Ep. 167: Serial Entrepreneur Christiane Lemieux on Building an At-Home Empire

Designer, entrepreneur and author, Christiane Lemieux was born and raised in Ottawa, Canada but refers to the world as her “second home” given how frequently she traveled with her family throughout her childhood. While she studied art history and fashion design academically, her business training came through first-person experience. She founded her first brand, DwellStudio, in 1999 and sold it to Wayfair in 2013. She has built several other successful brands, including Lemieux et Cie, The Inside, and Cloth & Company. As a design historian and business expert she also contributes to design publications and has published books in both the design and business spaces including Undecorate and Frictionless. She brings all of her creativity, business acumen, and worldly travels together in the service of creating beautiful, customizable interiors that feel like home.

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Read the Transcript

Amy Devers: Today I’m talking to home design entrepreneur and best-selling author Christiane Lemieux. Christiane has founded several successful brands in the home design space including DwellStudio which she founded in 1999 and sold to Wayfair in 2013, The Inside - a direct-to-consumer, technology driven, home furnishings brand, Cloth & Company - a wholesale brand that deals in , made-on-demand textiles, and Lemieux et Cie - her luxury home furnishings brand. As a design historian and business expert, Christiane has also contributed her wisdom and talent to books and magazines - Her first book, Undecorate, was met with critical acclaim in 2011 and she has just recently released in 2020 her first business book: Frictionless, why the future of everything will be fast, fluid, and Made Just for you. And if this wasn’t enough, she’s also an investor in the consumer and tech sectors with a focus on female founders, inclusivity and diversity… What a powerhouse… here’s Christiane…

Christiane Lemieux: My name is Christiane Lemieux. I live in New York City and I am a designer entrepreneur,author, designer, technology person, and I do it because I really believe in the creative process and I think that it’s something that we can continually build on, not only as humanity, but also in our industry. I just like to push everything forward on a constant basis. 

Amy: I love that! I can’t wait to get into how you do that. But before we get there, can we go back to the beginning? I really like to start building from the ground up. So would you take me back to your childhood and describe your formative years for me, your home town, your family dynamic and what kinds of activities captured your fascination?

Christiane: Sure, I think that where I am today, or where we all are today has everything to do with our formative years. I am Canadian. I grew up in Ottawa, Canada. My mother is an academic and my father is a federal judge. My parents met at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1969 on a midnight train to Moscow (laughs). 

Amy: That’s so romantic. 

Christiane: I know, I know! They were on a school trip we, as a family, have spent a lot of our years dividing our time between Canada and Paris. My father is French, my mother is English, Canadian and so that’s really sort of the backdrop. They spent, and have spent a lot of time travelling. I think my first international trip was when I was two years old and we never stopped after that. My greatest memories of growing up were Christmases on a boat going down the Nile in Egypt and India. I mean they literally took me all over the world. And I think it was the greatest gift because I saw so much. I just uncovered a duffel bag of slides that my mom took -

Amy: Oh man! That’s treasure. 

Christiane: Yeah, I know, I know, it’s treasure. She wants me to convert them into digital imagery which I’m going to dig up somebody to do. Yeah, I think that’s the sort of… I think the basis for me for curiosity, for an appreciation of aesthetics, for my deep, deep passion with design and art history. That’s where it all comes from. It comes from travelling the world my entire life and it’s kind of a… you know, my parents never had a second home or anything like that. The world ended up being our second home and what a gift. I cannot thank them enough and I’m trying to do the same thing with my children now. 

Amy: It sounds like you kind of had keys to the world from a really young age via travel and your parents. But I’m guessing if your mom was an academic then she also probably imparted some of this voracious curiosity what kind of academic was she?

Christiane: So my mother studied Russian literature and language and so she studied it at the Sorbonne and then later at Middlebury and then at [** 0.04.05] in Moscow. She’s a linguist and is deeply fascinated by Russian literature, so slightly different than art history and design history but I think academia nonetheless. We also have a side family theory that she may or may not be a spy or may or not have been a spy, we don’t know because we can’t get that confirmed. We were in some odd places at odd times, so who knows? (Laughs)

Amy: Oh my god, what mystery and intrigue, how exciting! (Laughs)

Christiane: That happened over Christmas this year. So we were like huh, that really checks, so I don’t know, the question… it’s just out there. 

