DBTB Unplugged | Alison Kenworthy
Intro: Welcome to the one and only interior design book podcast, Decorating by the Book, hosted by Suzy Chase from her dining room table in New York City. Join Suzy for conversations about the latest and greatest interior design books with the authors who wrote them.
Suzy Chase: Welcome to my feature called Unplugged, where I chat with interior design tastemakers. Today I'm absolutely thrilled to chat with Alison Kenworthy, the executive producer of Homeworthy, and a three-Time Emmy Award-winning television producer. She formerly worked at ABC's Good Morning America, where she covered entertainment stories from the red carpet of the Golden Globes to the tennis courts of Wimbledon. She also traveled to small towns across the country filming heartwarming profiles of extraordinary Americans. In 2019, she founded Homeworthy as a way of showcasing how homes shape people's lives. Alison, I just adore watching Homeworthy, a brand that celebrates the interiors of homes on YouTube. It's a really fabulous way to check out people's homes and hear their stories at the same time. And what comes through in every video is how passionate you are about storytelling and how homes shape people's lives. How did the Homeworthy video series come to life? And by the way, fun fact, while I was researching you, it hit me, the worthy connection. I've never noticed Kenworthy and Homeworthy.
Alison Kenworthy: It just came to me one day. I was hemming and hawing about what are we going to call this company? What are we going to call this company? And I decided to use a little play on words with my last name. I should first say thank you, Suzy, for having me on this podcast. I'm thrilled to be chatting with you and in such great company with so many of the fabulous guests you have on your show. So thank you.
Suzy Chase: Thank you. So how did Homeworthy come to life?
Alison Kenworthy: Homeworthy came to life a few years ago when I was still a producer at Good Morning America. I had a long career in the television industry. I was at GMA for about seven years, and I absolutely loved it. It was a high-paced, high-intensity job. I was traveling all over the country telling stories, whether it be about something in the entertainment and lifestyle field to breaking news. And I received an incredible bootcamp by working in network television. But I hit a point where I thought, "What's next?" I wanted to do something else. I wanted to start something of my own. I always had a passion for interior design and home decor, and I loved snooping around people's homes. So I decided to partner storytelling, which is really what I think one of my main talents is, I love storytelling, and I love producing. I partnered it with fabulous people, interesting people, and their beautiful homes, and Homeworthy was born. And I have to tell you, Suzy, when I first started it, it was just me, my iPhone, a little mic kit, small tripod, and I did everything. I interviewed, I booked, I produced, I edited, I wrote copy. I did it for a year and no one watched. I had no traction on YouTube. But I believed in it, and I thought, "I'm just going to keep doing this." Eventually there came a point where the content was discovered, and ever since then, it has been a real whirlwind. And we are now in a much, much different place than we were a few years ago. I mean, I can tell you, Suzy, I think we had 17 people at one point per day watching the content, and now we have 60 million minutes watched every month. So it's been fun to watch the company grow.
Suzy Chase: I'm so curious how you curate the homes.
Alison Kenworthy: Well, when we first started, it was largely a friends and family type situation where I'd be asking friends, "Do you know anybody who has a great home who might let me into it?" Because they were really taking a risk too, because at the time I had nothing really behind me to show to convince people to want to participate. But now we have really reached a global audience. People submit their homes to us with photos, and we have a team of producers who sort of vet everybody and do a lot of the pre-production work, and chat with them about their story and about their home. We also have a lot of publishing houses reach out to us, people who have coffee table books coming out, and they're always so fascinating to chat with as you know. We do a fair amount of outreach on our own, people who we find via social media or people who we read about in a magazine. Because even though someone may have been featured in a magazine before, we still want to profile them because for me, there's such a difference in the print medium versus the video medium. And we have no problem leaning into the magazine space. So we love to scour magazines and find people that way as well, and design books. And also, word of mouth. I may be at a party and I meet somebody great and say, "Listen, would you be interested in being featured?" That actually happened to me in Dallas, Texas. I interviewed a gentleman named Joe Minton who was fantastic. I met him at a Sotheby's party. Two days later I was leaving Dallas. And I said to him at the party, "Sir, I'm leaving in just a few days, but you would be great on camera. Would you be interested?" We made it work. I showed up two days later with a crew and we filmed. He's a 90-year-old man who's an interior designer who has just this joie de vivre and this incredible outlook on life. He said to me during the interview, "I'm at the peak of my career." I just loved that because he's 90 and he just has this zest for life. But when we were figuring out the logistics of how I was going to come produce, I had a really tight schedule when I was in Dallas. I was there for Kips Bay and we were doing roughly six other home profiles. I said, "I have a small window of opportunity while I'm still here, but we would love to feature you." I said, "Could I come over tomorrow around 9:30 in the morning?" And he goes, "Oh honey, I don't wake up until 10:00." He said, "I need to have my coffee. I need to get ready." Anyway, we ended up making it work. But he has this routine in the morning. He reads like two newspapers, he has his coffee. I think he might be a bit of a night owl, so that's why he wakes up a little bit later in the morning. But he was such a joy to film with. His name is Joe Minton and he's got this historical home in Dallas, Texas with this gorgeous garden in the backyard. I just love his outlook on life, so it was a real treat to film with him. Had I not gone to that party, I wouldn't have met him and we wouldn't have filmed with him. So you never know who you're going to meet.
