Pierce & Ward on Collecting Vintage and Designing With Intuition

The Expert Podcast

Host Jake Arnold interviews interior designers Louisa Pierce and Emily Ward about their journey from meeting in a New-York bar to designing

Key takeaways

• Louisa Pierce and Emily Ward recently designed a custom interior for Chris Stapleton and Morgan Stapleton's tour bus.
• The designers suggest using affordable materials like Home Depot tile or beadboard to add instant character to new builds.

Main topics

• Interior design philosophy
• Vintage furniture sourcing

Notable quotes

Our installs look like a circus.

Conclusion

The episode serves as an inspiring guide for anyone looking to infuse

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:05) Do you ever wish you had a friend on speed dial that just happens to be one of the world's best interior designers? Or someone you could DM all your burning design dilemmas to? At The Expert, we set out to give you one-on-one access to the industry's biggest talents and brands. And now we're pulling back the drapes. Welcome to The Expert podcast. I'm your host, Jake Arnold, interior designer and co-founder of The Expert. This season, I'll be talking with designers and founders behind some of the most exciting interiors and brands to give you an all-access look at an industry that's been closely guarded for decades, but not anymore. Each episode, we'll be unpacking all things design from nailing down the best vintage, avoiding costly mistakes, and creating a home that feels comfortable and timeless. So sit back and tune in. you're going to want to take some notes. This is The Expert Podcast. Speaker 2 (1:09) Louisa Pierce and Emily Ward aren't afraid to push boundaries. The design duo has built a stellar reputation designing celebrity homes from Leonardo DiCaprio to Kate Hudson and Dakota Johnson and thrive on taking design risks and have a lot of fun doing it. Their layered interiors always feel cozy, quirky, and collected over time, a mix that fills part Hollywood and part rock and roll. On top of an impressive roster of A-list clients, Louisa and Emily have written a book, made the AD100 list, opened a storefront in Los Angeles, and launched a homeware line, which you can find on The Expert. We'll dig into their go-to paint trick, their no-fair approach to buying vintage, and the controversial color they can't get enough of. Let's get into it. Speaker 2 (2:04) Today, I have this majestic duo. Both Emily and Louise are with me today. It's so much fun to have you guys because we've never met before in person, which is crazy. But actually, it's not that crazy because now I've realized that you guys live all over the country and I might get the one chance to see you in LA. So welcome. So happy to have you. Thank you for Speaker 3 (2:27) having us. Speaker 2 (2:28) No, it's such a pleasure. And I've been such a fan of your work for years. And I actually have your book in front of me. Oh Speaker 3 (2:36) my God. Speaker 4 (2:38) It Speaker 2 (2:39) actually has post-its in it because I always love to go through it. Speaker 4 (2:44) Wow. Speaker 2 (2:44) I just love your book. Firstly, I just think that you embody that whimsical cinematic, but also livable, which I feel like is so difficult to do for everyone listening to even understand where this started, where this brainchild began. Because I know you guys, were telling me offline before that you met in a bar in New York. So how did that happen? How do we go from being in a bar in New York to now having an international business that is sought after by every celebrity under the sun? You Speaker 3 (3:16) want me to tell the story? Go for it. All right. Louisa and I met in a bar in New York. Speaker 4 (3:25) We became fast friends. My husband was a writer for Rolling Stone and the guy she was dating was the drummer for the Blacklist. The Speaker 3 (3:31) guy I was dating. I did marry him. We were together for quite a while. When we met, you were dating. Met in a bar, decided to double date, became really good friends. I stalked her a little bit because Speaker 4 (3:42) she was really Speaker 3 (3:42) cool. She Speaker 4 (3:43) did. She really did stalk me. I really stalked Speaker 3 (3:45) her. Louisa told me that she was moving to Nashville, so I moved to Nashville. And then... Nothing's changed. Wait, Speaker 2 (3:53) what's that movie, Ingrid Goes West? Or a single white female. Speaker 3 (3:58) That's more like it. Speaker 2 (3:59) Yeah. Speaker 3 (4:00) I Speaker 4 (4:01) was like, be my friend. Speaker 3 (4:04) But after we'd been in Nashville for a couple of years, me and my ex-husband bought a Bobby McAlpin house. And Louisa had just bought a piece of land and designed and built her house from scratch. which was so impressive. And I like to brag about it because she basically drew the house almost to scale by herself. Not Speaker 4 (4:26) to scale, but it was like the architect that I ended up working with. He was like, wow, you're the first client that I actually, you know, your drawings, I can make this work. It was very exciting and the most fun I've ever had in my life. Speaker 3 (4:37) It was very impressive. And Patrick, my ex-husband was like, oh my God, I'm going on tour. You need to have Louisa help you. So we did our house together and it was like. absolute magic. Speaker 2 (4:50) Wow. It Speaker 3 (4:51) was so fun. And we were like, this is so awesome. And then friends kept being like, you should do this, you should do this. But we didn't know what we were going to do until finally Mary Hilliard, she's a music publicist and manager in Nashville. And she was like, you're doing my office. So she literally forced us to do it. We were like, okay. Speaker 4 (5:08) So we had to get our LLC. Speaker 3 (5:10) Yeah. And that's how it started. And that was January of 2013. It's Speaker 2 (5:14) a long time ago. Yeah, that's crazy. And I love I love stories like this because I think so many people who are going into the interior design field is like, where do you start? Do I need to go to school? And really, it's amazing if you think about how organic and nonlinear your path has been to get to this place. Oh Speaker 3 (5:32) my God. We feel so lucky. To Speaker 2 (5:34) have a business partner. I mean, tell me some of the best things about having a business partner and like, how do you guys balance that? I'm so curious because obviously you... both are such creatives. So who of the two of you is like more on the business side or you both equally across the board do everything together? Speaker 3 (5:53) It's really been like across the board for such a long time and only in the last year and a half have we started like dividing and conquering more. Emily is Speaker 4 (6:02) definitely more on the business side though. Like I don't do business. That's just not my thing. So Emily is the business side and then we're both the creative. Speaker 3 (6:11) But Louisa does a lot more of the architectural details and I'll do more of the furnishing details. Speaker 2 (6:17) And Speaker 3 (6:17) then before COVID, we were traveling and on site a lot more. And now I think people realize, okay, you don't necessarily have to be on site as much. Speaker 2 (6:26) So Speaker 3 (6:27) a lot of our jobs are in LA right now. So I'm on site a lot more than Louisa. It just depends on like where the jobs are, that kind of thing. Yeah, it's Speaker 2 (6:35) so nice to have that balance. The Speaker 4 (6:37) first five years of our company, though, I would say like every job we had, we thought we had to be on site every day. It's crazy. Like when I think back now, I'm like, oh, my God. I like we were there doing it at Karen's house. Yes. And just like watching everything, just learning just because I was obsessed. I couldn't do anything else. But that's Speaker 3 (6:56) the best piece of advice, I guess, for people, even if you've gone to school, it's like you cannot learn unless you're like on a construction site all day. Going, okay, how far away do you put the hot water filter from the sink faucet? And what do you want your spread to be? And what do you want the grout width to be? And what color grout? You have to just learn all these things on site. You know how it Speaker 4 (7:12) is. Speaker 3 (7:12) But it Speaker 4 (7:12) changes with each job. So there's not like a standard, at least that we find, that Speaker 3 (7:16) you Speaker 4 (7:16) can have your... Speaker 3 (7:19) Team. We are so psychotic that every single bathroom and every job has a different grout width or... Speaker 2 (7:25) Right. We Speaker 3 (7:26) trim it out differently. We don't do the same paint colors. We're like really crazy. I think... Speaker 2 (7:32) But that's what I think is what shows. It's like when you look at your work, it's like saying like, of course, there's go-tos that like things that you love and that you build up that kind of through line in the work that you do. But what I think is so special about what you do is it's not only does it feel custom, it feels like the person who lives in that house, it's their house. And you've really channeled these clients. And it's so interesting to see, especially with the celebrity clients. And I know how different that phase can be, especially when someone's a creative. For you guys, how is your process when you're working with someone who might be a creative and you obviously have your sensibility, but also treating every project from scratch? Like, what does that process look like for you? Isn't Speaker 3 (8:18) that Speaker 2 (8:18) funny? I Speaker 3 (8:18) wonder if this is the same for you, because of course you work with celebrities a lot, especially... creatives, we find we have a lot of actors and it's almost like they know what it's like to want creative freedom so much that they're actually good at giving it to us. They like to be involved, but not necessarily like dominate. They like to be involved because they think it's fun, but they know what it is to hand over creative control. That's Speaker 2 (8:44) what Speaker 3 (8:44) they want from their director or their producer or whatever. Speaker 2 (8:47) Yeah, totally. I think it's so true. I think that's the best thing when you're working with talent is that Even if they don't understand in the beginning, I don't know about you guys, but I always use the metaphor of writing a song or like being on set as such a beginning, middle and end. And it's the same in a design process. You're Speaker 4 (9:06) like, please stay away Speaker 3 (9:06) until the Speaker 4 (9:06) end. Like you're painting a painting and someone's to come in the middle of the painting and be like, oh, Speaker 3 (9:12) you need a little bit more green here. You need