Nomad at Home | Hilary Robertson
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.
Hilary Robertson: Hello, I'm Hilary Robertson, creative director, author, editor. My most recent book is called Nomad at Home. Designing The Home More Traveled is the tagline, which we'll be talking about. I'm from London, but I've lived in America for 17 years. I live in Brooklyn and Hudson.
Suzy Chase: When I first cracked open this book, I assumed it was all about decorating your home with finds from around the world, but it's so much more than that. I really love your philosophy of the leavers. Can you chat a little bit about that and how it's really the centerpiece of Nomad at Home?
Hilary Robertson: Well, I've always been very curious about living in other places ever since I was a child. My parents are both academics, so we had long vacations and we would go away for all of those; a lot to France, actually, because that's so near England. But I always imagined myself in those places. I couldn't help doing that. And I grew up learning languages, so that also reinforced that idea that one day perhaps I could live somewhere else.
I know that not everyone does that, especially now that I have lived in America for so long and I go back and see my friends who live in the same house, live in the same town. And their lives have developed and moved on, but they clearly are happy to do their developing in the same context, whereas I always want that friction of being somewhere else. That's I think what it is. It's a kind of friction that helps you grow in some way, but some people just don't need that. So I'm a leaver, not a remainer.
Suzy Chase: I've always wondered if people could really develop if they were a remainer, if they stayed in that house they grew up in?
Hilary Robertson: I think they do, it's just a slower process. It's more of an Anne Tyler type of a process, you know what I mean? I always think in her novels, they're very based in a town and a place. And things move and change, but in a different way. I think you're putting yourself in a crucible when you take off to somewhere else, so it's more extreme. I like to speak other languages and I like that discovery process. I'm also completely in love with cities. Cities are like people for me. They're like getting to know a new friend, and maybe it's not always comfortable, but a friend that pushes you and changes you somehow.
Suzy Chase: When people write books, they normally have an audience, a reader in mind. Who did you write this book for?
Hilary Robertson: Oh, gosh, that's so fun. I think people who like to travel and people who, like me, will immediately go to the real estate office and press their nose against the window looking at houses in Tuscany, or Apulia, or Madrid, apartments in Parma. I just can't help it. I consider all of those options. If I like somewhere, I always have to imagine, "Where could I live here?" Maybe it's a lot of dreaming, not necessarily something you may end up doing. That's the designing the home or travel part of it, I think.
Suzy Chase: Yeah, dreamers. And you talk about otherness a lot in the book. How has that always attracted you?
Hilary Robertson: I do have a brother. He's six years younger than me. But I was an only child for six years. I think that only child experience basically meant that I was having to play games with myself and have imaginary lives, and that's always been very important to me. So I think having those experiences of being in another country and being different, somehow that was a default setting for me. I think I wrote about it in the book, but I went to stay with my mother's pen friend from when she was a child, her French pen friend. I stayed with their family in France, which wasn't really that much fun, but it was interesting. I guess I just learned to rely on myself, but also to be an observer. And I enjoyed that. To me, I don't really want to fit in. I just want to go and look and absorb what's around me.
Suzy Chase: I love the fact that you don't want to fit in, because I don't want to fit in either. But with the internet, with Instagram, I feel like it's encouraging all of us to be the same, look the same, like the things.
Hilary Robertson: I totally agree. I can't bear it, actually. That's the antithesis of what I want to do and how I want to live. But it's worrying to me, especially in the work that I do, being on trend. And I think that gets narrower and narrower, especially in America, because I think England is an eccentric place. And we are known for eccentricity when it comes to fashion and music and all sort of creative fields. But I think America can be very trend-driven, and especially because you have these dominant retailers who will be selling a look. That look will dominate the marketplace. And because independent retailers are so threatened by huge rents here, there's so little of it. I mean, I find LA much more inspiring for independent retailers, smaller retailers in design and interiors.
So I feel that it's very, very difficult to be different if you want to work in the fields that I work in. I love to morph and to change, and I like to soak it all in and try it out. That's the job that magazines used to do so brilliantly, is to go to all the shows, be it Milan or Paris, and to come back and bring the trend and interpret it for the reader. I think that's what I'm doing in my books, because magazines just don't really do it anymore.
Suzy Chase: In the book, you talked about when you decorate your homes, you turn your gaze towards somewhere else. I'm so curious about how your mother decorated.
Hilary Robertson: Oh, well, she did that too, in a sense. I mean, she grew up in ... I suppose she was born in 1933. She was definitely a modernist. And my father, he was a geographer, but he studied in Finland, Norway and Denmark. So he very much liked Danish design. And so my parents, that's what they started with. Nearly everything in our house was Scandinavian, and that continued with me because I actually studied in Denmark and lived in Denmark. So that feels very natural to me. Do you know, even though I wrote this book called Monochrome Home, I think a lot of people assume that I don't like color, but I really do like color, but I want to do all of it. That's the stylist in me. I can't really help it.
Suzy Chase: Would you say it's calming, the colors that you are sort of attracted to?
Hilary Robertson: Oh, yes. Absolutely, yeah. I went to Tangier recently, and I was in the house of decorator Gavin Horton. And his house is all red and green and primary colors and cleverly put together, very sophisticated, uses stripes a lot, super fun. I mean, I absolutely loved being in it. But I think what Leanne Ford does with white, that's a really clever way of editing out choices. There are so many choices. The monochromatic palette, that is also very calming. And also, it's easy to unite a lot of things if you like things from different periods, or minimalism. White can deal with all of that.
