Rafael de Cárdenas, designer and founder of RAFAELDECARDENAS Ltd.
How do I get comfortable at home?
Comfort should always be hidden. Whatever you do, don’t be obvious about it. Without a soupçon of discomfort—or the visual impression of it—a home is never actually that comfortable.
Taylor Johnston and Ed Bowen, founders of Issima
How long will it take my garden to reach its final form?
Gardening is the slowest of the performing arts. Rarely do you get an opportunity to make a garden and see it 10, 15, 20, or even 30 years later, when it actually starts to become something. Another tip: Resist tidying your garden like it’s an extension of the indoors. Letting your garden stay in its desiccated skeletal form late into spring, allows bugs to hibernate over winter, and lay eggs into the hollow stems. You’re encouraging an ecosystem by doing nothing. New plants should only get watered until they get a toehold, and then they’re on their own—sink or swim.
The point is, take your time. Get familiar with annuals, perennials, biennials, woody plants, vines, tropical plants. Don’t limit yourself. Treat it like a lifelong thing.
Bethan Laura Wood, designer
What’s the best way to make space for my pet?
Give in! Your home is no longer your own. It is a vessel for your pet’s every whim and their fur. I’m lucky—Wilma is a non-chewing tiny creature who I have to confirm is breathing half the time because she is so still. I didn’t have to change much.
When I adopted her, I did move many of my objects and rugs (believe me, that’s a lot of stuff) into a room she couldn’t access while I figured her out. Now, I use small throws on any surface she claims, and I’ve become one with my Muji lint roller. I persuade my mum, with photos of Wilma in carefully curated neckerchiefs, to make washable dog bed covers out of vintage fabrics to match my home.
For food and water, I use shallow, found ceramics. Her toys live in a patterned box, and I rotate them to keep things fresh. You don’t think you’ll become one of us until…
Oh, and a word of warning: If you’re getting a dog, just give away any panettone gifts from your well-meaning Italian friends on the spot. Nothing sucks the joy from a party—or the money from your bank account—faster than rushing to the vet while your dog throws up the jewel-like sultana they scarfed down.
Antonio DiTommaso, professor at School of Integrative Plant Science, Cornell University
What should I do with my weeds (other than pull them out)?
What is a weed? Some people say it’s a plant out of place. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “A weed is a plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered.” The term “weed” is very human-centered. These are plants, and they were around before humans.
As a weed ecologist, I feel there is value to these plants. Think about the common milkweed, which is a major food source of the monarch butterfly. In Canada, people use its little fluff to insulate jackets and put bags of it along the beaches to absorb oil spills. Sheep sorrel has this lemony taste that you can put in salads, same with common purslane and tender lamb’s quarter. And why do we have to get rid of dandelions? They’re the first thing that bees love to have. We can make dandelion wine. Why fight it?
Oana Stănescu, architect and curator
How can I make my space more interactive?
A central design—fluid, flexible, open, with layered lighting and textures, all facing each other, instead of away. Different proximities, contrast between pieces to tease out choice, soft offset by hard, one oversized presence to order the rest, following natural light or leaning towards a view.
Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen, fashion designer
How does getting dressed relate to designing a space?
Clothing becomes an extension of the soul when worn. Likewise, the garments we strip off, discard, or hang from furniture become a physical reminder of our presence, our way of making any space we inhabit our home. A simple reminder of lives led, a suggestion of the impending past and future, a self once worn by us, now worn by a room.
Rodman Primack and Rudy Weissenberg, designers and founders of AGO: iNTERiORS
What’s the best way to bring pattern into my life?
Seriously, stop thinking about it. Just commit. Allow patterns into your wardrobe and home in equal measure. Consider scale and weight, but don’t obsess—small cotton or linen checks, windowpanes, and stripes mixed with big florals or vintage cut velvets, hand-embroidered pieces from Turkey, Guatemala, India… Whatever you do, don’t mix and match from only one shop or purveyor—that zaps all the energy. Pattern is the adjective in the sentence, the spice in the dish, so get comfortable with it and push it to the edge; the more you have, the more you’ll want.
Lindsey Adelman, lighting designer and founder of Lindsey Adelman Studio
What’s the best way to set a mood?