Amy: Huh!

Christiane: Yeah!

Amy: That’s a mystery worth digging into. 

Christiane: Seriously, or a great screenplay at some point (laughs). [0.05.00]

Amy: Yes! So growing up it sounds like it was very textural, you had the inputs from all over the world of not just land formations, but other cultural, heritage and craft and color palettes and textures and smells. What a sensorially rich background to start to develop your creativity from. 

Christiane: I mean correct, yeah. I think that when my parents dragged me through the Louvre on a Sunday morning and I complained, now I look back and just thank them.

Amy: Yeah, I have the same thing. I remember it was the Louvre where my dad coined the term ‘museum burnout,’ because we were just young (laughs) and we had seen so much, I couldn’t process it anymore. I was like, “Get me some ice cream!”

Christiane: It’s so true. Even as an adult, you can only…do one museum in New York and yeah, the ability to take it all in and process it, understand what it means to you, how it’s influencing you, how you could be inspired, is a lot. 

Amy: Okay. So were you traveling all the way up through, to your college years and beyond? Was travel a constant background for you?

Christiane: Constant, constant, constant, constant travel is my thing. I’m going to Nairobi on Friday, so yeah, it’s the battery I plug myself into. And I would say the same thing is true of New York City. So obviously I came down here a lot as a child for the museum and the museum burnout with my parents, but I remember in high school, we came down to do an art class at the Met. We came down from Canada.

And I stood on Worcester Street, not 100 feet from where I live now, and I was like, wow, this is home. And it’s because there’s something about the energy in New York and it’s one of these funny things. You’re either all in or you’re all out. It’s like binary, right? And so for me, through the ups and downs, I’ve lived through 9/11, just through the pandemic, the financial crisis in 2008, I mean this has been my home for much more than half of my life. 

There’s something about this place, with respect to the energy, the inspiration, the culture, what you see and feel, smell, taste, all of those things, every day, that is such a big part of my creative process. I mean New York really is the energy that powers me, I think. 

Amy: It is a very concentrated hub of energy and so many rich pockets of flavor and inputs that are constantly flowing through it. That’s why they call it the greatest city in the world. 

Christiane: It’s a portal; it’s a portal to something. You just feel it and it’s not subtle, obviously, and it’s also not for everybody. The thing about New York is you have to be willing to take it on every day. (Laughs)

Amy: Yes! So back to your youth, what about the teenage years? What flavor was pronounced for you? Were you industrious, rebellious, lost, super focused? How were you expressing yourself and your creativity then? 

Christiane: So I was very rebellious, to the point where my parents sent me to boarding school because -

Amy: Oh damn, I wanna hear this!

Christiane: I’ll say the following though. Pretty willingly on my part. I mean I got up to all kinds of trouble… I’m the person who snuck out of the house at night. I was very rebellious. I was really independent from early on and I’m seeing some of the exact same attributes in my children. I can’t tell if it’s DNA, nurture versus nature, I think about this a lot. But yeah, I just didn’t want to be told what to do. And I wanted to find my own path very early on. And it turns out that my path and the way my parents wanted to raise me and the rules and structures that they wanted to put around, were not congruous. 

So, they sent me to boarding school but I also went willingly. I lived in a smaller town in Canada called Ottawa. They sent me to a girl’s boarding school in Toronto which [0.10.00] was like a step up. It was like moving from Washington to New York. And for me it was eye-opening and I got to see and experience a much bigger city. For me it was much more interesting. And I think that that was very formative too because it made the jump to New York very easy and very seamless. 

Amy: That sounds like the daughter of a spy! (Laughs)

Christiane: We secretly call her Agent M now, the whole family. 

Amy: And maybe it was also the spy in her who is like, I can’t have my daughter sneaking out at night, it’s just not safe. 

Christiane: Right, yeah, or under my watch, yeah. 

Amy: Yeah. 

Christiane: And wait a second, how is this happening? How is this happening to me? Yeah.

Amy: Right. (Laughs)

Christiane: It was interesting because I went to an all-girls school and looking back, when you remove all of the social issues of a teenager and you can focus, for me, I don’t think it’s for everybody, but for me it ended up working very much to my benefit because I went from the girl who snuck out to the girl who wanted to do really well in school. And that was, I think, very helpful.

