Polished whimsy
Interior designer outfits her own space with well-executed blend of traditional and contemporary furnishings and art
Janet Gust is a bundle of energy, running up and down stairs in her chic Fendi sneakers to check on a photographer doing work for her interior design business and her new home-décor store.
On a cool spring day, the photographer had set up a camera in her guest bedroom as a stylist fluffed pillows, adjusted floral arrangements and smoothed out the pristine Tribute Goods and Leontine bedding on the queen-sized bed as assistants checked lighting. Outside the room, an antique settee with lime-green velvet upholstery held a line of colorful pillows, all with a perfect “karate chop” V in the center, waiting their turn in front of the camera.
Gust is known for her energetic and colorful interior design projects, an eclectic blend of old and new, traditional and contemporary with a big splash of midcentury modern. Her own home is no different, and as she walks through, she calls out designers of different pieces, including a thick acrylic Charles Hollis Jones dining table, Cedric Hartman table lamps and a crop of Brno chairs, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1930 but still stylish today.
“I like to mix Italian, French antiques and contemporary pieces,” Gust said of her style. “I like the mix of different eras, and I love color. In my own house, I keep it kind of calm, but I move my art all of the time. If you had been in here day before yesterday it would have been all different.”
As if Gust isn’t busy enough, she has just opened a showroom — the Janet Gust Design Group Stu-di-o on the edge of the Heights. It’s filled with contemporary and modern home accessories, a still evolving lineup of goods that changes every time she and her longtime friend and sales director Kristy DuPree stumble onto something new.
For example, Gust asked florist David Brown to gather stunning flowers that were photographed, then manipulated onto colorful backgrounds for pieces of art that provide a pop of color for just about any room. She’s also working with Barbara Leiner of Boston and Susan Smillow of New York and other artists to get licensing rights to create more affordable prints from their original work. Smaller framed works by Houston sculptor Paul Carola are hung in curious groupings — they’re actually small-ish drawings he does before working on a piece of sculpture.
Gust works in a secondfloor space of her Cornish Street showroom, looking out onto a wall filled with the work of rock ’n’ roll photographer Richard E. Aaron. There are photos of David Bowie with his androgynous physique and spiky white-blond hair. Elton John is captured in a pair of oversized glasses while he’s pounding on a piano. Propped in a corner is a larger-than-life, fullbody photo of John Wayne, and Gust notes that she has sold several copies of that one, including to a client who wanted it for his Texas ranch.
Meant for entertaining
One of Gust’s favorite places in her home is a spot with four white swivel chairs and a small marbletopped table, perfectly arranged as if Gust and a few friends are about to arrive.
“It’s this in-between space,” she called it. “The table isn’t dining height, and it isn’t coffee-table height. I call it tea height. It’s the best place in the house to sit and have a glass of wine. It’s my conversation space. Everyone ends up right here.”
It’s in nearly the center of the St. George Place home just south of the Galleria, where Gust lives with her husband of eight years, patent attorney Rick Gregory, and their three dogs, Gabby (named after Coco Chanel, whose first name is “Gabrielle”), Izzy (named after Elizabeth Taylor) and Polly (whose name sometimes stretches into “Polly Prissy Pants.”)
Nearby is the family room, with a pair of white sofas and a pretty plush gray tete-a-tete with an antique chair upholstered in emerald-green velvet nearby. A big, clear coffee table filled with books, vases of flowers and a tall jar of fresh, blooming cherry-blossom stems is the first big hint that Gust loves acrylic. The fireplace mantel is from Chateau Domingue, the Houston store that specializes in European stone flooring, mantels and other architectural antiques.
“This is where I sit and read books and watch TV with my dogs. I’m obsessed with magazines and books, anything about style. That’s how I spend my free time,” she said. “We do a lot of entertaining, so I like to have different seating arrangements for people.”
When she and Gregory bought their townhome, it was partially built. She made changes to the kitchen to make it feel less homey and more restaurant like, including removing upper cabinets and adding a big, black range hood to dominate the back wall. A wide chandelier of 12 glass orbs hovers over the dark-gray island and black stone counters.
“Granites are changing a lot. I saw one with pink veins in it and thought I’d like to see that in my house, maybe my next house,” Gust said wistfully, as if a new project might not be too far away. Before she got married, Gust moved every few years, buying a home, fixing it up and selling it to move on to another fixerupper. Now her moving itch has scaled back to every five years or so.