Dim it all the way down. Light that is barely there and golden in hue, spread out between many points throughout a space, creates softness, privacy, and a conspiratorial feeling.
Tin Nguyen, artist and co-founder of CFGNY
How do I build an outdoor shower?
Consider the sun. Are you exposed to southern light, giving you daylight for many hours, or are you facing west to reveal the setting sun? Observe your surroundings. Could your shower head provide irrigation for nearby plants? Is privacy necessary, or can you eliminate walls and stand before a forest of redwood trees, absorbing oxygen through every pore of your skin? Of course, make it fab with additional details: a towel rack made of foraged tree branches, a mosaic bath mat made of pebbles. The mosaic could be a portrait of your pet, your mother’s birthday, or it could say “New York City Forever.” The world is your oyster.
Polymode, graphic designers
How do I choose a font that suits my personality?
You might think picking a typeface is a hyper-rational exercise. It’s not. It’s about trusting your gut and finding a form that feels right. We contain multitudes; consider a variable font. Where are you on the axis today? Bold, italic, thin, or heavy? You can be all or nothing—just don’t choose a default.
Matylda Krzykowski, designer and artistic lead at CIVIC
How do I design my home for fun?
In the 1970s and 1980s, the German Partykeller (essentially a man cave for all) was the answer. It had a nostalgic interior and a wood-paneled bar in the center. One could listen to music, enjoy cold beverages, play games, relax. Party cellars have experienced a decline in popularity, but I suggest we revive them.
Josh Itiola, designer at Vitsœ
How should I wrangle my books and magazines?
Respect your collection enough to give it structure. Books belong on a shelf. No piles along the floor, no leaning towers on the windowsill, and absolutely no books in your nonfunctional fireplace. Any shelf will do. It doesn’t have to be a designer setup, just give them a proper home.
When you organize them, please—not by color. Let’s move on from all that. Let your relationship with your books shape the system. Group by genre or topic if that helps you navigate, but don’t lock in. Think of your shelves as a living archive.
Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, architects and founders of Johnston Marklee
What should I look for in a dining chair?
A good dining chair is like a good friend: If you want to be left alone, they will leave you alone. But if you engage, they will tell you a lot. They are dignified from behind and supportive in front. They are completely invisible yet always in sight. They move in herds; they are never alone.
Billy Cotton, interior designer and founder of Billy Cotton Studio
What is the greatest design lesson you learned from a mentor?
Tom Delavan taught me about needing half of what you think you need to make a room successful. Purge your mind and your schemes in the process.
Joanna Glovinsky, gardener and founder of Fruitstitute
How do I graft the fruit tree of my dreams?
Fruit trees are like purebred dogs—they’re made by humans, not nature. We take the root stock of a size-appropriate, disease-resistant, climate-appropriate tree and a cutting of a Meyer lemon or a Red Baron peach and we merge them; two bodies in one.
Grafting is ancient knowledge and its own specialty—50 percent of tree success is “right tree, right place.” So first, figure out what kind of fruit you want. Do you have the space for it? Don’t put your avocado on top of a slope. Put it at the bottom of a hill, collecting water and protected from the wind. And remember: A happy, healthy fruit tree comes with the things that eat the fruit, like squirrels and birds. We call that your fruit tax.
James Wines, architect and co-founder of Site
How can I bring irony into my interior?
Søren Kierkegaard said, “Irony is the birth-pangs of the objective mind.” This observation credits irony with humanity’s capacity to see the world more clearly, emphasizing the discrepancies between perception and reality. In short, it’s not easy. I have no rules to impart. Success or failure depends on the designer’s ability to inject physical ingredients into commonplace living spaces that question the redundancies of such environments in the first place.
Dan Rosen, comedian and design snob
How do I avoid getting roasted on Dan Rosen’s Instagram?
Just don’t get famous! It’s really very simple. Resist the temptation. Go back to grad school, do whatever you have to do! If, by some unfortunate twist of fate, you do find yourself on the wrong side of fame, and some snot-nosed Condé editor emails begging to showcase your impeccable taste—so refined, they heard you actually picked a lot of the pieces yourself, you little aesthete, you—click “Reply,” and refuse.
Artwork by Ebecho Muslimova
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