Amy: That is very helpful, wow. Did you find yourself in the trenches forming deep, long term bonds with other people who were in the same formative situation?

Christiane: I did and the other thing that was interesting about that experience was, it was a pretty international group of humans, from all over the place. 

Amy: Oh, that’s nice. 

Christiane: There were girls who came from Iran and hearing their stories was so interesting and girls from Africa and girls from all over, some Europeans, and all over Canada. So it was… there was definitely a much more diverse and global outlook in boarding school than in my local public school. 

Amy: Wow, you’ve had a nice aperture on the world. Okay, so at what point did the love and fascination with art and design strike you and did that drive you to study at Queen’s University and Parson’s, can you connect those dots for me? 

Christiane: Yeah, I would be painting and sketching and drawing from the moment I showed up. So I remember, my parents sent me to Montessori when I was three years old and there was an art station in the classroom and I, instead of rotating, would try and just stay there. And do that and only that. And when I look back, that was the first experience for me where I think I fell into the flow because I would totally lose track of time and space and everything. 

And that’s continued through my life. So for me, it’s the creative process, the artistic process, is the place that I’m the happiest and feel the most comfortable. So it was pretty evident to me early on, the road I was going to take. And I remember when other people were asking for candy (laughs), I was asking my dad for art supplies. So it’s been a fairly constant thing. My parents wouldn’t let me go to design school right out of the gate. 

They’re academic, so they wanted me to get an undergraduate degree, so I went to Queen’s University and I studied art history. And when I had proved myself worthy, they let me apply to design school and I came to New York to go to Parsons. 

Amy: And what did you study at Parsons?

Christiane: I studied fashion design, of all things. Parsons is an incredible school - and to be honest, I mean my undergraduate degree was easy compared to the workload that they piled on at Parsons. I mean it’s one of these things that’s like part university, part trade school and they really teach you how much work you’re going to have to do [0.15.00] to be in any of these creative fields, which is a lot, you know, and it’s hands-on.It was a 12 hour day at Parsons from sketching for fashion illustration all the way through to sewing and all these things. What it taught me, I think, is A, respect for the creative process, B, it gave me the tools to understand how hard and what a voluminous amount of work this was going to be. And it also taught me the design fundamentals and then I was… I think the interesting thing about the creative process is that when you have yours, you can apply it to… you know, whether it’s food styling or fashion or interiors. 

And I think the biggest bridge for me was textile design, right? So in fashion I really learned textile design and that was the bridge between fashion and interiors for me. 

Amy: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and it’s true, I found the same thing. I studied furniture design, but I was maybe even in New York City when you were because I went to FIT for a couple of years. When I learned the process of designing and building hands-on furniture, I was able to see the world in an exploded view and I was like, well now I can build anything, whether that’s an idea, a platform, a system. When you know how to work with yourself from zero to this, you can apply it to anything, which is magic. 

Christiane: Correct, yeah.

Amy: So learning all those lessons at Parsons and putting in all that work and connecting yourself to textile design, is that how you launched yourself into the professional world and what were your first few steps like for you in the early years, professionally? How did you find your entrepreneurial footing especially? 

Christiane: I started DwellStudio a year after I graduated from Parsons. 

Amy: Oh my god! That’s wild!

Christiane: I’ve only had two real jobs in my life. One was the first job I took. So I had a friend at Parsons who married a gentleman who was in venture capital who had bought a home furnishings company called Portico, which was in New York City. And in my final year of school she had me go meet with him and he said, look, I need somebody to be a creative director here. It was a bed and bath store, so a lot of bedding, textiles and things like that. 

He’s like, do you want to try, and I said, sure. So I left Parsons, went to be the design director at Portico and started designing and putting things on the floor and they started to resonate with consumers. The interesting thing is that coming from Canada, wallpaper had started there, so I knew Tyler Brûlé and that whole team and was really deeply influenced by mid-century. It was really a thing in Canada, before it became a big thing in the United States. 

That was the language I was speaking. And so I started designing textiles that were more modern, mid-century focused, put them on the floor at Portico. They resonated and I just decided I was going to do it myself. And I had no idea how and I just fumbled my way through it. 

Amy: What do you attribute that to, is that just courage and moxie, or was that naiveté or a mix of both? 

Christiane: Oh, I think it was a very serious mix of both. I think my parents told me I could do anything, so I believed them. 

