Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another SLD Meetup. My name is Alvaro and we are back to talk about another interesting conversation in regards to luxury. Today we have Erin V with Erin V Design Group to talk about the interior design and all the magic that she brings all the way from California into the Moslox® orious homes. She is an interior designer, equestrian and a software visionary.
She has her own furniture lined with Erin V official, and she also has her own masterclass when it comes to interior design, which I found it very interesting. Erin, what's up? Hi, Alvaro. Thanks for having me.
Of course, of course. Thank you for joining me. It's a pleasure to have you here with us today. Great.
Same here. And you are in California, correct? Yes, I am in Masito. I'm on the seat though.
I love it. That's so nice. And, you know, besides interior design, which is going to be the topic that we're going to be discussing today and all of the amazing things that you're currently doing, something that I found super interesting is that you are combining interior design with also horses. You have your own horses and you compete, right?
Yeah, I do. I grew up on a farm in Northern California, so I was riding since the time I was a baby and had a little pony that I used to, you know, get to ride all over the countryside. And then when we moved to Los Angeles when I was nine, I got another horse. I used to train saddle breads, Arabs and quarter horses and, you know, quarter horses.
And I'm jumping. So doing a lot of equestrian sports when I can fit it in. Tell us a little bit about Erin V Design Group. I mean, you're one of the leading companies when it comes to interior design in the West Coast.
So tell us a little bit about what you guys are doing and how it started, really? Absolutely. I've had the design firm since I was 24, so going on, you know, 17 plus years now. Nobody does that.
I'm not the glory. No. And we do predominantly luxury residential. We do residential development.
So as a developer myself, I've had quite a few projects that we've brought from, you know, the ground up. Most of our projects are on the West Coast. We do some projects across the country. We have one in St.
Helena, San Francisco, Greenwich, Connecticut. Mostly all luxury projects, new builds, sometimes remodels renovations and smaller projects here and there alongside I have a furniture brand. So I started making furniture for my projects many, many years ago and turned that into a furniture brand that's now carried in nine showrooms. So we're there in.
Wow. As well. That's amazing. No, that's fantastic and obviously it takes time to get to where you are today.
But you also managed to become leading source in social media. You also carry yourself with many followers, good engagement. So how has been for you to transition throughout all these years into the social media space? Well, I think, you know, one of the things that allowed me to kind of break into the design field as an entrepreneur when I was young was just my willingness to market and put myself out there.
I think artists need to be willing to communicate, right? And share their art. And the woman that I worked for before I started my business very much taught me from an early age, the beauty and the effectiveness of PR and marketing. When I started my business, I got into TV and was writing for magazines, anything I could do to get the word out.
And then with social media, it's actually just made it so much easier. Or some of the, I guess, teeping points that you have in your early stages that help you. I would say, as an interior designer, anyone in the visual arts, you really only need to put out the best stuff, right? And when you're young and you're starting out, you don't have luxury projects under your belt.
So what can you show that shows someone your taste and your ability? I always look at some early designers, projects or websites and I'm like, if you only have five good photos, just show those, right? The photo part. Have beautifully designed website.
Have a beautifully designed business card. Show your aesthetic ability in whatever way you can. It doesn't have to just be like a 10 page spread in an axi when you don't have that to show. So much of that like technical knowledge that you will gain over the years.
But if you could intern for someone, I recently created a whole series of courses, put his very thing to help homeowners understand the construction process. I believe that courses are always like a pathway to reach that level. And you that have been doing it successfully, I found very inspirational to see your master class, your courses. So tell us a little bit about that.
You know, I've always had interns working for us at our firm throughout like their design school experiences. And many of them at the end of their six week period and program would say, wow, I learned more here in six weeks than I did in my years. UCLA's design program or whatever school they were going to. And although you learn very valuable things in those other programs, they're not really teaching you the business of the business and also just with clients, you know, teaching them or not even teaching them, but explaining the process that they're about to experience the very lengthy costly renovation or new build process is really important to set expectations.
Wow, that's very inspirational and very clever on your end as well. Now, when it comes to Clubhouse of this app that at some point was in everyone's mouth, have you been playing around with it? With Clubhouse? Yeah.
I have not. Because it seems, you know, that a lot of people that want to share also their knowledge and their value, they've been getting into the audio platform Clubhouse. Yeah. And it seems that it's kind of like in your alley.
I know it's losing a little bit of popularity just because of what we're currently facing with things opening up again. But I believe that it's still a very strong platform that I will recommend you to look into it. A little story and you tell me about this, what you think, because I was in Los Angeles, not too far out from where you were a couple of weeks ago. And we ended up being at this amazing property that it was just basically built for content creation.
And they were inviting all these big influencers to shoot content, you know, and therefore expose the brand and the home. And everybody was inside capturing the right angles with the right design. So I think that when it comes to interior design, more and more, especially in commercial spaces, they're starting to look into what looks good, what's good photographically, you know, and I wanted to know what you think about that. Well, I mean, I think showing off interiors, like getting published in the magazine, you know, that's always the pinnacle of having the cover of architectural digest or eldercore house, beautiful or traditional home or lux.
There's such a limited real estate in print, but having photographs of your work is so incredibly important. I think people recognize how much work goes into shooting an interior well. I mean, it's a week of prep easily. You buy stuff just for the shoot, you rent art furniture accessories just for the shoot, because rarely is a how perfectly perfectly finished.
