Quintessence: At Home With A YouTube Sensation

 

 

I had only met Stacey Bewkes for a couple of minutes when I had the idea for our video series and wanted her to be my partner in it. I literally signed a book for her at a local store where we had been introduced and, as I drove home, the concept of filming designers in their own homes downloaded itself into my brain.

 

Of course, I already followed Stacey’s much-revered blog Quintessence and I knew how respected she was by the design community. I could see that she knew how to work in Final Cut, as she had posted a video story capturing my former editor at House & Garden at her home in Rhode Island. Between the two of us, we already knew many of the top interior designers around the world: from shoots, dinner parties and events. “We know how smart and fearless and fun they are, but so many only see their work and that’s not enough,” I told her as I crossed my threshold.

 

“Two-dimensional shots of their work in magazines only can offer so much. Let’s break the barrier,” she added excitedly.

 

“And give design a voice,” I added, knowing we both did not have to say anything more: we were all in, even if we didn’t know the town where the other lived. Our shared intent was enough.

 

We quickly made a list of our first top ten asks: some were already friends while others were admittedly reaches. We divided the list up between us and within an hour we were already texting – the first of thousands to one another – that everyone had said yes.

 

And so it began: filming at first in our hometowns of Connecticut, New York, Nantucket…but as the views and subscribers increased so did the distance we traveled from them: to Tangier, Cartagena and Paris. And our support rippled expectedly back: we walked down a street in Charleston and a woman told us how much she loved the series. I sat next to a priest in an airplane on the way to Rome who recognized me. We had comments from places as far away as Poland and Brazil telling us how these videos mattered in their lives. We celebrated 10,000 overall views and then one hundred thousand. Then a million monthly views.

 

The designers themselves began approaching us, telling us how they loved how we could reveal their silverware drawers, clothing closets, gardens and paint color mistakes. No page count could cap the tours as in the case with magazines: we could make the videos any length we wanted, and our biggest criticism was that people wanted them longer.  We did our own marketing, editing, social media, driving and travel arrangements. We shoved power bars into our mouths while inputting the next destination into our GPS.  I always drove and Stacey navigated. We quizzed our children about their homework along the way and obsessed about the next houses we wanted to visit when we saw something delectable posted on Instagram. We never turned the radio on or ever ran out of things to tell one another. We often said, “Oh…my…God….”in exact unison as we drove up yet another spectacular driveway.

 

Over seven years and one hundred video visits, our continued collaboration never gets old or jaded. People making their lives more beautiful and functional and emotionally fulfilling through the design of personal touches is the greatest gift we can give ourselves and our families and friends. I am excited to debut within the pages of PARK Magazine, a sneak peek into what’s ahead as we continue to debut our video visits.

 

I have found that people love the behind-the-scenes stories – whether it’s about getting wonderfully lost in Wales or what we were served for lunch in Tangier – as they do the name of a textile or a plate. In fact, it’s often the best part of the journey, so I am looking forward to sharing those with you, along with Stacey’s brilliant still photography that she somehow always seems to seamlessly capture on the fly whenever she puts down her film camera.

May you find your design voice along the way as we have!