Suzy Chase: I think I remember that episode, because I don't think his house per se is historical. Wasn't it the inside of it had all these historical elements?
Alison Kenworthy: His entire living room was moved from England. Yeah, you're right. The entire house was not historical. There were just parts of it that were. He made the whole house flow beautifully with that one room that had been imported from England. It's funny, I walk into these houses and I just think, "Oh, I could live here." I was like, "Do you want to do a house swap?"
Suzy Chase: It's kind of like this podcast where it's fine to read a review of a design book, but it's so much better and more informative and entertaining to hear the author talk about their book.
Alison Kenworthy: I love sort of really getting to know a person, and I love just seeing how they talk and how they move and the stories they share and the jokes they tell. I really love getting to know a person, and I think that so much of that is hard to decipher in the written word. But when you have a camera in front of somebody, you just get so much out of them. I've always loved video. I've worked in television for 20 years, so it's always been my medium. But I just think that there's a real authenticity, too, that you get with people when you have the camera on, and you just really get a chance to know them. I think that's in part why this series is so successful; one, because of the length of the content. They're quite long. Our episodes range anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. When we first started the series, they were short. They were sub eight minutes. And that's because I was coming from a news background and I thought that people wanted short concise tours and information. But what we learned was that people were writing to us and saying, "Oh, we wish this was longer. We wish that we could see more rooms." So over time it evolved from something that was very short to now almost 45 minutes to an hour long where you really get a chance to know the person and feel like you're a friend that's being invited into their home to sort of snoop around with them. I think that's what people really enjoy about it, is they sit down on a Saturday morning with a cup of coffee, they projected onto their TV, which we know people do, 50% of our viewers actually consume our content on television, and they watch it like it's a television show.
Suzy Chase: I love hearing about the creative process. I'm curious about the format and flow. Do you confer with the homeowners first to discuss showcasing a certain room or a feature that they're most excited about? How does that work?
Alison Kenworthy: We do. We always talk to all of our homeowners before we film with them. We chat with them ahead of time. We have scouting images. We talk to them about the rooms that they would like to feature in their home. We also ask them to think about specific items that are important to them that have a great story attached, because so much of the episode is about the story behind the thing. So it's not necessarily, I got this from X store, I got this from X place. It's really about, what is the story behind something? So you might have a great chair that was passed down from a grandmother, or you found it on the side of the road, or you found it at a flea market, or this piece of China was given to you by so-and-so. And so it's a sort of a mix of how you have curated your own space and where you find things, but also it's really about the stories. We like our homeowners to think about the stories that they want to share. I would say that we have kind of a Cliff's Notes version of what we're going to talk about going into it. We don't like people necessarily to be overly prepared. We want them to have an idea of what we're going to talk to them about, but we love the organic sort of natural flow of conversation with homeowners. I think that comes from having them be sort of partially prepared. But we always tell them that they are the star of this show. They're the only person in the video. I am not in the video, and we've done that intentionally. We really want them to be able to shine and tell their story. So I would say that, yes, there is a certain amount of pre-production that we always do with people to make sure that they're comfortable, but then we let them be the star when the camera starts to roll.
Suzy Chase: This might sound weird, but since you're not in the video, I think when they open their front door, it feels like I am walking into their home and not you, Alison, as the host walking into their home.
Alison Kenworthy: Oh, that's so interesting. That's what we've attempted to achieve. And that door knock scene, I think, is an important part of the episode because it really is them saying, "Come on in. Let me show you around my home and tell you about me, and share all of the nooks and crannies of my home, from my China closet to a powder room." It's just so much fun getting to chat with these people. Some of them I produced, but most of them are produced by local crews and producers on the ground in these local markets.
Suzy Chase: Tell me about the darling Homeworthy pencil logo. I love it.
