An ardent vintage lover, Los Angeles-based designer Martha Mulholland studied art history at the University of Chicago before working in visual merchandising for Gucci, Tom Ford, and others. Her unerring eye led to success as an interior designer when she founded her own firm in 2013. Clients include creatives from the art, fashion, and film worlds, who appreciate her unique ability to create dialogues between eras and objects—as seen in her Chairish edit.
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How has your background in fine art, art history, and historic preservation influenced your approach to design?
I think my education (and fascination with the journey of the objects that enter my life) has given my design work more context and nuance. I understand the interplay between periods: where architectural styles, furniture trends, color palettes and decorative motifs originated, how they have influenced each other and why they are reinterpreted time after time, which makes the storytelling aspect of interior design more fun.
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Tell us about your approach to vintage and antique finds. How do you like to incorporate vintage into your projects?
Another reward of my art history background is that it allows me to educate my clients about the things they are purchasing. Understanding where something came from and why it was created makes buying it more meaningful because it becomes more than a thing—it has a story and they get to tell the next chapter (while hosting a cocktail party, hopefully)!
Even if a client isn’t vintage-obsessed when I start working with them, they usually are by the end of a project.
Martha Mulholland
Besides the obligatory history lesson, I think they like having something unique. Even a room that is rather innocuous, with new production decor that everyone will recognize, can be totally transformed by the infusion of vintage objects, and endlessly reimagined.
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What eras or icons of vintage furniture design are you most drawn to and why?
Oh dear, this is a tough one, as the answer is always changing based on my exposure to things.
Currently: Billy Haines and early Hollywood Regency after my annual pilgrimage to Sunnylands, everything Angelo Donghia touched in the 70’s, André Dubreuil, Greene and Greene…
Eternally: Viennese Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte, Eileen Gray, Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann, Les Lalanne, Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Tony Duquette, Jean-Michel Frank, Piero Fornasetti, Renzo Mongiardino, Charlotte Perriand…
You worked in visual merchandising for fashion houses at one point in your career. How have you applied those techniques to finding the finishing touches for a home? Any tips for styling the finishing touches in a space (coffee tables, shelves, etc)?
My visual merchandising days taught me the art of the vignette: an artful balancing act of objects based on color, scale, materiality and form. It’s what draws you to a shop window and what draws you to a beautiful corner inside someone’s home.
The important distinction is that people in a home experience a vignette in 360 degrees; when making one, study it from all angles, and make sure it’s not too precious to live with or it will drive you mad. To that end, it’s important to always change things up.
We would always move merchandise around the floor at Gucci and the effect was amazing: the same person who walked right by a dress last week would suddenly stop and stare at it, seeing it for the first time because it was placed in a different way. Homes are no different—they need to live and breathe and move along with you!
ON CHAIRISH & VINTAGE PIECES
What do you find most compelling about Chairish?
I love that Chairish brings the best of both worlds: blue-chip vintage and more affordable, idiosyncratic treasures you might otherwise find at a flea market. With the acquisition of Pamono, that one-two punch is now worldwide—what more could one want?
How does sustainability factor into your design choices and love of vintage?
It’s not something that I think about consciously most of the time because as a Southerner, I grew up around old brown furniture (“family things” as we say) that was beloved because of its history, and one wouldn’t dare part with it. It was always repurposed and reimagined as trends came and went. That, to me, is the epitome of sustainability.
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A FEW DESIGN FAVORITES
Favorite way to create a statement-making moment in a room? A fabulous rug or a bold wall treatment.
Favorite paint color? For autumn, Farrow & Ball’s “Brinjal”, Portola’s “Nostalgia.”
Favorite piece of decor in your home? At this moment, a very special and beautifully painted Staffordshire “Medici Lion” circa 1812 that I picked up in the Cotswolds last spring.
Favorite style icon? I could never pick just one, so borrow from many.
Design destination every creative should visit at least once? L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue.
A FEW LIFESTYLE FAVORITES
Favorite Instagram accounts to follow? Object_la_ny, historic_realestate_la, anonymousworksinc, theworldofinteriors.
Favorite host (or thank you) gift? Santa Maria Novella potpourri.
Favorite vacation destination? Almost anywhere in Italy.
Favorite flower? Peonies.
Favorite entertaining essential? Dim lights, jazz music, plenty of wine.
Lead Image: Interior Design by Martha Mulholland, Photography by Shade Degges.