Suzy Chase: Okay. You just brought up Leanne Ford, and she wrote the most thoughtful forward: "I truly think Hilary Robertson is one of the greatest stylists, editors and curators of our time. And don't even think about taking that line out, Hilary." That was the nicest thing I've ever read.
Hilary Robertson: No, so sweet. She's the best. We're about to go to Copenhagen together to 3daysofdesign, which is going to be so fun. We haven't been able to go to a design show together, and I can't wait to show her Copenhagen. But yes, that is the kindest and sweetest. And she found my book, my monochrome book, and then reached out to me. So it's very nice to connect with people over a book. I love that. Something that you've made, you don't know who's going to find it, who's who it's going to resonate with. And we make this magazine, FEEL FREE, together now as well.
Suzy Chase: So you tell us color is a personal matter and finding our palette is an intuitive process. What are some steps we can take to discover our palette?
Hilary Robertson: I think most color schemes probably need three colors, or if I was doing a neutral room, maybe I'd be playing with four different intensities and then varying the textures. It could be anything. It could be a stone, it could be pebbles you saw on the beach, just training your eye to notice colors that you respond to or combinations that you respond to.
Suzy Chase: One wanderer in the book I'd love for you to chat about is Liselotte. Is that how you pronounce her name?
Hilary Robertson: Oh, Liselotte, yeah.
Suzy Chase: Yes. And her story had me at leaving Sweden for Texas at 17 with no money and no plan.
Hilary Robertson: I know.
Suzy Chase: That's crazy.
Hilary Robertson: So brave.
Suzy Chase: Yes.
Hilary Robertson: I know, I know. But actually, weirdly, I meet a lot of expats here, and a lot of them left England very young, and just on a whim and then sort of just figured it out, which is incredible to me. So she is extraordinary. She's so brave. But now in Italy, I think she's really hit her stride as a painter, because now she's not really making products so much or illustrating for brands. She's working as a fine artist. But she's doing a series at the moment where she picks ... When she travels, she picks up like a favorite novel, whether it's Bonjour Tristesse, posted recently, and then she does a little ... I think she frames the book and then she made a painting sort of inspired by the book. I love all her references. All her references make so much sense to me. And interestingly, her color palette has become more muted in her paintings, but I think it's fascinating to see how artists develop.
She talked to me a lot about how she lived in Rome, how to connect with the people. You always say hello to everyone, to your neighbors. It's the opposite in New York where everyone kind of scuttles past each other looking at the ground. It was interesting. So now she's moved to Tuscany. I'm longing to see her new home. That's the great thing, some of the people in my previous books, I've sort of followed to new homes. So I always like to see how they develop. There's a chapter in the book, Less is Moore, about the Moores who live in Majorca now. And I'm hoping to shoot that house for my next book. Well, they're minimalists, but every time I go to a new house of theirs, there's less things in it, which is very funny. They're just paring down and paring down and paring down.
Suzy Chase: Is it a style thing? Are their kids going off to college? Why are they paring down?
Hilary Robertson: No, I think it's just that's how their taste is evolving. They're doing more with texture and less with things. I think that's a trend at the moment, I would say. So it's about the textures and about understanding ... I call it the envelope of the room. So every surface, there's something that has character, but in a very simple way. It's minimalism, but minimalism works when there's texture. I think the cornerstone of minimalism is really attention to the shape of the room, the window, the light that comes in, and lack of distractions, I think, that sort of peaceful quality. I'd love to be a minimalist. I'm not, because I like things and I'm a magpie. But I admire people who are able to pare down in that way.
Suzy Chase: Me too, oh my gosh.
Hilary Robertson: Yeah.
Suzy Chase: More is more with me. But yes, I have so much admiration for people ... especially in their bedroom, it's just a bed in their bedroom.
Hilary Robertson: How do they do that? I don't know.
Suzy Chase: It's lovely.
Hilary Robertson: I know. I have all the different sleep aids and piles of book. Oh, it's ridiculous. Yeah, I don't know how anyone does that. They must just live in a completely different way. It'd be fun to observe them, to follow them around and see where they keep everything.
Suzy Chase: So before we go, I would love for you to tell me what this line means to you: "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive."
Hilary Robertson: Well, many years ago when I was just in my 20s, a very good friend of mine called me Hilary Traveling Hopefully, I think identifying my attitude to life. And I guess not much has changed. I think maybe it's about restlessness and curiosity and being a leaver. Maybe that's just in one's blood, just the search for something. And maybe occasionally you attain the feeling that you're after. I can get that swimming in the Aegean, or momentarily somewhere. But yeah, I'm always looking for my forever home. I don't know where it is yet. I mean, I do feel very English, for sure, but I don't know where I'll arrive, if I'll ever arrive. So maybe I just have to be happy with that.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Hilary Robertson: On social media @HilaryRobertson. And I have an Instagram for the book, which is @nomadathomebook. And then I'm hilaryrobertson.com for my website.
Suzy Chase: This has been so fascinating, Hilary. Thanks so much for coming on Decorating by the Book podcast.
Hilary Robertson: Thank you so much. It was really fun to talk about it. Thank you for all your observations. I really enjoyed it.
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