Talk Shop: Celerie Kemble // Kemble Interiors
Photo by Stephen Karlisch
ABOUT CELERIE
We here at AOI are Celerie Kemble’s biggest fans (re: Ariel’s stay at the fabulous Mayflower Inn & Spa.) We love everything about her work; especially the magic imbued when you walk into any Kemble Interiors home or hotel. Celerie’s signature alchemy of whimsy, heritage and color inspire endlessly – all with a fresh take and a hit of patina.
After starting Kemble Interiors, Inc. in Palm Beach in 1982, Celerie’s mother Mimi Maddock McMakin became a household name in the design industry. Fusing a playful approach with historic restorations, these spaces were where Celerie laid her training ground. She claims her childhood was, in many ways, a tutorial in interior design – spent around construction sites, antique stores, and in the unique homes designed by her mother.
After graduating from Harvard, Celerie worked briefly in film production, before quickly pivoting to what she’s known her whole life. She started her firm slowly in New York City, opening the Kemble Interiors NY office. Since then, she has spent the past 18 years cultivating a portfolio of much-publicized work that is as unique and diverse as her clientele. She’s done campaigns for the likes of J.Crew and Benjamin Moore, while creating her own line of furniture, lighting, and more for various brands like Schumacher and Arteriors, running her eponymous firm for residential design, and commanding several out of the park hospitality projects.
We were ecstatic to sit down with the talented designer to chat about her latest book, Island Whimsy — and all the things that make Celerie Kemble, Celerie Kemble. Enjoy!
Congrats on your latest book, Island Whimsy! Where did the inspiration for this book come from?
I spent years dreaming about it. We were very slow to get the build going so I had time to draw inspiration from all over, and time to shop. It’s based on whim and whimsy which is kind of unusual. It let me hunt through vintage markets and look to create a character and a soul out of things that were lighthearted, garden-based, and nothing new. The whole goal was to build a boutique hotel, clubhouses, and homes that came both from someone’s imagination and filled over time, not that it was new construction.
But the inspiration really came from old Victorian buildings, garden follies, and a lot was drawn from my family home. I grew up in a shingle-style church and on the property was an old Victorian house that my great-great-grandparents built. Architecturally, I pulled a lot from those houses. They were fanciful but tropical.
I know this is a hard question, but do you have a favorite room in Playa Grande? Why?
Oh, wow! There are two favorite rooms just because they are totally different moods. I love the main dining room/hangout room/daytime bar. There’s a Taian word that kind of sounds like “Bahia” that means “gathering place.” So I would say that room because it has those pink and yellow tiles and a soaring roofline with aqua ceilings. Something like that just catches all the light in the garden and the ocean and pool in one vantage point. It’s a center thing, it pulls the outside into it so well.
The other one is the Star Bar which is totally different. It’s a little more menacing and wild and deep color tones and just deliciously cozy to hang out in until 2am. It’s more part of the night sky in the jungle, it’s not daytime and faded bathing suits! They’re kind of the ying and the yang, there’s such tension between floral, breezy and sunny and then the jungle and the wet, deep, and wild. And that’s what makes Playa Grande so magical—having both.
Describe your style in three words or less:
Eclectic, comfortable, and pretty. Pretty is a simple word but I think people have lost touch with it!
What have been the three biggest influences on your aesthetic in your life:
Travel, and having grown up in Palm Beach. Old Palm Beach, mainly the 1920s, 1930s, and 1960s was a place where people have taken extraordinary risks and they’ve both been quite luxurious in their designs but it’s usually done for fun—it was a playground. The huge variety of wild, and was all about people who decorated without fear.
My third biggest influence is probably my visual memory. I think sometimes I’m a complete source of chaos and disorganization but something has always worked for me I record the impressions of things visually and that has let me go through life seeing movies, reading magazines, and picking up details from a friend’s house is having a deep subconscious style of what I see. I remember those things better—I may not remember someone’s name or where I went on vacation two years ago, but I can tell you things the minute someone starts talking about something my visual library comes into play and something pops up in my mind and I can relate. It’s like the old light bulb going off! Something gets me excited and there’s always a strong, weird reference.