Amy: Oh man! (Laughs) That’s awesome. 

Christiane: And I also think that I didn’t know, I didn’t know all the things that I fundamentally know now, which is how much money it takes to build a company, all of these things. I just figured my way through it. I launched the company, I launched Dwell in 2000, I don’t know, I was just graduating from school. At the same time one of… this is all serendipitous luck too, one of the people that I worked with at Portico for that short amount of time went on to Crate & Barrel her name is Celeste, she’s amazing [0.20.00], she’s still a friend of mine. 

She told the team at Crate & Barrel, oh, there’s a designer at Portico who has gone on her own and she’s doing some interesting things, why don’t you see if she’ll do some work for you. And so what I did is, on one hand I started a private label business, which I called Design Space, and on the other I started Dwell. And I did a whole bunch of work for all of these larger companies, Crate & Barrel being the first one, but then I went on to do walmart.com and Room & Board, a whole bunch of different home companies. 

And Bed Bath & Beyond, I started producing in Asia and shipping containers to the US. It scaled very quickly.  And I used the funds from the private label design to actually build the brand, Dwell. And so it was interesting, the world was very different then. I had travelled to Asia a lot, so I had some connections there. So I was able to do sourcing very easily. So it kind of all got tied up in this interesting bow for me because between the travel, the language, the ability to set this all up pretty seamlessly and inexpensively and actually do all the work myself because I was so used to it at Parsons, working 18 hours a day, that I got this off the ground without any outside funding.

Amy: Man, that sounds like such a heavy lift, but I guess you did have some pathways already carved, not that that makes it easy, but I’m also wondering and hoping, did you have some mentors you could call up and ask for advice when things got overwhelming or when you hit a place where you’d never been before? Or were you really just like, I think I’ll try this and hope it works?

Christiane: If I’m totally honest with you, I was like, all right, I’ll just figure it out. (Laughs) Because I also, I was really young, so I didn’t have any mentors. I’d never really worked anywhere and it’s just like a puzzle for me. It’s interesting, in retrospect, so much of entrepreneurship ends up being creative problem solving. I mean that’s all you’re really doing on a constant basis. (Laughs)

Amy: Yes, so speaking of your serial entrepreneurship, you’ve launched many brands since DwellStudio, including Living by Christiane Lemieux, Cloth & Company, Lemieux Et Cie and the inside, most recently, can you walk me through your entrepreneurial progression and some of the major highlights and lessons that you’ve integrated along the way?

Christiane: Yeah, so it turns out maybe in the end I’m as much a serial entrepreneur as I am a designer. 

Amy: I think yes! (Laughs)

Christiane: You know what, I think I like to build things and I like the challenge of… if I’m intellectually honest, I’m much better at building things than running things. So I’m a builder and less an operator. I built DwellStudio over 13 years and then I sold it to Wayfair in 2014… it was really interesting for me because I went, that was my second job. So my first job was at Portico and my second job was at Wayfair.

When I went to Wayfair I got to learn really the e-commerce fundamental from one of the best CEOs in the ecommerce business. I mean Niraj is pretty, he’s pretty phenomenal. The way he thinks and approaches things is so wildly different from how I do, that I think there were a lot of really interesting learning moments for me. He is very rational, very focused, very engineering driven. He stack ranks everything, he’s methodical in ways that I wasn’t. 

Some creatives are very methodical, very process oriented, very structured. I just am not, and so I learned a lot from being there. And I also, I think, saw the landscape in a slightly different way than my colleagues did because I was coming at it from a creative point of view, right? Into a very technology driven environment. And so that is where Cloth & Company and then after that, The Inside came from because I realized that [0.25.00] there were all these cutting edge things happening in technology that applied to the industry that I’m in and love and were there ways we could bring more interesting thoughtful solutions to our consumers, right, to our customers. 

And so what people really want to do in home furnishings is design and by designing, taking your form and putting your own fabric to it and designing your room is a really great tool and technology allows us to do that pretty seamlessly now. I worked with some of my favorite factories, we got digital printers, we got very quick throughput. This prior to, obviously, the supply chain issues we’re having right now, as well as component shortages and things like this.

