August 15, 2016Sara Story spent her childhood in Japan, Singapore and Texas, all of which helped shape her point of view as a designer (portrait by Taylor Jewell). Top: The breakfast room at SK Ranch, Story’s home in Texas Hill Country, features a Paavo Tynell brass and glass chandelier from Craig Van Den Brulle, hanging above a custom DLV Designs table. Photos by Eric Laignel, unless otherwise noted
Most of my clients are lighthearted,” says New York–based interior designer Sara Story. “Design shouldn’t be so serious. There should be some whimsy in there.” It’s immediately apparent that Story herself has a generous sense of humor about a lot of things. Smartly turned out in jeans and a white Isabel Marant top, she laughs readily and frequently. All this merriment could tempt one to think of her attitude as almost laissez-faire.
That would be a mistake. Story cut her professional teeth in the office of Victoria Hagan, who regularly handles projects with multimillion-dollar budgets and boldface clients. There, she learned that the ratio of business savvy to creativity in this field is around 80:20. “So much of design is about running a business efficiently,” she says. “And you work very, very hard. You’re always creative, but the amount of time you spend on that aspect is far outweighed by what you spend on the process and the details.”
The distinction should also be made that, for Story, whimsy and rigor are not mutually exclusive. Her clients, mostly in their 30s and 40s, are much like her: old enough to have established careers, started families and developed discerning tastes but youthful enough to desire a bit of fun amid the refinement of their environments.
They have also, like the designer herself, come of age in a time of global connectedness and influence, with all the sophistication that implies. As the daughter of Edward T. Story Jr., the CEO of London-based energy giant SOCO International, Sara Story had a particularly peripatetic early life; she and two older sisters followed their father and mother wherever oil and gas exploration led. The first two years of her life were spent in Japan, the next three in Singapore. “My surroundings — the materiality of them, the atmosphere — were always impactful to me,” Story explains. In Singapore, they lived in one of the city-state’s “Black-and-White” bungalows, a hybrid style dates to British Colonial times and has also been called Tropical Tudorbethan. Needless to say, she was accustomed to cultural mash-ups from an early age.
The living room of this residence in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park neighborhood features a Skygarden chandelier by Flos, custom sheer drapes by Holly Hunt and Dempsey Cocktail Tables from KGBL.
When the family next relocated, to Houston, they immediately stood out. For one thing, their house was unlike any other in their Memorial neighborhood. “It was very influenced by the time my parents spent in Asia, with lots of pieces they had collected from Japan, Thailand and Malaysia,” she says. “Back then, most people didn’t have such a global take on things.”
Story’s mother, Mary Jean Shah, became a curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum. “We were always taking art classes,” remembers the designer. Consequently, aside from travel, her other great passion is “total immersion in the art world.”Both these interests dovetail with her preferred interior style, which encompasses a love of Danish mid-century modern design (“the sense of scale and proportion”); South American textiles; and lighting from the 1950s and ’60s (Max Ingrand, Fontana Arte, Paavo Tynell).
Also essential, she says, are unusual and luxurious surface treatments. “Rooms should have a kind of quiet unfolding of materials that you discover layer by layer,” she explains. “It’s stimulating.”
Case in point: A dining room she designed for Singapore-based clients with a “sensational porcelain collection from their family” evoked 19th-century artist James McNeill Whistler’s famous Anglo-Japanese “Peacock Room,” with the pieces displayed in custom lacquered metal shelves installed against walls of embossed leather under a mercury-mirror ceiling. “There are so many materials available,” Story enthuses, “and so many new ones coming out.” She is, in other words, a sensualist to the core, endeavoring to convey mood, richness of experience and expression through tactility.
Story didn’t immediately leap into a career as a designer, beginning instead by earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of San Diego. A few internships convinced her that this was not her natural path, so she attended San Francisco’s Academy of Art University and earned another degree, this time in interior architecture.
A René Broissand Pagoda Chandelier, 1977, from Galerie Pierre Mahaux, sets a dramatic tone in the Singapore home’s double-height living room. A Mendocino mirror by Pagoda House Gallery, flanked by a pair of Serge Mouille appliqué sconces, hangs above a teak credenza from Morentz. Photo by Masano Kawana
“My mom first brought me to New York when I was ten,” says Story. “I remember walking in Soho and saying, ‘This is where I want to live.’ It’s so exciting — the pace, the energy, the sense of movement, the mixture of cultures and nationalities.” Today, she and her husband reside in Gramercy Park with their three children, ages 12, 8 and 6. They also own SK Ranch, a house in Texas Hill Country that appeared in the pages of Architectural Digest. And Story has just completed work on a weekend retreat in Snedens Landing, New York, just up the Hudson River from Manhattan.
Story has built an impressive portfolio since leaving Hagan’s employ in 2003 to go out on her own. Back then she was focused on starting a family, so she did everything herself and took on only one or two projects a year. Now, she handles, on average, seven projects simultaneously and employs eight people, while making time to create two wallpaper lines, sold through Holland & Sherry and her website. She still, however, oversees all the creative aspects of every project. From the outset, her talents were evident enough to garner attention from the design press, including Elle Décor and Interior Design.
Sara Story Design continues to buzz with activity. On the boards now are a restaurant in Los Angeles (set to open in the fall); Manhattan residences on Central Park West and the Upper East Side and in Noho; and homes in the Hamptons, Aspen and Sun Valley. She is also in talks with various companies about licensed lines of lighting and furniture. Despite her busy schedule, though, she travels annually to Thailand to play championship (yes, championship) elephant polo against her father’s team.
Story’s practice is unlikely to ever become a large corporate design firm. She is simply too hands-on. Besides, given the 80:20 business-to-creativity ratio, she is determined to keep her firm small enough that she can continue having fun. And considering her enthusiasm and resolute positivity, she might even manage to shift that ratio a bit.