You spend, you know, several days on average with your photographer shooting every room and moving everything in the room to get perfect for the camera. So certainly doing video makes it a lot faster because you're moving and you don't have to worry about capturing that base being perfectly not in line with the window behind it. You want to be an interior designer. You really need to focus on the work and not as much, you know, how you're going to video it later.
One of the things that I wanted to ask you, you know, is working with influencers. How is that becoming because there's so much competition. How do you really stand out? I don't think an influencer is an approach if you want to be an interior designer.
This is a profession. And if you want to be an interior designer, then you have to go get clients and you have to have real projects. And that's something very different than just sharing a bunch of pretty pictures on Instagram. That's a little bit about the current project that you have going on.
Is there any specific project that you're excited about? We're always very excited about a lot of our projects. Beautiful house in Greenwich, Connecticut for some wonderful clients. We're now building the pool house for them and finishing up some interior spaces.
We've got a great renovation and design project in St. Helena and your Napa. We're starting another project down in Playa Vista soon. You know, we've got five to ten projects going at a time.
And then I spend a lot of my majority of my time is really spent developing software now for the industry and a luxury marketplace with Style Row. So we're the first to bring all the luxury furniture brands together online so the designers and architects from around the world can access all the great product in those design centers. So smart. Yeah.
Very good. This obviously has this question in our SLD meetups. And I'm very curious to know what you think is the actual definition or the meaning of luxury. Well, I think that it is very much a personal thing.
But I think when you have beautifully handmade products around you that make you happy, that's ultimate luxury, you know, and everything that you touch and feel and interact with, I think on a daily basis, simple things, bed linens, the towels in your bathroom, a great hand lotion. Those things can all be very luxurious, fabulous dishes and beautiful glassware that you use every morning, not things that you keep in a cabinet and use once a year because they're so precious. And so I think that even on a small scale, we can all have daily luxuries. And, you know, I think that something that is so important for anyone that wants to be in the real estate interior design space to remember, especially in the luxury space, is that everything is designed, but not everything is designed well.
Amazing. I love that answer. Thank you for sharing. Now, is there any final takeaways, any recommendations for those that are in the luxury real estate space?
I would say one of my main design principles is height, taller, taller. So that goes everything from hang your drapery at the ceiling, have big tall art, big tall branches, taller windows, more natural light. I mean, anytime you can go up, cabinetry, door heights, a lot of builders don't and that. And they go for the smaller, cheaper windows, light doors.
All the way up. Yeah. They have some and invest in those key moments of height because again, that's that feeling, that intangible. But when you walk through the space, suddenly just feels great and people want that feeling.
And there are exact literal steps you can take to create those feelings. But if you don't do those things, you're not going to get that end result. So that's often what I do when I walk through with a developer or on a project. I'm like, OK, how do we get more height here?
How do we get more light in the space? And if you really just live by that guy and principal, your real estate projects will be a lot more successful. That's amazing. I mean, I see a lot of questions coming in.
And I don't know if you want to go over a couple of them before we wrap these up because I know you also have a tight schedule. But there's a couple of questions here that says, are you open floor spaces going out of fashion? I think to a degree, you know, everything being open is not always that functional. And certainly as people realize working from home and having a lot of family members or kids home, you want to be able to close doors and have privacy at times or just have space from all decor and art.
So I still like to be able to close off a kitchen for smell, you know, for privacy at times. So I think that openness is good, but you don't want everything open all the time. You do still need rooms and those rooms often need doors to be really functional. So just be very creative about how you're opening it, really consider the lifestyle of people living there.
Amazing. So there's another question. Why are your ceilings already only eight feet high? Well, with everything you put in that space, it should be as tall as a ceiling.
You know, people often hang their drapery low right over the window. Your ceilings might be eight feet, but your window might be at six and a half. You know, you might be able to raise that window up. You might be able to have taller drapery, a bigger piece of art, a taller vase with bigger benches.
That is just a key that if you look around your house, you'll probably notice a lot of opportunities. Get a taller pot, put the tree on a stack of books. I mean, anything to make things taller is just naturally going to feel better. Think about when you walk outside, trees are bigger than us.
Yeah. Yeah. We'll bring tiny little things in their house and then they wonder why. Well, I know that we can be all the long going over questions.
So all I want to advise is anybody that is studying, please make sure to follow Erin. She's done a phenomenal job. I'm sure she's going to go over some of your comments and questions if you message her or, you know, reach out to her directly. Well, any last takeaways or anything that we didn't touch base?
I think you've covered a lot of it. I really appreciate it. I've got a line of hardware with Baldwin, Hollywood Hills by Aaron B. So everyone can check that and a lot of new drugs and accessories on the way too.
So making things a lot more accessible as well as my high-end furniture and the official. Well, that's excellent. You know, we're going to be posting this conversation across all social media platforms as well as podcast platforms. So for those that came in late or want to rewatch it, please make sure to tune in.
Also make sure to follow Erin and thanks again for being here. Erin, it's been a pleasure. Thanks, Alvaro. It's such a pleasure.
Have a good one. You have a good day and thank you, everybody. See you next time. And thanks again for everybody tuning in today.
We hope you enjoyed it. And remember, embrace its beautiful success in life. My name is Alvaro and I'll see you next time.