I didn’t really plan on opening a store this year. It just unfolded and I say Yes! I love letting things happen in this way. I love the unfolding of life. And it just happens to be in the loveliest community I have ever really had the pleasure to visit and hang around in. It really couldn’t be more peaceful. The kind of peaceful that hits your nervous system, soothes it. In December 2024, I was being pursued for this space, and eventually, two days before I left for Paris in January 2025, I went up to Montecito to check it out. I prefaced the trip by telling Michelle, my COO, and my husband Craig, who both came with me that day, that we were NOT doing it. When we got there, and I saw the dappled light coming through the tree covered courtyard, surrounded by a perfect restoration of a Spanish colonial style of single story buildings, I was a hard YES. In this peace of Montecito, I flipped so fast. I was like, where do I sign?? And then four months later, we opened.

 

 

Can I just say, thank god Craig came that day. If I had come home and announced I was opening a store without him seeing it, without him “feeling it”… he would have thought I lost my mind. Because you need to know, I have no time, and have been incredibly stressed. Not the kind of stress that you should feel sorry for, the self imposed kind, the founder company growing kind. How on Earth would I do this from a time perspective? But he saw it, and he said, you have to do it, it was a great opportunity and it was. It was one of those moments we all could feel. Michelle knew, I knew and he knew. I just wasn’t sure how, but it didn’t matter, the cast was thrown. We were opening a store!

I had been doing interiors for the last 5 years for clients (and restoring homes for the last 15 years), so a 700 sq ft renovation in two months felt like an easy lift and shopping for furniture sounded fun. I have honestly stopped working with most clients because my brand has taken up all of the time. So this type of expression, this interior design lit up those parts of my brain in a way I was excited to do again.

It wasn’t hard for me because I had the right skill sets. I could draw the floor-plan easily, create instructions for the contractor, draw elevations and really lay it out from afar. I understand construction and timing so could push people when needed, and I didn’t need anything explained to me, we could just GO. So often we were designing kitchens for out of state clients, that is hard. This did not feel daunting. I have an interior design assistant who went up to Montecito for me a few times to meet with the contractor and make sure the walls and door openings were correct. We ran it like we have been doing it for clients. The best part was that it was for me. I really was excited to be my own client.

Being my own client gave me free will to say YES to everything I loved. Without pause. I can approve things easily. That is when it comes out the best honestly, with that perfect freedom of design and budget aligned in one vision. With clients, the vision can be distorted but what they want. And the client would get to decide. When I am the client, it’s pure. It was easy for me to come up with a vision quickly. The layout was tricky, it isn’t perfect. I am someone who has always embraced imperfect.

The store is shaped like a long rectangle with an L shaped area at the back. I wanted the shop to feel like a home. I wanted it to have a couch, mostly because that would feel cozy and I love making and restoring vintage couches. It wasn’t the best use of sales per square foot, but it would create a feeling of gravity, a place to stop that felt real and it would give me the opportunity to create a beautiful moment of pattern and finish playing off of each other.

 

 

I sourced this 1940’s Charles Dudouyt attributed credenza at an auction in Pennsylvania. I really wanted a 100” statement credenza, to line up the shoes on, to create a long shelf with. To be the piece that brought in patina, a deep warmth from wood and curves and character. I did have to buy auction pieces sight unseen, so there is always a risk. But also, I had confidence and a strong sense of it’s scale, so I felt really excited for it. The mirror was in my garage since the beginning of the company. When I first started the brand, we operated out of my garage. There was a mirror in there and a rug in front of it, and if you were one of those people who first visited me in my store of a garage, then you might have stood in front of this mirror for a 3/4 view of your body, head cut off. This wooden burl sculpture came from my bedroom, I LOVE it. I found it at an estate sale from the famous Paramour Estate in Silverlake about 10 years ago. I have used this sculpture in many photoshoots, including this one. It was a perfect moment of earthy, live edgy, vital energy and height. It ties in the balance of the light fixture, which is it’s opposite, calm peaceful zen modern, Noguchi.

I wanted to create this feeling of Soulful minimalism. It isn’t minimal, unless you consider the palette, the smooth plaster walls, the matte concrete flooring, some of it lighting, the energetic flow of negative space in the initial traffic area. The Soulful part is apparent. I want to express how this maximalism is balanced by the minimalism. The negative space allows for your brain to keep taking in all of the things. You need both, the balance.