Alison Kenworthy: Oh, I'm so glad. That was done by a dear friend of mine who's an artist, and her name is Inslee Fariss. She is still a friend of mine, a close friend of mine, who used to live in New York and she's since moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. She's a fabulous artist. When I had this idea for Homeworthy, she was the first person who I thought of who could design this logo. I had the idea that I wanted it to be a row of townhouses, and I wanted to include in the logo the townhouse that I grew up in. So the house I grew up in in Washington, DC, is one of those homes, which is really sort of a special little hidden fact about our logo.
Suzy Chase: So you don't live in DC anymore, you live on the Upper West Side in New York City. So I'd love to hear a little bit about your home and your personal design style.
Alison Kenworthy: I have been a long time Upper West Sider for the last 10 years, and I've moved around a bit. When I first moved to New York, I lived in this really darling place that was a studio apartment that was nicknamed The Dollhouse because it was such a tiny little space, but I loved that apartment. It had high ceilings, picture frame molding, big windows, a little tiny view. If you sort of squinted your eyes in the distance you could see the treetops of Central Park. I just adored that apartment. Then I moved to another place, which I loved. It was a sixth-floor walk-up, no elevator. I think I was probably in the best shape of my life when I lived in that apartment. And now I'm in another apartment on the Upper West Side. I sort of feel a little bit like, what is that phrase? The cobbler that has no shoes. My apartment is far from done, but it is sort of just like this little sanctuary for us. It gets a lot of light. I love a maximalist feeling of home. That's sort of my personal taste. So I have coffee tables covered with books, and candles everywhere, and I have little tchotchkes that I pick up on trips. I have little doodads here and there. My dad always says I can't fit a paperclip into this apartment or it's just going to explode. I love stuff, and I love sort of displaying everything. We live in a small space, it's New York City after all, so I have to be careful about what I bring into our apartment. But I have walls just full of artwork that some is really lovely and painted by friends who are professional artists, and others are like a poster that I found for free at Art Basel when we were down in Miami. I put it in a frame and it's this great print of a nose. It's sort of is this great juxtaposition on our gallery wall of sort of more traditional art, and then here you have this bright green backdrop with a nose on it. I would say it's sort of a mix of styles and taste, and I've just got a lot of things all over the place. For me, it makes it feel warm and cozy, and that's kind of like the feeling I like to have when I walk into a space.
Suzy Chase: I love the video on your sixth floor walkup. Are you going to do a video on this place?
Alison Kenworthy: Well, actually, you can get a glimpse of this place on social media. It's not a formal tour, but my husband is from Colorado, so he is an outdoorsman who needs to get his fresh air every day. We have a terrace, which we were so lucky to find. He decided one day that he wanted to buy an outdoor shower for the terrace, and he showers out there six months a year. It only has cold water so I have never used it. And he's got to wear his bathing suit because we've just got neighbors who can peer down. But I did a video, I think a year or so ago, from the front door. I opened up the front door, I moved through the foyer, I moved through the living room, I moved out onto the terrace, and then I ended on a shot of him outside taking a shower, and it went wild on social media. I think it had, I don't even know, 10 million views or something like that. So that's his little sanctuary and his haven. But you can get a glimpse of our apartment as you move through from the front door to the terrace. Maybe at some point I will do a more formal tour. That's a good idea. I hadn't thought of it.
Suzy Chase: I really tried to narrow down a couple of my favorite episodes, and it was so hard because I love them all. But a couple that have stuck with me are Curtis and Danielle Taylor in their 700 square foot home in Chicago. Now, this is the perfect example of discovering the people, their story, and how it all ties into their design style. They're just so creative and darling. Can you talk a little bit about them?
Alison Kenworthy: I love them. I think they are so fabulous, so stylish, and they just seem to have the greatest relationship. I adored their apartment. I personally love small space, and I think that it gives people so many ideas of how to curate even a larger space, because what you have to do is you have to put really your favorite stuff out. It's almost harder, I think, to decorate a small space because you are just so limited. And their apartment was chic. I thought it was packed with color. To me it was just like a little jewel box. They're the perfect example of what we strive to achieve with a Homeworthy episode because they had fabulous personalities and a great space. One of the things that we like to highlight with homes is that it's not a matter of size on Homeworthy; we want to see studio apartments and we also want to see country estates, and everything in between. And to me, their home was just the perfect example of a beautifully curated apartment and how to live well in 700 square feet. So they were just delightful and we loved filming with them.
Suzy Chase: What's so great about Homeworthy is you give us a peek into the homes of huge names like Bunny Williams, Jamie Drake, Jill Kargman, and Barbara McLaughlin, and some people who weren't on my radar just like Curtis and Danielle. It's such a nice mix.
