A force of nature
Designer Barbara Barry draws inspiration from her favourite places, like Bowen Island
Designer Barbara Barry is as down- to- earth as the nature that inspires her work.
Perhaps not what you’d expect for a Los Angeles- based designer who has built a design empire in the past 30 years that started with interior design and branched into bedding and bath lines for Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s, fabrics for Kravet Inc., and furniture for Baker and Henredon.
Barry is known for her perfectionism in appearance and work, with her often- quoted taste for the perfect cup of coffee in a fine porcelain cup ( she designed her own for Wedgwood).
Yet there is nothing stiff about her. Barry has a childlike exuberance for her work and her luck in life.
“It seems to me a bit of a miracle that any of this every really happened,” she says. “That you’re even interviewing me. Why? I just have loved what I’ve done.”
The fans lining up to meet her at the Home Couture store in Coquitlam last weekend and have their copies of her book Around Beauty ( Rizzoli, 2012) signed seemed to know why.
“I entered the world in design when there wasn’t as much choice,” Barry says. “And I had a very clear vision of transitionals — the word we seem to use for furniture that wasn’t super contemporary and wasn’t really traditional. It was a very narrow piece of the pie. Now that’s very wide.”
The amount of choice people now have in designers, architects and products because of the Internet is a good thing, says Barry, but can be overwhelming. It has, she says, affected the relationship consumers used to have with store owners who stood behind their products.
“In America, the furniture business was always part of our DNA,” says Barry. “I’ve grown up in it. I’ve added to it and I’ve enjoyed the relationships with all the many
owners of furniture stores that I’ve met and their dedication to it. Many, many, many, have closed. It’s very hard to keep a business alive.”
Not for Barbara Barry though, whose company continues to thrive, deriving her inspiration from international travel, the natural world and quiet moments at home. Her latest collection of fabrics, Chalet, which she is designing for Kravet Inc. and will be released next year, is inspired by time spent in Austria.
“Boom, the Alps,” she says. “Boom the green, the blue sky and then there’s that rough pine that’s so humble and then there’s the level of sophistication in the fine porcelain and linens. So you can hike all day in the mountains and you can come back and have a good Riesling and a beautiful meal and to me that’s the ultimate way to live. Casual elegance.”
Barry looks to nature for the subtle patterns and simplicity that has defined her work.
“As a designer, I’m never thinking really about one thing standing out,” she says. “In nature, there is no one thing. It’s the alliteration and it’s the codependency. It’s the way things work together.”
Japan, Europe, New Zealand and B. C. are places from which she draws design inspiration. While in Vancouver this time, she found it on Bowen Island.
“The beauty is just so profound,” she says. “Just to be on the water yesterday with those rising mountains and those islands and the ferry coming across at night. I almost need to come here.”
Visual artists often talk about their obsession with light and Barry is no exception, with annual open air painting sessions in France and, this year, in Italy.
“It’s very humbling,” she says. “And it brings me out of my business world where everything is doing and business is growing and you get behind a canvas and you get a paint brush and you just start looking and you’re like a child again.”
Barry’s childhood had a profound impact on her. She credits her mother, who raised four daughters solo, with having a keen visual eye and optimism that taught her more than any formal education ever could have — dying their towels different colours, naming the paints she used to paint their walls before paints had names.
“My mother was just a really elegant woman who was very capable of doing a lot with very little,” she says. “We didn’t have money but she made us aware: ‘ oh look at the colour of the sky.’ She’s no longer with me, but she still remains my most vibrant mentor.”
From her mother, Barry learnt that style is not about having money but having confidence and belief in oneself, As she heads off to New York on business and then the Italian Alps for her birthday, it’s clear these lessons have served her well. “Pretty good life, huh?” she says.