I am sitting on the fourteenth floor of Chicago’s iconic Merchandise Mart — known in the design community as simply “The Mart.” The building is buzzing with the energy of Design Chicago, the Midwest’s biggest design conference. And this impromptu raw-space-turned-interview-stage is mere steps away from a showroom that still bears the name of a woman whose work reinvented the design world: Holly Hunt.
The place is packed to overflowing with industry movers and shakers eagerly awaiting the arrival of Hunt herself. The design industry icon is set to speak about her just-released book Holly Hunt: Fearless in the World of Design (Rizzoli, $65) At the sound of her name, Hunt makes a confident entrance in a smart gray blazer and fitted black pants. She holds her arms out in greeting. The crowd roars.
On Remaining a Design Industry Icon
A few weeks earlier, I spoke with Hunt about the process of putting together a book reviewing her unprecedented career thus far. She is in the midst of overseeing a design project in Aspen. So our conversation is peppered with occasional clangs and clatters of progress from the next room.
Hunt may be better known for sourcing pieces used by designers than for designing. But in the time since she became less involved with her eponymous company, one of her pursuits has been boutique interior design studio House of Hunt. “It’s actually been a great couple of years,” Holly says. “Running a smaller business means you become the leader, not the star character.” She praises her team and says they find the work exciting. “You’re learning something new all the time.”
More taxing, it would seem, has been crafting Fearless in the World of Design. As we speak, Holly is still waiting to see her first fully bound copy — though she wonders if she will want to resume making adjustments the moment she sees it. “It was hard. I never intended a book. So I wasn’t prepared for how hard it would be,” Hunt reveals. In fact, initially selling the idea may have been the easiest part. “Margaret Russell took it to Rizzoli and sold it before I even agreed to do it,” Hunt remembers.
On Becoming a Design Industry Icon
“The whole title came from: how does the small-town girl from West Texas — without any professional training in interior design — change American interior design for the better?” Hunt explains. Soon teams were endeavoring on multiple fronts. Folks from the Holly Hunt company helped source images even as Hunt worked with writer Lisa Skolnick to shape the story. Hunt knew that the words needed to be more than mere captions. “Design books are usually about pictures,” Hunt observes. “This design book is a storybook. It’s the story of how I built this business, and that’s my design gift: how I built the business and helped interior design become better, stronger, trustworthy — over 40 years. And it was a pleasure doing it, but it was difficult.”
Hunt says that what motivated her to become a household name in the design industry was the belief that she could do better. “I had been a client of these showrooms doing my own houses from New York to Boca Raton to Chicago,” she says. And in the course of designing her own homes, she came to see the industry was lacking — especially when it came to client service. “It was a natural evolution for me to buy a showroom and do this,” she says.
On Sharing a Household Name
But what was Hunt to call this nascent venture? To many who were around her at the time, the natural choice was to name it after Hunt herself. “And I said, ‘I don’t want to name it Holly Hunt. That’s my name. I don’t like that.’ I was very insecure about it. I wasn’t sure,” she says. Eventually, she reached a decision. “Finally I said, ‘Okay, we’ll call it Holly Hunt.’ My mother gave me that name. It was not my married name. It was my maiden name. And I said, ‘I see it working, so it’s going to work.'”
After many years of success, the name became an issue again when it came time for Hunt to sell the company to Knoll. “People asked me: ‘Are you giving your name away? Why, Holly? Why would you sell? Can you sell your company but keep the name?’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t think that works,'” she recalls with a laugh. “Anyway, I sold it, and the good news is: the people who came after me — like Mark Szafran, who is president now, and other people that I have known for years — held the brand together and made it better, and it continues to grow,” Hunt explains. “So I’m very proud of my name. They have not hurt it. In fact, they may have made it stronger. And I can’t take it back anyway, so you might as well be happy.”
On Sharing the Personal Stuff
With the time between first showroom and successful company, Hunt still had plenty of story to tell. But some of Hunt’s collaborators wondered whether she was telling the right parts “They kept asking me: ‘Why are you putting so much personal stuff in it? You don’t need to have personal stuff: it’s a design book.” But Hunt knew her fearless journey could not be shared through images of homes or showrooms, best-selling products or even treasured collaborators.
“I couldn’t tell my story without talking about how intertwined my personal life was with my business life,” Hunt says. She saw the fact that she had three sons — and made it through divorce to become a single mother working full time — as central to her story. “It was hard to build the whole thing,” she says. “But my pride in looking back at what I did is: it really did change the interior design business of America for the better.”
Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the story of Hunt’s inimitable journey is accompanied by photographs that testify to her taste. There are images of homes she decorated — both before and after becoming a force in the world of design. Readers will also see key projects she worked on for clients — such as the Little Nell Hotel in Aspen and a penthouse apartment in Miami’s Surf Club. And images of Hunt’s ever-evolving showrooms — filled with pieces by notable collaborators including Rose Tarlow, Christian Liaigre, and many others—are interspersed with time capsule candids of Hunt and company through the years. “It evolved over time, and I’m very proud of how it worked out,” she said. “I wound up loving the business. I love my life. And so I think that that’s why there’s so much personal in it.”
On Awaiting the Arrival of a Design Icon
Back on the fourteenth floor of The Mart, Holly Hunt has finished talking through some of her favorite aspects of her book. Hunt is ushered out of the space and — in a great crush — the assembled head across the floor to the Holly Hunt showroom. It still serves as a powerful reminder that Hunt’s legacy endures — in each beautiful piece that is on display here and in the homes they will eventually grace. And if the rapidly forming queue of designers waiting to buy their own signed copy of Holly Hunt: Fearless in the World of Design is any indication, the design world is as eager to see Holly Hunt’s next chapter as ever.
Photography courtesy Rizzoli.
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