I wanted people to see the both sides of me. If you knew me at all, from interiors you might see this Craftsman historic homes designer, and that connotation would create one expectation of what you might see in a store with my name on it. If you knew me from having a shoe brand, you might have a completely different expectation of me, as a store. How do I create a place that melts both of that worlds together in a way that does justice to everything and feels like the version of me that is inspired, that is current. The real me vs. the perceived me. That was the goal. It started with the Credenza.

I had the metal hanging racks custom made. They were raw metal, minimal in shape and style. Nondescript. Complimentary in warmth to the wood, but they offered contrast and depth.

 

 

I bought the 1952 Paul Tuttle sofa at an auction and covered it this very special patterned jacquard that I recently used on a past clients couch that I LOVED. I brought the coffee table and Victorian bobble style side chair from my office, which honestly is a collection of pieces I buy without purpose at auctions. I am addicted to buying good opportunities at auctions. I think in another version of my later self, I will have an antique store, a furniture shop, that restores pieces.. and sells them post curation. I might even do that in this store… I am just not ready to part with anything yet. The lamp I had shown to maybe 5 clients, they all said no. I always loved this lamp. I bought it from Amsterdam Modern in Echo Park. I never secured a piece so fast. I finally had a reason for it and the reason was me.

 

 

These curtains came from an estate sale in Los Angeles. In an old Craftsman, I found them in the attic. I brought them down to the check out area, this was about the time I started my company and had just committed to the apartment next to my home as an office in Covid. They wanted to charge me $800. At an estate sale!!! I told the woman that I understood she loved them but I told her she would never find anyone at the sale to pay $800. I also told her they were so specific that only I would ever love them like she did and I offered her $200 for them. She sold them to me.

The rug was gifted to me by my friend Sheba, a rug collector and antiques dealer that has been so supportive of my interior design business. I have worked with her on so many projects. Bringing in this rug really connects that part of me to this store. I LOVE a 1920’s pinky Sarouk. It is my spirit animal of a rug. I offered to pay, but she insisted. It really is the perfect little dressing room nook of soul. I found the bench on FB marketplace.

 

 

This is my Grandmother Buba’s chandelier. She isn’t alive anymore, she died at 86 about 13 years ago. I only have a few things from her. This and her wild pink floral China and a pair of white gloves with red polka dots on them. This hung in my old office. I just love it, like I loved her. That 1970’s gilt mixed with soft porcelain flowers. I remember it. When I was a kid, in her dining room of matching 1960’s traditional Ethan Allen furniture. My grandpa Julius (of The Julius Blazer) would sit at the end of the table and eat beans on toast. I would sit at the table, which she covered with a pieced together felt table cover, and we would play tile rummy late into the night before we watched Golden Girls together. I was so lucky to get to have a life with her, while I did. I wish she could see everything I have now. My kids, my business. She would be so proud. But she is with me in the store.

 

 

The large wall sculptures are my by my husband Craig Ekedahl. He is a sculptor, an artist. But he doesn’t lead with that. That became his personal secret really. When I met him, he was doing this as a career. He had his art in a gallery called Twentieth. This piece used to be in our first apartment together, then our first home and in our current home it ended up in the attic, we didn’t have a wall for it. I pulled it back out for the store. We spent the last 15 years working on homes and real estate together. He became a real estate agent when we had children as an extension of that work and the desire to be close to home. I left out the part that he worked in TV for 20 years, but when you work in TV, you often travel for large chunks of time… . It feels really nice to bring this sculpture into the store, obviously it’s amazing… it’s nice to include that side of him.

 

 

This Burl table I bought from RH. The vase is from the amazing Pierce and Ward collab with West Elm (it’s so good). The bench is a perfectly patina’d parchment wrapped Jean-Michel Frank bench. The smaller square table is similar, attributed to Samuel Marx, also patina’d parchment. They have different patinas. I love how the 3 shades of light tan play off of each other. The wavy. mirror I bought from the local Montecito shop called The Well. When we opened, I realized we needed another mirror outside of the dressing room. People were waiting in a line to use the mirror in the dressing room.. So I bought this one the next morning on my way into the shop.

 

 

The Post Montecito spoke to me because of their very thoughtful, beautiful, and authentic restoration of what was original to the area, to Santa Barbara. I felt an alignment in it. The values they expressed in their restoration are the same ones I connect with in a restoration. It was the reason I felt so strongly about it. I am so happy to be here, to have created this. If you are ever in Santa Barbara, or Montecito, please come by.

 

Photography by Tina Finkel.