The dining room has pops of color in a darksage-green rug with cutouts and bright, multicolored drapery sheers over long windows on one side of the room. The original Charles Hollis Jones table sits here, a thick acrylic base topped with a big round slice of the clear plastic, surrounded by the chrome-framed
Brno chairs.
In the corner, partly in space that otherwise would be the underside of stairs, is a bar and wine room.
At the front of the home is what other families might use as a formal living room or even a study. Gust calls it “Rick’s room,” though her own touch is glaringly obvious: bright-fuchsia walls and bookshelves covered in metallic gold paint. One side is filled with her husband’s engineering books, the other with her fashion and design books.
Color has never been an issue for Gust. Even though big pieces in her home are white or neutral, bursts of color come in big forms, too, in art, rugs and smaller pieces of furniture
“When I do a project, I think about the flow and how it will all go together. There might be one inspirational piece, and it might have one little ounce of color, and you play on it and grow from it,” she said.
Creative sisters
Gust was born and raised in Houston and has a twin sister, Regina Gust, who works in design as well, albeit in holiday décor at Regina Gust Designs. Janet Gust had graduated from
the Art Institute of Houston with a degree in interior design and worked in a furniture store for a couple of years before starting the Janet Gust Design Group in the late 1980s.
Regina handled her accounting and helped out. The two took on some Christmas-decorating projects, and Regina flourished, launching her own firm in 1996 and becoming known as one of the city’s premiere holiday-décor experts.
Regina said that the Christmas work fell into her lap and suited her more than it did her sister. Also, Regina had gotten married and starting having children, and the seasonal nature of decorating for Christmas meshed with her family life.
Now they swap services, and Regina said that Janet helped her on the home she recently built. “We’re constantly doing stuff. I’m very creative, so something’s always changing,” Regina said. “I have boys, and they break my stuff. They don’t understand that my Hermès throw is for looks, not for them to cover up with.”
“The difference between us is that I design with my hands, and she designs in her mind. You can give me a pile of stuff, and I’ll make something beautiful out of it. But Janet can design a whole house in her head,” Regina said. “We’re really yin and yang.”
DuPree has been part of Janet Gust’s life for years, too, as one of her closest friends. It was DuPree who connected Gust and Gregory when they were in Atlanta shopping at the furniture market. Gregory, who lived and worked in California at the time, was there separately on business. They happened to meet in a wine bar after dinner when Gregory and his friends struck up a conversation with DuPree, who is married. When she learned that Gregory was single, she pulled her friend over.
The couple hit it off immediately and dated for a year before getting engaged. A year and a half after that, they got married in Arizona, a place where they met a lot while dating because it was easy for them each to fly there.
“My friends call me ‘lucky dog’ because I was the one who met Rick that night,” Gust said.
Personalized spaces
Private spaces are upstairs, the master suite and guest rooms, one of which has been transformed into an office/closet for Gust.
Set up much like a boutique, the room showcases her stylish clothes.
On a shelf sits an autographed pair of Christian Louboutin heels, sparkling with Swarovski crystals. Next to them is a photo of Gust with the French shoe designer when he was in Houston for a meet-andgreet at Sak’s Fifth Avenue. On another wall are framed handbags that once belonged to actress Elizabeth Taylor.
The couple had planned a trip to New York, and just before leaving she heard about an auction of Taylor’s clothing at Sotheby’s. “I’m like, ‘Honey, we’re going,’ ” Gust said. “If you could have seen the collection of her clothing. She was such a fashion icon. One room was full of purses, and my husband surprised me with these. It was a battle to get anything.”
Carrara marble covers the master bathroom, and the master bedroom is chic in black and white. The acrylic canopy bed — another Charles Hollis Jones piece that was once owned by Sylvester Stallone — was purchased at auction. A pair of white leather sofas finishes the room, and draperies in a bold blackand-white geometric pattern run the length of the back wall.
The home is filled with art, too, and the bedroom has a large abstract painting by Marcelyn McNell, plus a big pink flower by Joe Mancuso hangs over the bathtub.
Gust wants to do her part adding interesting home accessories to the Houston market and making great art more accessible to homeowners.
“I’ve thought more about what my passion is than what the market is. I want to do what I love,” Gust said. “Stores are shutting down daily, it seems like. Janet Wiebe Antiques is gone, Carl Moore Antiques and Harrison’s Antiques are gone, and even Jonathan Adler closed.”
“I love AREA and Found and Longoria Collection; those are my go-to stores,” she added. “I believe in seeing and touching things. The stuff they have is the jewelry of your room.”