Alison Kenworthy: Well, thank you. We want everybody to feel like they're represented on the channel. So when we book, we always keep that in mind. I have to say, we have high hopes for this brand and we're excited about its growth, and hopefully someday we'll be interviewing celebrities and really getting into the homes of more politicians. We recently did an interview with MK Pritzker, the first lady of Illinois, and it was such a treat to get to see a governor's mansion that had been so beautifully decorated. We're just on the hunt for incredible people and incredible homes. So we always say, send us your pitches if you have them, but there's tons of homes and people out there who are worthy of being featured, and we are always on the hunt for them.
Suzy Chase: Did you hear that Brad Pitt?
Alison Kenworthy: Do you think he would ever do it? I don't know.
Suzy Chase: I don't know.
Alison Kenworthy: I was talking with some of our producers last night. I was making dinner and I was making a beef bourguignon, which let me tell you, I very rarely have time to make a dinner that takes that long, but it was a special occasion and I decided to make a three-hour recipe. It was an Ina Garten recipe. And we were talking, I said, "Do you think that Ina Garten would ever do a Homeworthy tour?" I don't know. So maybe at some point we should reach out. But don't you think that would be fun, a tour of her kitchen and her home?
Suzy Chase: Oh yeah. I mean, who doesn't love Ina?
Alison Kenworthy: I know. I think she would be great. And then maybe a glimpse into her fridge. I love seeing the insides of somebody's fridge.
Suzy Chase: Me too. It tells so much about them. Are they a food prepper? Do they drink a lot of champagne? What's their story?
Alison Kenworthy: I know. I totally agree. I love a fridge. I love a China closet or some kind of a little place where people keep their plates and their silverware and table decorations. I love that as well.
Suzy Chase: Well, it just goes back to the storytelling.
Alison Kenworthy: Right, because usually it's been given by a grandmother, or found at a flea market. I actually have a few plates in my cupboard that I found on the street in New York City. Somebody had them in a bag, and I thought, "I'm just going to go home and wash these." They're cute and they're perfect, and I still use them to this day. I probably found them 10 years ago on the street in the West Village, actually. Your hood.
Suzy Chase: Well, that's where all the greatest stuff is.
Alison Kenworthy: I would agree with you there. I would agree with you. We're actually filming an episode in the West Village coming up. We're filming with Elyce Arons of Frances Valentine.
Suzy Chase: Yeah, Frances Valentine.
Alison Kenworthy: She's got a great house in the West Village, so we're going to be down there coming up, which is going to be really fun.
Suzy Chase: Oh, she's fantastic.
Alison Kenworthy: Yeah, she's so great on camera, and she's got just fabulous style too. And I think that it carries over to her house. It's got pops of color, and we're really excited.
Suzy Chase: So as I said, it was really hard for me to nail down a favorite episode or two because I love every single one. But Edith-Anne Duncan's estate in Blacksburg, Virginia is something special. Her style is everything I love, I think because I just adore blue, anything blue. And I also just want to be her friend. She seems so cool.
Alison Kenworthy: I love Edith-Anne also. She is a maximalist at heart, and I just adore her sense of style. I thought her dining room was to die for with all of the color and her napkins and her table setting. This is just an example of somebody who when you walk into her home, you just immediately feel her warmth, and you felt that throughout the whole tour. She also gave great tips, I think. I think a lot of people want takeaways that they can use in their own home. And because she's a designer, she had so many great little tidbits that she shared with the audience in addition to her personal story, which I loved. I don't know if you remember, she was talking about sort of a console underneath her television. She said that she had these custom doors from Asia put onto her console. So it was just sort of like, I never would've thought to do that. But what was once a door turned into something that she used underneath her television, and it just was beautiful. That house was spectacular.
Suzy Chase: And someone we all love, Allie Provost and her fairly new Upper East Side apartment. When she got this place, I want to say two years ago, I was just so excited to see what she was going to do with it. Please chat a little bit about that.
Alison Kenworthy: I love Allie. I discovered her I think via TikTok, and then we became friends. I featured her first apartment before she moved into this new one. It was a little studio apartment on the Upper East Side just packed with color. She has a closet that's just to die for with all of these beautiful dresses and shoes. She's very much sort of like this kind of Carrie Bradshaw-esque type person who keeps shoes in the oven. And in fact, I remember that she had an entire drawer dedicated to just bows and headbands. There was this funny moment where she put on this headband that had this huge bow attached to it. I was like, "Do you wear this?" She's like, "Of course I do." She's like, "I wear this to parties. Or I wear it to the bodega to go get my bacon, egg, and cheese." She just had such a funny personality, and also just incredible style and taste. She's such a natural on camera that you didn't want the tour to end.