But theoretically we could take a customer, could choose their design, have it printed on upholstery fabric, have it, at this point upholstered and then turned around to them in under four weeks. Pre-pandemic, this was a completely feasible business model. And the great thing about all of these… putting all these things together is that nobody is holding inventory. There aren’t gigantic warehouses to heat and/or air condition. We’re not having to produce 3,000 yards of textiles using 10,000 gallons of water. 

It’s also much gentler for the planet and I think that’s important too and I think technology is allowing us to do that thoughtfully across a lot of manufacturing. So I just wanted to put together all of these ideas into, again, problem solving, into a company and put it out there for consumers. And that’s what we did at The Inside. 

Amy: Yeah, it is so fascinating. I also think if you are a manufacturer and you have to commit to anticipating how many of a certain piece you’re going to sell, then you also need to commit he marketing dollars to that and then that’s what you kind of put forward. When you don’t have to do that, you really do allow the consumer a lot more creativity with their options and the product choices because you’re not really invested in what they buy, you’re just invested in how they buy it and getting it to them in a way that’s, as you say, frictionless. 

Christiane: I think that’s right. And I also think that especially in our industry, I think the fashion industry as well, these creative industries, I mean we have so much more access to inspiration, imagery, beauty, we can really start to formulate our aesthetic opinion. And I think that it’s much more niche and segmented than people think. And so I think then people can go after exactly what they want and they can modify things that are 90% there to be 100% there. 

To really make them happy with their purchases and for us, when you’re holding somebody’s hand and helping them create their home, it’s not only an honor, but also you want them to have exactly what they want. And I don’t think that page 305 of a catalog anymore, I think it’s personal. And I think that during the pandemic we also all learned that our homes are sort of our everything and they certainly are now. 

And it looks like they will be that for the foreseeable future, right? So I keep talking about the decade of home, I think we’re going into the decade of home because I think people are thinking about their spaces and how they make them feel a lot more than they used to. 

Amy: Oh, I 100% agree and I teach furniture design here at Rhode Island School of Design and I’m seeing, something I’ve been aware of, but it’s now really coming through in the generation of designers that I’m working with, is they’re actively designing for a more itinerate, nomadic kind of lifestyle because they don’t want to move from… they want to move from place to place, but they don’t want to bring cheap, disposable, throwaway furniture into their spaces. 

They want to be able to fill that space with the things that they need that have meaning and have care and intention baked into them. And so I think that’s just a fascinating sort of evolution that we’re in the middle of, for the way we interface with our objects. I think it’s really important and it’s also important for us to feel grounded, secure and able to launch ourselves out into the world with the most momentum we possibly can. [0.30.00] If we’re coming from a home space that feels like it’s truly restorative for us. 

Christiane: I think that’s completely true. And if we learned nothing else during the pandemic, I think that that’s the lesson that we learned. I think the most interesting outcome of this is going to be what does work look like, because even the most traditional office sort of bound businesses are having to re-evaluate that. So our homes not only function as the place we lay our head at night, which is, you know, in some ways what it really used to be before, now they have to be our home, our office, in some cases our school room. 

All of these other aspects of our lives are driven from our homes now. So I think everything is more thoughtful and I totally agree with you. People want to invest in their homes now in a way they didn’t, that it doesn’t, throwaway doesn’t feel as safe or correct.

Amy: I’m really interested in this entrepreneurial side of you, but I’m also fascinated by the fact that you’re an author and frequent contributor to magazines. Clearly you have something to say but I’m also wondering why you are compelled to write? I mean your books include Undecorate: The No-Rules Approach to Interior Design. The Finer Things, which is Timeless Furniture, Textiles and Details. 

And recently you wrote the book Frictionless, which is, directly related to the inside and your system of creating a business that is frictionless in order for people to acquire things that are custom to them in a way that is also sort of comparable to the Amazonation, the Amazon ‘Primization’ of the world. On a personal level, how does being an author complement your endeavours and why are you compelled to write? 

Christiane: That’s interesting. I think that for me, just the act of writing is also a creative process, right? So it’s just stretching a different muscle than the sketching or some of these other, the sort of tactile designing. I’m really intellectually curious and so sometimes that curiosity vends with the greater curiosity. So I learned a ton at Wayfair and when I was thinking about what the future of commerce looked like, I realized that it has to be frictionless. Just think about all of our experiences. 

