Fashion for the home
Nina Magon’s love of beautiful things leads her to interior design
The captain’s chairs at the end of the dining table in Nina Magon’s Memorial home could pass for modern art: heavy metal frames with triangular backs and luxurious leather seats. They’re her own design and represent her interest in all things beautiful.
You could call them prototypes, though that’s not necessarily what she was thinking about when she created them in 2015. Since then, she’s tweaked the design as the chairs, a nearby console and other pieces in the home have evolved.
They’re one of the first things you see when you enter the 6,000-squarefoot modern home that she and her husband, Karun Magon, gutted and reinvented in 2013. Most of the time it’s simply the home the stylish couple share with their two young children, ages 7 and 9, but often it’s where they host family dinners, charity events or parties for friends.
Nina Magon founded her Contour Interior Design firm in 2008, and since then, it’s become known for glamorous, modern interiors. In addition to the residential, commercial and hospitality clients her team of 14 handles, she designs the interiors of the spec homes built by her husband’s Capital Builders construction company.
“I never wanted to be ordinary, to just have a job and go somewhere. I wanted to make a name for myself. It’s this innate quality I have inside of me,” said the 39-year-old who is now working on a licensing agreement with Universal Furniture.
Magon will create a 20-plus collection of home furnishings that Universal will debut in April at High Point Market, where manufacturers and wholesalers display their wares to thousands of designers and dealers from all over the world.
“My collection is going to be very European influenced, high-end luxury,” she said. “They didn’t have that genre, so they’re using this as their European luxury line.”
A fashionista
Magon was a student at Memorial High School when the fashion bug bit. Other students dressed more casually, but she and a couple of close friends wore high heels and suits every day.
“We were these fashionistas. We were obsessed with fashion,” she said of her teen years, after her parents moved the family here from Canada, where Nina — now a U.S. citizen — was born.
Her father had moved from his native India to Canada for college and earned his undergraduate degree, an MBA and a doctorate there. Her mother earned an undergraduate and master’s degree in education there, too.
In the 1990s, her father brought them to Houston, thinking he’d get a job in the oil and gas industry. Instead, he got into real estate.
When his sister visited, she’d take Nina shopping.
“She would come from India and say, ‘Let’s go to the Versace store, let’s go buy Waterford crystal, let’s go look at Lalique,’ ” Nina recalled. “At that time, you couldn’t find those things in India. I would tag along with her to Neiman Marcus, and I got to see all of the beautiful things in life. She’d say, ‘Let’s buy one for you,’ and I’d get a Versace plate or something. I got obsessed with it. That’s when I got into fashion.”
But fashion wasn’t really a career for a smart Indian girl whose parents nudged her toward business. She studied economics and finance at Southern Methodist University and sneaked away in the afternoons for fashion classes at the Art Institute of Dallas.
After graduation, business beckoned. She opened a lingerie store near Nordstrom in the Galleria and toiled away in the long hours of the retail world.
“I wanted to sell flirty and fun lingerie, so I talked to my parents, and they thought it was a great idea. Coming from an Indian family, I was surprised my parents would be OK with that,” she said. “Then, after a couple of years, I just couldn’t do it anymore. There wasn’t enough money to be made for the amount of work I was doing. I was 22, 23 years old, and I was working 60 hours a week while my friends were out having fun. It didn’t seem worth it to me.”
She closed the store and went to work in her parents’ real-estate company. Soon, she wanted to do her own thing, and asked her dad to finance a home that she would design, build and sell. They bought a lot in West University Place, and she hired a superintendent.
At some point, she figured out that design work was what she longed for. She loved fashion and had been exposed to real estate — when she put them together, she found interior design and enrolled in classes at the Art Institute of Houston.
Since she knew nothing about designing a home, she hired her Art Institute professors — not only would they give her great advice, she’d learn from every word they said. The home sold four months before it was finished, and Magon made more money from that sale than she had in two years at her store.
“I loved designing and picking cabinets and countertops. I needed to be creative,” she said. “I started watching the work of people I admired — Zaha Hadid, Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Wanders, Peter Marino — I watched their trajectory, and that was what I wanted.”
A major fixer-upper
When Nina and Karun Magon, who’ve been married since 2005, first saw their Memorial home, it was a mess. It had been vacant for a couple of years, it had termites, and Nina swore she could hear mice running around. Its terrazzo floors had yellowed, and its floor plan was funky.
