Notes from The Sunny Spot

If you follow me on social media, you will realize that the last couple of months of my life have been largely consumed by creating, sitting in, and breaking down, my little sitting area in the Palm Beach Kips Bay Show House!

This year was a huge struggle for the Kips Bay Show House organization to find a suitable house to use in Palm Beach. Just like many places outside of big cities, the property market in this area went pretty much berserk in the time of Covid! Whoohoo for Zoom meetings in your dress shirt and shorts below, followed by a lovely dog walk or a sunset wander on the beach-migrating to warmer climes seemed an obvious choice for many people. For people that have lived through decades of miserable,frigid, winters in the northeast –me!–the experience of six solid months of sunshine has been nothing short of heaven.

I was so honored to have been chosen as one of this year’s Kips Bay participants, it was not only a time to show Florida what Mally Skok Design is all about, but also an opportunity to connect with other members of the design community, outside of my little circle. It has been a marvelous experience.

The idea of channeling ‘Old Palm Beach’ with a twist came to me as soon as I stepped into my little space on walk-through day. The sun was pouring in through the window and ping! I knew exactly how it was going to look.

We already had the silk screens made at our Great Barrington studio, and were waiting to launch our new pattern –Secret Temple –this spring. I had painted it a couple of winters ago, drawing inspiration from an old polychrome plate that I had bought in my London days, and that lay on a whatnot in my entrance hall. The cheeky chinoiserie vibe was just perfect for the Kips Bay story I wanted to tell. Our amazing wallpaper maker at Alex Mason’s studio created a perfect digital replication for the wallpaper on the walls, and voilà!

I had recently helped Gabriella renovate and move into her dream apartment in the West Village. My daughters are my favourite clients-very opinionated, but open to hear my grown-up suggestions, and extremely firm on the direction they want to take, not always mine!!

So, Gabs was all about painting her main area of her apartment terra cotta; “too dark,” I said, “we overdid it in the nineties,” I said, “are you sure?” I said. She was adamant. It turned out so amazingly warm and fun looking,oh so Grand Millennial,I had to copy her! The ceiling and all the trim in the Sunny Spot were painted the most lovely warm terracotta colour, almost the same colour as the roof tiles outside the window in the hot sunshine!

I was introduced to a wonderful young woman with her own drapery and upholstery outfit down the road from where we are in Palm Beach, and from a rather raggedy sketch I had made, she created the most comfy corner upholstered bench in our new ‘Cape Town’ jacquard woven fabric – which was also about the launch this spring! It’s just amazing how much we all got accomplished in 2020 when our wings were clipped!

For us at Mally Skok Design it was a year of getting stuff done – my little book got edited about a million times and is now with the book printer, and the jacquard wovens were introduced, working with an incredible mill in Pennsylvania (MTL) – I made Gaby drive down with me to meet the amazingly talented people of the MTL design studio in Jessop, right into the heart of Trump country, during a worldwide pandemic, yup, I can be persistent! Also, I think we have added about seven additions to our fabric line since 2019, I haven’t counted, but it was a lot, not to mention a few nice projects in the Cape and around Lincoln. I feel exhausted just writing this!

I have always been one for collaboration, so my next step was to connect with my friends in the industry.

Anna Brockway for prints from her Art and Print Shop on Chairish – choose what you like she said. And I chose the most gorgeous, feminine under the sea prints, from such a talented illustrator, turns out I have a little summer frock – I bought it for the fabric design – that was also designed by Sarah Gordon! That’s her in the fabric of the frock I own, I am consistent!! When people walked in they went, “wow pattern on pattern, I like it!” Some just shrugged and kept walking…. Oh well….

I needed a side table of very specific dimensions, and look, to hold all the vintage treasures I had been collecting from the first announcement. I had scoured the shops on Antique Mile, and all my treasures, and shells I had picked up on the beach, were lined up in my spare room cupboard. One call to my friend Stacy Kunstal of Dunes and Duchess, and my table was as good as done!

I needed a big splashy contemporary painting for above my busy side table, to settle down all the pretty, and I knew just where to go – the Gregg Irby Gallery! We had met Gregg and her team at a popup just pre the Covid shut down, and I loved her curated eye. If you trust the seller, you can buy anything online, and I trust Gregg and love this artist, we have one of her paintings, so the perfect painting by Lynn Sanders arrived in a big old box!

I needed some serious chinoiserie to tell the story so off to Circa Who in the Northwood area for a vintage, gilt, faux bamboo mirror – choose whatever you want to use they said! I chose a gorgeous one! Nice people.

I am all about the last layer, the layer that tells the audience exactly who you are, and what you are trying to say.

I added a jumble of pillows from other fabric designers that I admire that I sourced from my new friend Dorlise at the Hive trade showroom. I didn’t want the space to be all Mally all the time. There are so many amazing small fabric lines out there these days, I wanted to change up the vibe a bit. An often-asked question from the show house visitors was, why did you choose those fabrics to all sit here together on the bench? The answer is just a designer shrug… I throw the samples all together on the bed, stare at them, weed out the ones that don’t sing to me, and voilà.

You have to have confidence in your choices and it will show, this is one of my mantras for the up-coming designer set!

The painting above my bench is from Patricia Hoffmeister, an Instagram buddy. We chat about life and the Universe from time to time. I love the way Patricia paints in this exuberant, relaxed style, she draws her inspiration often from images she sees on her Instagram feed. I saw one she painted of Palm Beach, and asked her to paint me one like it. It was so admired, I sent a lot of new customers her way. You can buy her painting from her Instagram feed but you have to get up at dawn to get the good ones. They go quickly! I donated this painting to the auction for Boys and Girls club, I hope they got a good price for it.

My pagoda lanterns were lent to me from Vaughan, my go-to cool lighting and fabric people that I have loved from their first shop, I think it was on the Wandsworth Bridge Road, about 25 years ago. Oh I miss wandering around London, coming soon I hope! I like to be a loyal customer and stick to my brands, that way you have a longstanding relationship to call on when you need a favour. The lanterns were also a hit, people thought they were vintage, they look so authentic.

I am a ‘dogs on the sofa’ ‘keep your things’ kind of designer, so happy that look is back on trend!

The lamp on my table was from Porto Romano – also a London favourite. In the travel days, my first stop on my design calendar was always London Design Week in September, I suppose living in London for many years molded my design sensibility. I am a ‘dogs on the sofa’ ‘keep your things’ kind of designer, so happy that look is back on trend!

I think that covers everything, and of course I had to add the usual smattering of African craftware, I do not think there is an African basket I do not love. Mostly I tried to use flowers from our garden, and when those were over I did supermarket flowers, or once I bought a couple of flowering plants from my new favourite plant shop down here – Smarty Plants – I just chopped them up and they grew a few new flowers for me!

I am so grateful for the experience I had interacting with the people that I met coming through my space. Lots of the show house visitors were actually Instagram friends already, or were friends of friends, or had used my fabrics somewhere…. It was a good investment of my time, just hanging out in the Sunny Spot and chatting to the passing crowd of cheerful, extremely well dressed, (lots of gorgeous colourful frocks) and fragrant people passing through!

In fact, it got me thinking…. I should do this on a permanent basis, I need a permanent Sunny Spot in Palm Beach!

So by next season I will be sure to have a lovely little place to fill with my Mally Skok Design wares. I’ve spoken to some of my design friends and they are keen to collaborate. My Dowel Furniture pieces will look so good down here in the sunshine! Lots of art, lots of colourful lamps and accessories, my fun Dowel trays and piles of pillows – can’t you just see it!