Suzy Chase: Well, and you know she worked at Kate Spade, so she was so influenced by Elyce and Katie back in the day.
Alison Kenworthy: Right, right. No, you're right. And it shines through in her style and her personality. She's just got a great way about her. So I'm thrilled for all of her success. She's a great social media follow if you don't follow Allie.
Suzy Chase: What are you working on for the spring, and can you give us a tiny sneak peek of what's to come?
Alison Kenworthy: Yes. Well, we are increasing our content production, which is very exciting. Right now we produce roughly five original episodes a week, which totals about five hours of content. We are hoping to increase production to 10 episodes a week to give you even more opportunities to watch Homeworthy videos. And with that, we're sort of expanding. Right now we focus mostly on the US, but we've recently featured homes and people in India, in Morocco. We have some great episodes in France. We have a great team of producers in England. So we're hoping to expand even more globally. We have a website that recently was revamped with opportunities for e-commerce and for shopping, so we're going to be building out our shopping section on the website. We also have this new members only subscription service as part of YouTube. If you sign up, you get lots of extra tips and little tidbits with homeowners. You get early access to episodes. So that's a really fun new feature that we have that's just been released about a month ago. And just lots more fun episodes to come. We're excited about all of it. We're hiring, which has been really great. We just brought on two new producers. We're shooting for the stars here and hoping really to be the destination that people come to for interior design content in the digital space.
Suzy Chase: What are some of your go-to interior design books?
Alison Kenworthy: Oh my gosh, that's like asking me to pick a favorite child. I have no shortage of coffee table books all over my apartment. Alex Papachristidis is a friend of mine who I've gotten to know through Homeworthy and I love his book, The Elegant Life. Love a Bunny Williams book. I also really enjoyed the coffee table book on the Carlisle. I think that's just such a fun cover, and I love the history of the hotel. In New York we have a store called Housing Works where people can bring their clothes and goods that get resold, and I love looking through their coffee table books and I found a few favorites there. One on India; it's just this beautiful book on Rajasthan with all these colors. I would say just a great mix of books about design, but also travel books. And oh, I love MK Pritzker's book, the first lady of Illinois who I mentioned earlier. She's got a great book. Because the governor's mansion was redone by Michael Smith who redid the personal quarters for the Obama-
Suzy Chase: Obama, yep.
Alison Kenworthy: ... White House. And I think you interviewed her, right, Suzy?
Suzy Chase: I did.
Alison Kenworthy: So we have that mutual affection for her. Those are a few favorites, but I'm always looking for more and collecting more. It's just like, that's one of my guilty pleasures, just getting a new coffee table book and getting to scour the pages. And that also gives me ideas for Homeworthy.
Suzy Chase: Now to my segment called Home where I ask you to describe one memory of your childhood home, and please start by telling us where it was.
Alison Kenworthy: Well, that's a great question. I was born in Newark and lived there until I was eight, but I really consider my childhood and growing up in Washington, DC. I grew up in a neighborhood called Georgetown in a very historic old home. My father is actually an Episcopal priest, and we lived in the rectory with the home associated with the church. My family is no longer there, but I had a lot of happy years and memories there. Because it was this old historic home, it was a place where the floors creaked. There might've been a little draft underneath the door. The ceilings were high, the windows were big. I think that my interest in homes all started because of where I grew up, surrounded by other historical homes and beautiful homes where I was always getting little glimpses into and seeing how people would decorate their own homes. It was such a treat to grow up in a place like Georgetown that felt like a village, in a way, in a much larger city. To this day, I still love homes that creek and have crown molding and have high ceilings. I think in a lot of ways that experience growing up in Washington formed, in sort of a subconscious way, this idea for Homeworthy.
Suzy Chase: So where can we find Homeworthy on the web, YouTube, and social media?
Alison Kenworthy: Well, our website is Homeworthy.com. Our Instagram handle is @Homeworthy. Our YouTube page is @Homeworthy. TikTok is @Homeworthy. Facebook is @Homeworthy. We would love you to subscribe to our channel or subscribe to our newsletter. We release a newsletter every Friday with a roundup of all of our videos and shopping guides and articles, people who we feature in print. And so there's just lots of fun things that come out every Friday morning on our newsletter.
Suzy Chase: I cannot tell you how much I love Homeworthy. This has been a dream come true. Thank you so much, Alison, for coming on Decorating by the Book Podcast.
Alison Kenworthy: Thank you, Suzy, so much for having me. This was a real treat for me as well.
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