Behind the Blue Door | John Demsey
Intro: Welcome to the one and only interior design book podcast, Decorating by the Book, hosted by Suzy Chase from her dining room table in New York City. Join Suzy for conversations about the latest and greatest interior design books with the authors who wrote them.
John Demsey: I'm John Demsey, the author of Behind the Blue Door: A Maximalist Mantra, my new book published by Vendome Press, available on Amazon.com, and fine bookstores across the world.
Suzy Chase: It was a rainy September morning and I ventured from the West Village to the Upper East Side and went behind the Blue Door for a special tour of your home. But before we dive into what is behind the Blue Door, I just wanted to say that you've had the most illustrious career as a transformational business builder in the fashion and beauty industries, including 30 years at the helm of Estée Lauder. So the incredible Douglas Friedman told you, “this house deserves to tell its story.” This is a very personal book that shares a bit of your trials and tribulations. Talk about the importance of one door closing and another door opening.
John Demsey: This past almost two years has been a period of great disruption, great turmoil, and a bit of trauma for me. It's been well documented, my departure from my long-standing career, and I had the opportunity to work on something and to reflect on where I've been, where I am now, where I am going forward. And Behind the Blue Door was my love and belief in the idea of creativity without boundaries and believing in yourself and being optimistic about living and about life. And for a period of time, that was not the easiest. I found in creating this book, which was photographed by Douglas Friedman and written by Alina Cho and published by Vendome Press, that I had a chance to take stock in myself and to try to not talk about what I did or how I define myself through my job, but actually give a peek behind the door of actually who I am, what I'm about, and who I've always been about. So Behind the Blue Door not only is a celebration of my passion for art, design and curation and discovery, but it also was a cathartic process for me, really to open up the doors of my past, understand the things that I've done over the years, and at the same time, as the door had shut on me to understand that there are new doors, new opportunities, and that one should not judge a book by its cover. It really is a celebration of life, of passion for collection, curation, championing artists, designers, artisans, photographers that I've known over the course of my career. And at the same time, to give a bit of a peek in terms of what makes me tick and to offer up advice to anyone who has a passion or wants to explore a side of themselves without boundaries.
Suzy Chase: Yes, I love the fact that it is a peek into what makes you tick, because I feel like we've kind of, quote, known you for a long, long time, but this house is you and how you have lived your life.
John Demsey: It's true. My friend Matthew Hiltzik had told me during this process, because I wasn't even quite sure if I should completely disappear, shut down my social media channels and just bury myself under my covers. And he said to me, no, be proud of what you've accomplished and you be you. And I think that's actually the best advice for anyone. To embrace those things that you love, that you feel, define you with kindness and dignity at the same time, not compromise in the things that are unique to your characteristics.
Suzy Chase: Tell the story of how the house started with a pair of Christian Louboutin boots.
John Demsey: This house actually was a long distance from the former house I was living in. I was living two doors down in a house for ten years, and this became the first house, actually, that I had bought. And it was a bit of a tear down. And I was in Paris having dinner with my friend Suzanne von Aichinger, who is a well-regarded model, who was one of the muses of John Galliano, particularly when he was at Christian Dior. And she was wearing these incredible suede Christian Louboutin boots with a shock of Moroccan Spice Red, Yves Klein Blue and gold. And I said, I have to ask a strange question, but I said, I need your shoes because I'm going to base my entire house and color scheme off of those boots. So took the shoes back to New York, went to Stark carpet, and then from stark carpet, I worked with them and went through the archives of David Hicks, and we color matched vintage heritage David Hicks designs from the that color palette and actually started the decor of the house from the ground up. So it was an inspired idea. A bit crazy maybe, but I felt it had a point of view. So in the opening of my book, you see two things. On one side of the page, you see the boutique boots poised on my zigzag David Hicks carpet on my second floor. And on the other side of the page, you see a framed picture of Brigitte Bardot that I bought when I was 19 years old as a student in Paris, which is the first thing I ever bought. I felt that the bookends of those shoes, the inherent glamour and an homage to the past and the fact that I had this appreciation for intrinsic glamour carry through with everything I do.
Suzy Chase: In terms of that Brigitte Bardot photograph, I've heard you say you had the glam bug early on. And have you really framed that photograph 16 times?
