a chinoiserie bamboo Chinese Chippendale chair in a contemporary color, left.
After starting out as a potter in the early '90s, designer Jonathan Adler has branched out to become one of the liveliest, most influential forces in the home industry.
In addition to pottery, he also designs furniture, bedding, towels, lighting, rugs, pillows, tabletop items, candles and stationery both for his own boutiques and for stores such as Barneys New York.
He also can be seen as the lead judge on "Top Design," Bravo's new home-design reality competition show.
The heart of Adler's achievement is his pop sensibility. Forms, colors and motifs change constantly. That George Nelson-inspired lamp or groovy '60s pillow or lusterware stash box you see one season may be gone by the next.
A self-described "maximalist," Adler likes stuff - lots and lots of it. On his Web site (jonathanadler.com) he includes a half-humorous manifesto wherein he outlines his design philosophy and also some of his favorite things.
The latter includes everything from geodesic domes to suits of armor to chinoiserie to "infantile happy emblems like butterflies and hearts."
And he means it. "I believe," he says, "there's something to be learned from every period."
HomeStyle: How has your taste evolved over the years?
Jonathan Adler: My point of view has gotten broader. I've become even more of a maximalist than I was when I started. I love lots of different stuff and I love it all mixed together. I don't believe in adhering to any one style.
HS: Do you have any guilty pleasures as a designer - a style or item you know isn't really very good but that you love anyway?
JA: Not really. I have stuff that some people might consider kitsch, but I don't really think of it as a guilty pleasure. The kitsch stuff I have is incredible.
Image courtesy Jonathan Adler
HS: What's an example of incredible kitsch?
JA: A set of clown pictures I recently bought in Capri. They're rendered in wood marquetry, it's like a puzzle made of different veneers, and when you put all the pieces together you get a picture. It's an example of kitschy subject matter - clowns - being elevated to a new level of greatness via incredible craftsmanship.
HS: What role does fashion play in home merchandise?
JA: As a business model, it's very important. Home tends to be a fairly sleepy business where people make the same things over and over again. I never wanted to do that. When I first started out 13 years ago, I was known for doing striped pots. And I could very easily have gone on doing that for the rest of my life. But I knew even then that I wanted a more creative approach.
HS: Do trends in apparel influence home merchandise?
JA: Not as much as you might think. I'm always surprised by how I will meet someone who wears very groovy clothing and then I'll go to their house and it will be totally frumpy and un-pulled-together. There just seems to be a real disconnect between people's level of fashion sophistication and the way they decorate their homes.
HS: Who influences you?
JA: I love the mid-century Modern people, especially textile designer Alexander Girard and fashion designer Bonnie Cashin. They made timeless designs with a real sense of playfulness and exuberance. But I also love and have been influenced by people as diverse as Andy Warhol, Yves St. Laurent and artist Leroy Neiman.
HS: Do you have a favorite style?
JA: I think you can learn something from every period. It really comes down to how you use it. A lot of the themes and motifs in my work are traditional, but I tweak them in order to make them right for the market today. For instance, I might use a traditional brocade pattern on something, but instead of doing it in a bland, tonal way, I'll use sharp contrasting colors to give it a crisp, graphic quality.
HS: Among other things, you're known as a trendsetter with color. How do you know if a color is right for a given season or collection?
JA: The minute I decide I hate a color, I know it's about to come back. If you had mentioned teal to me five years ago I would have made a face and said "never!" Now I live and breathe teal.
HS: What's on your current hate list?
JA: I really sincerely don't think I will ever love mauve or dusty rose. But, you never know.
HS: What's the hardest part of what you do?
JA: The challenge, for me, is editing my ideas. I can't produce every little thing that's on my mind. There's not enough time or room in the world.
HS: What kind of house did you grow up in?
JA: A modern house in a farm town in New Jersey. My dad was a lawyer, but he had a great design aesthetic. He was a rigorous modernist. My mom has a much more exuberant sprit. It was a house full of Marimekko textiles.
HS: Do you remember the first time you were aware of design as design?
JA: Definitely. I was about seven and I went over to my friend Andrew Goldstein's house and he had the grooviest red, white and blue color scheme in his bedroom. And I remember thinking Wow! Andrew's really lucky.
HS: What kind of house do you live in now?
JA: A great old building in Manhattan. The exterior is kind of grand pre-war architecture, but the interior is very colorful and quirky.
HS: Your partner is Simon Doonan, who is well known in his own right as a designer and author. How do you influence each other?
JA: We have very similar takes on the world. We're both populists. We like things that are communicative, happy and fun. Many artists and designers can be very elitist in their vision. I don't think we are. The only thing he likes that I don't is opera. I cannot understand or believe opera. He, allegedly, does. I'm a Top 40 guy.
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