So it’s really my visual memory and growing up in Palm Beach where people did crazy things, and travel. I do design work more on feeling than control.
How did you start your company, and what is your favorite thing about what you do:
My mother started Kemble Interiors and still works there fulltime—she runs the Palm Beach office and I run the New York office. I started the New York office in the mid to latr 90s by helping a lot of my male friends, who didn’t want their mothers or girlfriends to decorate their houses. So out of that group of guys in their mid to late 20s in New York who had bought their first apartment is where my business started. It helped that I had a mother who had a real business, and craftspeople and artisans and a reputation that helped launch my legitimacy.
Flea markets are my favorite thing about what I do—hands down!
Do you have a mentor in your career, and if so, how have they helped to shape your trajectory:
My mother. She’s been supportive in every way, and trust, and has badass taste and amazing business instincts.
What does your home say about you:
That I’m a hoarder and a shopper! But that it shows the layers of my sentimentality. I’m not at all precious about things, and I love quirk. Almost everything that has a place of honor is informal and a little bit off, but has beauty and humannes. It’s in the soft things that catch me.
Where do you find inspiration:
Often a whole room can come out of an object. So if I’m vintage shopping or in an antique store and something catches that god-light, or has resinence and poetry to me, that can start a whole room. And it could be a ceramic bowl that has a weird 60s vibe and that becomes the thing that I offset with everything else. Or a retched old mirror, or clock—it’s funny I can go back into my word and name which piece embodied everything. It’s the thing that gets you excited—it’s the catalyst. And then you have to build the stage around it. I’m so much less about decorating and more about how it makes you feel. A successful design is a place that tells you how to behave and feel when you’re in it.
People often talk about books and magazines and honoring the work of others, and I feel like that’s a safe line. I think there are a lot of people who are artistic and stylish, and the way they merchandise their stores and puts a vision together out of objects creates a really powerful point of view. So places like Plain Goods, Antiques Modern or Cutter Brooks. People can move a whole look forward by the way they assemble things, and I find a lot of inspiration in that while I shop.
Who are your style icons:
I don’t really think I have any. When I think of icons, I feel like people are so in a glass globe and trapped...like if your icon is Jackie O, you suddenly feel really tight and contrived by the lens of time. Like I feel like I know them less, like now I’m lost and know how other people think of you.
I think I feel nostalgic about beautiful moments, but the second someone says icon it starts to feel copycat and a false sense of understanding. I don’t know why, but the word “icon” really bums me out. I see this incredible beauty, and the depth of someone’s style. But once they’re someone’s icon I’m almost embarrassed for the person that they were an icon. It kind of makes me feel weird.
I think we’ve all gotten so used to icons and a way of looking at design. ANd people are kind of missing it like that’s a bit off. I think the people that are the icons really had personal style, and I feel like they didn’t have a pin board of other people who were their “icons” - that’s what made them great!
What are your key ingredients for entertaining:
Good lighting—it could be candlelight, it could be throwing your party at the right hour when the sun sets. Maling people feel pretty makes them more fun when they themselves feel more attractive. Good food and usually a little freezance. It’s about the lighting, personalities, and good food than anything else. There always has to be an introduction—a little sex in the air, a little purpose.
Do you collect anything:
Too much! Colored glasses, vintage towels, anything with applique on it, crepe paper hats, wonky flower paintings—there’s too much! It’s more of a problem, but a good problem.
Favorite Instagram accounts to follow for inspiration:
Jessica Yellin @newsnotnoise
What design “rule” do you always follow, and which is made to be broken:
Follow: My mother told me this and it really works— I don’t hang mirrors horizontally. There never seems to be a reason to forshorten something that’s all about light and air. It should always be reaching upward. I hate rugs that are too small in a room, I think it’s better to have a rug so big you’re never walking on the edge of it. I find edges of rugs to be real problems.
Broken: I think all rules should be broken! There’s common sense, and there’s comfort.