John Demsey: That photograph? Yes. That photograph has gone everywhere from my college dorm room to my Parisian Chambres de Bonne that I was living in to every apartment that I've lived in over the past few decades. So it's something that has been with me, and it was the first artistic piece that I ever bought, but it was something that sort of spoke to me, and it was when Bridget Bardot was a brunette, when she first began her career. So Paris has always been a big influence on me. So has the new wave cinema from France, and I've always been deeply inspired by French culture and design through the centuries, actually. So it was my first acquisition, and every single time that I moved, I felt it deserved a new way of being presented.
Suzy Chase: As humans were constantly evolving and changing. Does your home evolve and change in terms of the pieces?
John Demsey: It's never done, as a matter of fact, since you were last here. Last week, I went to the Salon Armory Show, and I found a Pierre Paulin chair that was at Model Moderne, which is like a sort of deep ochre with navy blue zigzags by Jack Larsen from 1962. It's sitting in the living room right now. So every single time something new comes in, other things move around, and the dialogue between those things changes. So it's constantly changing. As a matter of fact, I'll go through a period in a couple of weeks of rehanging some new art, taking some things down, reframing a few things. So I like to rotate things. I like to move objects around. As you can see, I have a lot of stuff, but the selection of each item is something very personal for me. And being able to change it, move it, hide it, bring it front and forward, I find, is always exciting and always reanimates the whole story.
Suzy Chase: You have a lot of stuff. That's an understatement.
John Demsey: Yes.
Suzy Chase: So is there anything in your home that came from your childhood home in Cleveland?
John Demsey: Absolutely. Many things. Sadly, I lost my dad about a year and a half ago, and we shut down the home I grew up in. And my mom, actually, I moved to New York. I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. And when I did that, I took a few things from the house because I wanted there to be a connectivity between where I was born and where I am right now. So there's an Orford chandelier that was in our hallway from 1956. It's now in my guest bathroom. There is an amazing mirror from the 1800’s that was my great grandmother's mirror from Russia hanging in my daughter's bedroom. I took the door knocker of the front of my parents’ house, which happened to be a lion, like the one I have on the front door of my house, and I never even realized it. And I put it on the door in the backyard to the tool shed. So I have lots of objects and pillows and things that were my grandparents, my parents, a couple of things from when I grew up, some emotional objects and things. So it's a combination of things from the past, things that have deep personal meaning to me, and at the same time, things of the present, and always looking for something for the future.
Suzy Chase: So I thought this was really cool that all the animals you collect are in one of the gatefolds of the book. Can you talk a little bit about that?
John Demsey: I have my own Noah’s Ark, so I've always loved animals, and I've always loved animals. That's only part of the collection. I used to be on the board of Baccarat for five years, so I had an incentivized discount. So I have all this incredible Baccarat crystal and glass at the same time. I've been collecting Lalique and dome and goodness Murano glass, and I sort of thematically started concentrating the collections in certain animal forms. So I have a lot of monkeys, a lot of rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, elephants, deer, snakes, buffalo, bulls, birds. It's something that is a lot of whimsy and something that just sort of organically grew into something sort of whimsical and important.
Suzy Chase: This book has a special leopard print sleeve, I think you'd call it, and it's so rare for a coffee table book. Was this your stylistic idea?
John Demsey: It was exactly my stylistic idea. My Patrick Naggar Chaise Lounge on the second floor is covered in that leopard velvet fabric. And when we were working on the book, I felt that I wanted something instantaneously to give the impression that something else was going on in here. I have this sort of lifelong belief that when the going gets tough, the tough go leopard. So I love leopard, and it's something that I always think looks chic. I use extensively across the house, and I learned a trick from my friend Cornelius Guest's mother, C.Z. Guest, many years ago, that when you have a lot of dogs, I have eight dogs and two cats. The best way to disguise mistakes from animals is to have a leopard carpet so it's very utilitarian as well.
Suzy Chase: And it's a neutral for me.
John Demsey: It's a neutral absolutely.
Suzy Chase: Everything goes better with leopard, and leopard goes with anything.
John Demsey: Absolutely anything. And it's fun and it's exotic and it's jungle and it's pop. I know it's chic. I love it.
Suzy Chase: Speaking of pop, you call yourself a student of pop culture, and I so admire it and find it invigorating because I feel like we hit our forty’s and the creative wonder kind of goes out, right out the window. You're always so very au courant with your finger on the pulse of music and fashion and trends in general. It's so inspirational to me.
John Demsey: Oh, thank you. I don't know where it comes from. I mean, I've always been influenced by pop culture. I mean, growing up in the days of regular TV, I used to glue myself to every variety show. I used to listen to the radio stations. Growing up in Cleveland, you could hear CKLW, the Motown sound over Lake Erie. And I fell in love with music and was very much inspired by the movies, television, art, films, music, pop stars and fashion. So it's been something that I've always loved and immersed myself in. And I'm lucky in that I have a 15-year-old daughter who's my insurance policy to remain current. It's forever changing and has meaning to me.
