Jonathan Adler Wants to Teach You How to ‘Decorate Like a Designer’ (VIDEO)
Exclusive
Ever since Jonathan Adler first uttered “Seen ya later, decorator” on Bravo’s late, great Top Design back in 2007, we have been obsessed with the puckish interior designer, author and potter. His luxe, cheeky work is a perfect mix of fun and fabulous, which basically sums up his personal vibe as well. Now he’s sharing his secrets to creating the space you want—and others want to visit—in his new Wondrium series Decorate Like a Designer With Jonathan Adler. Along the way, Adler also drops knowledge on everything from the dirty secrets of Victorian era to the origins of mauve to the state of today’s design scene, all with the same sense of play he brings to his work.
Check out the streaming service’s exclusive trailer and our chat below.
This Wondrium show is so cool because it’s clearly educational, but it’s a cool education—part art history, part design tips. I love how you take us through the eras of design. I actually took notes like it was a class! Oh, good, that’s the idea! I think the magic of Wondrium is that it’s “edu-tainment.” The hope is that I’m entertaining and that people learn a lot, that they feel inspired to learn the rules and then break the rules with my guidance.
In the opener, you reveal your fail-safe design formula, which is 99 percent chic, 1 percent playful punctuation. That itself got me looking around my place…I may be at, like, 70-30. Oh. [Laughs]
There’s a lot of stuff happening. [Laughs] OK, well…I just think one has to be strategic and careful. You know, inasmuch as I might be known as being kind of playful in [my work], everything I do has sort of a classical, elegant foundation and then just a whisper of playfulness. You’ll learn all those rules, or at least I hope so.
Can you talk about your “decorate to communicate” concept? Totes. I mean, decorating has a few different functions. You know, you need to live well and be comfortable. You’re the one who is going to be in your space more than anyone, so it needs to please you. But then also it should be a considered expression of who you are, right?
And I think so often in decorating magazines, you see spaces that were just done by the decorator and they completely lack personality. So I hope that my Wondrium series helps teach people how to get the glamorous, polished look of a decorator-done space but with the details that make it personal. Yeah. That’s what I think the design should be.
What other topics or themes do you take on in future episodes? Oh, my God, it’s kind of soup-to-nuts. Because for me, this was an incredible opportunity to distill what I have figured out over the last 30 years and pay it forward. So it’s a full expression of my patented decorating-and-design formula and techniques. There are no secrets I don’t share. I hope it will give people the tools to express themselves, and I hope I did it in a really entertaining way. That’s my goal with the series.
It feels like over the last decade, you have really leaned into the idea of making all of this available to anyone. That it’s not just for the elite. You even note that a lot of “chic” design has an unfriendliness to it. Yes. I think my mission in life is to break that rule, to make “chic” more accessible and friendly. That’s a challenging task, and I would like to think I am just the alchemist to crack the code. Also, all of those tricks and techniques are included in this series.
It was so cool to see you sitting there talking to your husband, Simon Doonan, in your pottery studio. That’s where it all started for you, right? Oh, bro, I was basically Brooklyn before Brooklyn was Brooklyn. [Laughs] The posh and polished decorator you might see in the series ain’t how I started. I started as a really gritty craftsman, and that’s still where my heart is and where I work out most of my designs. In my pottery studio. That is who I am.
I still remember like being able to identify a Jonathan Adler horse statue, from just the angles, the lines and the styling. Well, I think pottery is a great way to deal with design, because clay is so malleable. I can do whatever I want with clay, and the very same principles apply to designing a pot as to designing a room or a house. It’s all about lines, proportion, color, pattern, and, most importantly, communication. That’s the main thing—communication.
Do you have any other guests come in? Nope, Simon is the only special guest star. I only had the absolute best guest star. [Laughs]
The show really does feel like that cool class you could take as an elective in college. You provide so much interesting information about not just the history of design, but how one period’s vibe influenced or catapulted the next design movement. Oh, good! In addition to my kind of signature techniques and methods, I also wanted to give a quick Cliffs Notes summary of the sweep of design starting in the late 19th century—just so people can understand how we got here and to dip into the majesty of the buffet of design, all of the different movements. I think that we’re lucky to live in a postmodern time when you can sample from all the meaningful design movements.
And I do love that you were able to relate postmodernism to rap music and sampling. Well, that to me is what postmodernism is. I’m a postmodern person. I came of age during a time when postmodernism was really happening, and rap music is the perfect embodiment of what that is: It’s about sampling quite literally from the past and creating something totally original.
What do you think will be next as far as home design coming out of a pandemic? People were trapped at home and suddenly they were like, “Oh, wait, no…that corner of my house looks like hell. I need to crank it up.” The pandemic obviously was a nightmare, but I think it catalyzed people to live their dream at home and to really make their space everything it can be.
OK, last question. You’re invited to somebody’s home for a housewarming. What do you take? Well, I am lucky to have the world at my fingertips because I make so many things. I bring my LSD candle because it is memorable and glamorous and slightly gilded—a portal to surreal fantasy. So it’s everything design can and should be in one object.
Decorate Like a Designer With Jonathan Adler, Series premiere, Friday, May 13, Wondrium