If you get into a situation in any kind of internet scenario where you get down a rabbit hole and there’s nobody to talk to and this, that and the other thing. Like you’re out, you bounce and that’s it, right? And I learned that really fundamentally at Mayfair. And one of the things that they’re phenomenal at is customer service. So if you look at the happiness scale of their customers versus a lot of their competitors, I mean it’s night and day. And I think this just got amplified during the pandemic, was that people who held their customers hands, whether it was in person or virtually, those are the companies that have succeeded. 

And the companies that make things easy and frictionless for their consumers are the ones that we’re loyal to. I mean Amazon Prime is Amazon Prime because who says no to that? Even if it’s slightly more expensive, you know that the process is going to be so frictionless that it’s worth it to you anyway, right? And I think we can apply that. And so we are also, between [Baso’s 0.34.15] and Steve Jobs and swiping and Prime and all these things, we’re also being retrained as humans, right, to behave in a certain way. 

So if you’re starting a company and you make it difficult to interface, to transact, to get product, there’s nobody on the other end of the phone to talk to you, to help you, it’s not going to succeed and that’s the knowledge I wanted to impart to any early stage entrepreneur. Think about how it’s frictionless, otherwise you’re going to have a very hard time competing, regardless of how much money you raise, right? I mean it doesn’t matter. Customers have to be satisfied. [0.35.00]

It’s dead simple and that’s what I learned and that’s why I wanted to share that book. I’m writing another book right now that’s sort of a follow-up to The Finer Things, which is kind of a loose encyclopedia of furniture. So we’re going to start to break down each design category thoughtfully and write some design history. 

Amy: Oh, wonderful, I’m looking forward to that, when is that out? 

Christiane: That is out in spring of 2024. 

Amy: I’ll keep an eye out for that. Back to the writing a little bit. You said you’re intellectually curious; does the writing actually help you organize your thoughts? It’s kind of obvious to me how it might be a supportive marketing endeavor, but it doesn’t feel like it’s just coming from a savvy marketer?

Christiane: I don’t think you (laughs) you write really big textbook books if you’re a savvy marketer. 

Amy: No, right (laughter). 

Christiane: I wish it was a savvy marketing…, it’s like a journey for me. how I ended up writing a textbook or an encyclopedia of furniture, I have no idea. But I would say that I went on a creative journey and I started talking to my editor and she’s like, you have to write that book. And that’s how I get back into it. But that’s how… it’s more just sort of , if this makes any sense, a conversation I’m having with a design community. It’s like, do you think this is cool? Yeah. Should we do this? Yeah. Is this important? Yes. 

Amy: Yes, that does make sense. This is a conversation I’m having with the design community right now. (Laughs)

Christiane: Exactly, so you know exactly what -

Amy: Different avenue, yes. 

Christiane: Exactly, it’s the same thing. 

Amy: That makes a lot of sense. 

Christiane: It’s a reverence for ideas. 

Amy: Speaking of ideas, I really want to talk about your creative process because you’ve already mentioned at the top that once you have a process you can apply it to all of your endeavors. You are a designer, an author, a serial entrepreneur and investor, which we haven’t talked about yet, and a design historian. So we’ve kind of heard how all of your thinking works to glue those together under the umbrella of Christiane Lemieux. But I’m wondering if you can give us an overview of your process, from the inception of an idea to nurturing it into a thing?

Christiane: I would say that a lot of this is informed by travel, right? It’s informed by a lot of the inputs I’ve had in my lifetime. And then I do a lot of this through the lens of design. So I really believe the creative process is a continuum right? I mean if we’re all talking to each other, there’s very few completely original ideas. Some of the textiles I just designed, starting in ancient Egypt. So we’ve been speaking in the same visual and creative language for as long as we’ve been walking and talking to each other. I think it’s a continuum. My creative process comes from, I’m inspired by this and then I dive into, here’s the history of this. So if I’m going to make a curved sofa, if I’m going to design it, where is it coming from? 

Some of it may be Royere, some of it [may be Gucci 0.39.26], some of it may be something I saw last week, but it’s coming from something. And I really, really am very, very serious about talking about where the inspiration comes from, what the continuum of the design history is. The why now and building on that, right? So I love Royere’s [?] polar sofa, but it is very large, has very big arms, is very, very specific. But the shape of it is [0.40.00] visual poetry. 