Suzy Chase: I love your relationship with June Ambrose because I used to work at Interscope and Jive in the 90’s and I remember her. Talk about creativity and her finger on the pulse! She is just everything.
John Demsey: She's a shape shifter, style shifter, lifestyle shifter. I met June, my goodness, over 25 years ago at the opening of the Fendi boutique in New York City. That's when I was running Mac, and she came up to me and she was wearing this ten-gallon fantastical hat. And I said to her, I said, who are you? I mean, I said, your fabulosity and your persona, I'm drawn to it. And we became casual acquaintances over the years, but in the last few years, we've developed a deep friendship. And she and her husband, Mark, and I love her because she's fearless and she's not afraid to take risks. She's kind, she's sarcastic, she's funny, but at the same time, she sees things before they happen.
Suzy Chase: So where did you find the inspiration for the Blue Door? What kind of blue is that?
John Demsey: That's actually a Caribbean blue, which is, I think, 16 layers of lacquered paint. I'm a Pisces, so I'm a water sign. And I was always in love with Yves Klein blue. When I went back to Paris a couple of months ago and I went back to the building where I lived on Cherche-Midi, I did not realize subliminally that had a blue door. It was more of a cobalt blue. And I thought, that's interesting. That door in Paris that opened up my eyes to the world was the color that I chose to open up to the doors to my home here in New York, to you decades later, to my world, I find blue a very nuanced color. It's a color that shows up in so many different ways and so many different undertones. And I think it's unique. I went through a lot of hassle, actually, to get the right to use that blue because this is on a landmark block in New York City and Treadwell Farms. But it was super important to me to have that blue door and the carpets in that door started the whole house. And then I have that giant, sort of Versace-esque lion door knocker sitting on the front. It's got a dramatic edge.
Suzy Chase: You definitely want to know what's behind that blue door, for sure. You've lived your life where the narrative has been controlled by others. And I love how this book is about you, the real you. How does that feel?
John Demsey: It was first a little uncomfortable because I was so much defined by the job I had, the work that I did, and the brands that I sort of championed or pushed forward. It was the first time that I had to think of myself as a standalone individual and almost like a persona or brand unto myself. People have the impression that I'm an extrovert. Actually, in reality, I'm an introvert. So that duality between having that creative spark at the same time, being quite shy in private is a healthy tension for me. So it was a great way to express who I was, take stock in myself, understand what has mattered to me and what doesn't. And at the same time, to put something out in the world that was joyful, especially in a time like now, where there's so few things that bring joy.
Suzy Chase: Now to my segment called Home, where I ask you to describe one memory of your childhood home. And please start by telling us where it was, although you already mentioned it.
John Demsey: Home. I grew up on a corner street in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, during the post war period. And that home that I grew up in, my family kept my entire life. Actually, up until about a year ago. The house was an eclectic mix of my mother's a painter. Her name is Renée Demsey. She used to be the resident in house artist at Bergdorf Goodman. The front door of the house was a pumpkin orange lacquer. My mother and father weren't afraid of color either. And in that home, which was a modest home, my escape hatch was my bedroom. And what I used to do is I used to plaster the walls with tear sheets from magazines, cover of the Rolling Stone, movie posters, day glow posters, and creating sort of a tapestry of swipe. And it was constantly changing. And I guess from my early teen years, I always was a master of the mashup.
Suzy Chase: It sounds like your home now is an extension of your bedroom growing up.
John Demsey: It is. You define yourself by what you embrace and what you give up. I'm the sum of all the parts. So I had a wonderful childhood. I had amazing parents. I had a happy childhood, and I was surrounded by a lot of love and appreciation for eclectic choices in home decor and design that has stayed with me my entire life.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
John Demsey: Well, you can find me @JDemsey, J-D-E-M-S-E-Y. You can find me on Facebook. You can find me on LinkedIn, though I'm not that prolific, so that's primarily where you'll see me show up.
Suzy Chase: Well, what a life, what an adventure, and what a book. Thank you so much, John, for coming on Decorating by the Book Podcast.
John Demsey: Well, thank you so much for inviting me and love your podcast, and I hope people get to know and understand this great book.
Outro: Follow Decorating by the Book on Instagram. And thanks for listening to the one and only interior design book podcast, Decorating by the Book.