They bought it for lot value but didn’t tear it down. Instead, they reinvented it.
They didn’t need more square footage, they just wanted to use it differently. Instead of keeping its eight bedrooms, they reduced the number and made them bigger — with larger bathrooms and closets. A bar at the front of the home was transformed into a glamorous powder room, and a tucked-away sunken living room became a media room.
Now, the home’s ground
floor is a sprawling open space, and the large, gleaming white foyer includes a dining area that originally was elevated. Windows were removed from the media room — after all, you want to watch that 110-inch screen in a darkened room — and relocated to a living room that looks into the back yard.
Magon credits her husband for the modern style that has become her firm’s signature.
“When I first went into design, I didn’t actually like modern design. I thought it was too cold, and it just didn’t fit my lifestyle, but my husband said, ‘No, you need to like modern, this is where it’s all going,’ ” she said. “This house’s architecture was midcentury modern, so we had to go that direction. It really set in that it was a forward way of thinking.”
A new bar with Italian Calacatta marble counters was installed at the back of the home for easy access, whether they entertain indoors or out. And three seating areas — all glamorous in gray, black and white —allow people to sit in small groups.
“People say it’s an entertainment home,” said Karun Magon, who also is Indian, though his parents emigrated from Kenya to the U.S. when he was 9. “We love to host family and get-togethers with friends. When everyone’s in one area instead of behind different walls, it’s a lot of fun. When I walk in my back door, I can see people swimming in the pool. I want to be able to see anyone and everyone.”
One of Karun Magon’s favorite things about his home is its automation. The Magons were a little ahead of the curve when they wired it to have security cameras, lighting, air conditioning and television all controlled from their phones or an iPad mounted on a wall in the kitchen.
“Everyone who came over would see the iPad and say, ‘Hey, can I play with that?’ I’d say, ‘Yeah, but you can’t take it off of the wall,’ ” the 45-year-old Karun Magon said. “I’d show them how it works, and we’ve had five or six friends put the same system in when they built homes.”
One thing the Magons embraced more recently is vastu shastra, Hindu architectural principles that guide how a home should be designed and used.
Earlier they had two prayer areas, one upstairs and one down-. They were advised to consolidate them, so now an upstairs guest bedroom holds their ornate mandir, a small temple they use for prayer.
Reality show builds confidence
Nina Magon took on her first design project just as the economy was crashing. It was a slow start, but she did jobs for friends and eventually built up her clientele. Things really took off in 2014 when she was one of 12 designers on NBC’s brand-new “American Dream Builders.”
She first tried out for HGTV’s “Design Star” and made it to a second round but wasn’t cast. Her audition tape floated around and caught NBC’s interest. They first called her in 2011, and by 2013 she was committed to spending five-and-a-half months in Los Angeles to tape the show.
Both excited and terrified, Magon said she felt out of place among more seasoned interior designers. Ultimately, though, she tied for third place.
“It was the scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life. For the first three weeks, I called my family and said I didn’t want to do the show, I wanted to go home,” she said. “My husband and my parents said, ‘There’s no way you’re leaving. If they eliminate you, then you leave, but you’re not walking off the set.’ ”
“I learned that there’s nothing that can conquer me. There were so many people who were so much more experienced than me, and when I saw them going home and me staying, every episode was a confidence builder,” she said. “Toward the end, I realized that if you have faith in yourself, there’s nothing you can’t do.”
Being on television opened other doors, including designing the interiors of 51Fifteen, the stylish restaurant inside Saks Fifth Avenue in Houston’s Galleria.
“Nina brought us to the next level in the way of design elegance. We had a floor plan, but she brought in the elements to take it to, ‘Oh, wow,’ ” said Joe Lanahan, chief operation officer of Landmark Houston Hospitality Group. “We had a challenging area in the center of the store by the men’s department where there’s a circular staircase and a bar. It turned out beautifully, and I don’t believe we would have had anything so design-sexy without Nina.”
All of it reflects on Magon’s first love — fashion — because its stylish customers come to the store for its high-profile fashion designers.
“You can’t design any restaurant without knowing what your concept is and who your customer is,” Lanahan said. “We have a regular, solid customer base of Saks shoppers and a super-strong lunch crowd. She used design elements that target 30- to 40-somethings as well as business professionals who want to come over for a happy hour.”