So how do you take some of these building blocks and then make them perfect for current spaces, sizes, you know, how we live and function? So I really think about it from that kind of 360 point of view. And then when you look at it, how does it make you feel? How does it make you feel when you sit in it? I really approach design from… it’s like my mental blender. So it’s the historic continuum, the how does it make you feel, the, where was I inspired and what story does it tell for you in your space. And how does it add to your life? I think these things are really important. 

Amy: It is, they’re all very important and I can kind of interpret this also through your entrepreneurial problem solving, in terms of how does it add to your life, what’s the experience like, how does it make you feel. Even through the customer operation. For you personally, what’s the criteria or the why now of starting a new entrepreneurial endeavor for you, knowing that it’s going to consume so much of your life and energy. It’s got to have meaning for you in order to do that. How do you drill down to find that meaning or decision making?

Christiane: Obviously that’s evolved over time. But now, one, it has to give me joy. Two, I think it has to be doing something creative, it has to be building on something meaningful you know, I think now I’m building on my Dwell legacy, on the whole lifestyle brand, but bringing in all of the things that I learned along the way. I mean one of the things that I’m very cognizant of, is I don’t want to create products that you throw away, right? 

Which is why I think the design continuum is important. I’d like to be able to create things that people love and live with and hopefully pass on as opposed to the idea of just trend, and pushing things out. Just product for product sake, and I think that that’s where consumerism is headed. I think that we’re becoming philosophically much more aligned with our European friends who buy less, buy beautifully, invest and I think that’s the right way to go.

So I really try and bring that philosophy to the things that I start now. You know, I really don’t believe that you can find white space in the market, build one product, market-market-market on Facebook, Instagram, Google Shopping, SEO, and build something of value. It’s really driven by the customer. They have to be along for the journey with you and you have to be, doing something that’s helpful to them. 

Amy: I think now there’s also a real need to resonate with the values of the company. So you started DwellStudio all on your own - Very young. 

Christiane: Very young. 

Amy: Now you’ve got several successful brands under your belt, I’m wondering how you would characterize your leadership and relationship building style?

Christiane: It’s interesting, that has also evolved along the way too. So now, you know, I think that the collaborative, a great collaborative environment is the best way to maximize output. I always say this to everybody on my team, 10 heads is better than one. And you’re going to see something that I don’t see, I’m going to see something that you don’t see, let’s have a conversation and that’s really become my leadership style. 

It wasn’t necessarily always that way, but I think, especially in creative fields, everybody has always got something thoughtful to add. So we do a lot of back and forth on my team. And at the end of the day, so our litmus test is, would I put this in my own home. We’re not creating product [0.45.00] just for the creation of product sake. We’re really thoughtfully putting stuff out into the universe. 

Amy: I like the idea of creating a truly collaborative environment. I feel like that is the real richness of life, right, when you’re in a soup with other perspectives and ideas and you all get to be nourished by what everybody else is bringing to the pot, it’s just the best. So a big mission of mine here with this podcast is to humanize designers and in doing that I like to celebrate the full spectrum of your humanity. So that means I usually ask some personal questions too. 

Christiane: Sure. 

Amy: If you just want to get right in there, I love to know what you would consider your highest priority in life, in your whole life, not necessarily just your work life. 

Christiane: Okay, I’m back, yes, so my highest priority is raising my children who are 14 and 16. And our teenagers are in New York City, which is you know, challenging in ways which I could never have known. Nor is the introduction of social media into parenting something that’s easy to navigate. 

Amy: Yeah (laughs).

Christiane: So when I’m not working and designing, I spend a lot of my time trying to feel my way through that and do the best job I possibly can. That’s sort of my biggest priority. 

Amy: That makes sense. 

Christiane: Yeah (laughs) and I’ve got to tell you, it’s not easy! I laugh a lot because I thought wow, it would be such a great gift to my kids to raise them in New York, they’ll be at the Met every weekend, going to Broadway, all these things, and then we get hit with a pandemic and then you layer Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok on top of that with a lot of time on your hands and it becomes a pretty daunting challenge. (Laughs). But then beyond that, as I grow Lemieux as a sort of brand, I think about what kind of company I want to build, what kind of example, mentor I want to be. As I think about the next generation of people that work in our industry, you know, trying to do the right thing. But also down at the product level, we just want to create things that hopefully don’t end in a landfill or a trend only breakout in a digital publication. Just trying to create something of longevity, substance that’s helpful to people and -

Amy: Has soul. 