What are you working on right now:
I am working on a couple of projects in New York, Silicon Valley, a Palm Beach house I’m so psyched about. I feel like I’m kind of all over the place but other than CA it’s all pretty East Coast. And then I have new lighting, accessories, and small furniture pieces coming out with Arteriors. I also have some upholstery and rugs I’m making for Chairish that’s been so fun, and they do such a beautiful job.
Wardrobe staples:
I always think in terms of shoes! I’m Greek sandals in the summer, boots in the winter, and Tretorns in-between. I’ve gone pretty deep into jumpsuits. I really like clothing that’s one and done. I love Lela Rose and Ulla Johnson dresses. Mainly because I put them over my head and all I have to think about is shoes and I’m done!
Favorite fabric/wallpaper:
This is just too hard! I love Schumacher, my favorite place to shop is Harbinger showrooms, and I really love Fromenthal for their murals because they do really beautiful modern ones as well as the classic chinoiserie. But it’s hard because that’s the reason why I do what I do because I get to get to spin in the middle of all the options.
Best interior advice you ever received:
Don’t look to being done. What makes an interior have merit is its evolution.
Best career advice you ever received:
Be nice. You get everything done by being nice, and nothing done by being hard and demanding.
Types of home purchases you invest in, and save on:
Invest in: Fabrics is where I splurge, and consistently shop top of the line. The colors, intricacy of pattern, and quality of construction in really good fabrics are unmistakable, and how homes feel really high-end. It lets me be junky in my love for junk, but if you have good fabrics everything else looks couture.
Save on: Art. I like found art and things that are more important because of the discovery of them rather than the merit of the art in the marketplace. I find homes really warm when all of the art is totally beloved and important because of the eye of the beholder. I love a house that when you walk in you’re like “wow! I would have never seen that or noticed it myself except for the way you give it life and energy.” It could be old frames, needlepoint, string art, or odd things rather than art with a capital A.
Your greatest extravagance:
Food and travel. I travel more than I can admit! I travel while I work, I work while I travel. I like to merge the two things because they really reinforce each other.
Favorite places to shop for home:
Dixie Highway in Palm Beach,. La Cienega in LA, Blackman Cruise is the best-composed store anywhere. Plain Goods, Harbinger, I shop a ton on the internet—it’s become a flea market! Chairish is amazing, it has high, low, colorful, quirky, it has everything.
Most prized possession and why:
Family photos: you could burn everything else but my life is in the negatives, albums, photos, and my iCloud.
But all the art/non-art I’ve bought because it’s so many years of finding things that somehow become poetry for me.
Your interiors motto:
Perfect and new is flat, look for patina.
Your life motto:
Don’t let fear drive you. It’s not a good impetus for anything, and the idea of control is a trap. I’m always looking to be carried away. Pursue your joy. Stay imbalance.
Advice for someone looking to define their own interior style:
Don’t! Don’t define yourself. Be something unlike anything else and you’ve already defined yourself.
Take Ten: My Favorite…
Food: Butter, pasta, cheese. It’s one food group.
Drink: Orange Wine
Film: Antonia’s Line and Parenthood. I love a funny, sentimental family drama.
Hotel: The ones I’ve buried my heart in—The Mayflower & Playa Grande. They’re my babies!
City: Paris, Hong Kong
Bedding: Vintage voile Porteau sheets that you only find in people’s grandmother’s linen clothes. Mismatched twin sheets and all!
Tea or Coffee (and how do you take it): Coffee in the morning, and I love to drink it at home—not somewhere that has oat milk! I have 2-3 cups of coffee. In the afternoons I do green tea like Jasmine green tea makes me very happy.
Playlist: My boyfriend’s company makes mixes on Mixcloud and they’re amazing! But you could Fleetwood Mac me to death and I’d be happy. My best friend is Bronson van Wyck and sometimes I bust into his music and he has incredible playlists.
Weekend Activity: Nap and read. I love to putter. I never get enough time to create orders in my house. Puttering, reading, sleeping.
Design Book: Tony Duquette and Oliver Messel.