Christiane: Yeah, and has a soul, right? 

Amy: Is there something on the personal development side of things, is there something that continues to challenge you, or where would you say your leading edge of growth is in terms of you on the ladder to self-actualization? 

Christiane: We’re in such a huge flux right now.I mean the pandemic changed the way we experience almost everything and it’s fundamentally changed… I mean I think the working schedule, the need to be in a fixed place. Almost everything is up for grabs. I’m in New York because my children are in school here, but after my children are done school here, you know, the landscape becomes wide open [0.50.00] because… my team is already virtual because I built it. I launched the brand into the market in August of 2020.

And so you know, all of this has been in the middle of, and/or post first wave of pandemic. So my team is dispersed, it’s all over the world, it will probably never have a structured office in the way that I would have in 2019. So what does that mean for me? What does that mean for the people that work with me? What does that mean for our industry at large? These are the questions that fascinate me right now because it’s so interesting to read the tea leaves in this complete, great upheaval of a longstanding tradition of how we work and live our lives. 

And so I spend a lot of time thinking about that. It’s problem solving, it goes right back to what I really love to do. And so I’m trying to figure this out. 

Amy: Still trying to figure it out. 

Christiane: I know, it’s all I’ve ever done. That’s my sort of mission in life. I’m trying to figure it out. And there’s a lot to figure out now. 

Amy: Yeah there is and there’s also this extra important, urgent imperative that we figure it out in a way that is -

Christiane: Thoughtful, sustainable. 

Amy: Sustainable, thoughtful and also much more, I think, caretaking of our own humanity. 

Christiane: Oh, I totally agree, and inclusive. Look, the great thing about design is that it’s all of us. It’s a language we’re all in together. And it’s one we all speak. And I think that the inclusivity of that, hopefully, you know, much more thoughtful going forward, is the relationship we’re in with each other. I think the future is wide open and that, figuring that out is very interesting to me. 

Amy: So the future is wide open. What is in the pipeline for you in the near future and also, what do you see for yourself on the very distant horizon?

Christiane: Well, in the near future I am trying to build this new brand in this new world, in this new way? So a sort of multi-category brand with a dispersed team, in a world where retail is in total flux, so do you have storefronts, do you have catalogs, do you sell online, do you do all of it? Do you… you know, wholesale? I mean all of it is up for grabs and I’m honestly feeling my way through that because I think that the omni of everything is actually going to be what works? 

So just being part of all of these channels of distribution, from a business perspective, I think are important. I’m feeling my way through that, trying to understand what it means to be a brand builder in 2022 and beyond because it’s completely different, right? Nobody would have ever told you that social media would have been the biggest driver of brand awareness and sales. I mean even five years ago, people would have told you that that was not possible. 

And now we know it very much is. And you know, this morning I’m reading, Meta might shut down in Europe. What does that mean? It’s changing minute by minute in ways that it never did before. And so I think, seeing around those corners is one, very difficult, but two, really interesting. So I think I spend a lot of time thinking about what the future will bring. 

In the distant, the very distant future, you know, I don’t know because everything is changing so quickly, I don’t know. I don’t know. It used to be you could have these concrete plans, but now [0.55.00] technology is throwing us so many curveballs that the ideas that we grew up with, even the storylines that we were told over and over again, just are dissipating, right? I mean who knows? 

Amy: In a general sense though, do you see yourself as enjoying a large population of grandchildren (laughs), do you see yourself maybe taking a slower pace and sailing the world or… I guess I’m trying to get a sense of, you’re always problem solving and looking around the corner. Is there ever a moment where tranquility or just peace -

Christiane: Yes, I’d really like to get my pilot's license. 

Amy: Yes! Okay!

Christiane: And fly a small plane across the globe. I really would.

Amy: That would be so amazing. 

Christiane: Like to photograph along the way. 

Amy: Ah! Like a human drone photographer? (Laughs)

Christiane: Like a human drone, I’d like to be a human drone for a while. And yes, I’d like to have a gazillion grandchildren, if possible because the other thing that I think we all learned on this pandemic journey is when you sit in your home with your family, how awesome they are. And here you are with your team. And so now I want a much bigger team. I wish I could go back and have seven more children, it’s a little bit late for me for that now (laughs), but I think it would be the importance of family.

And I think that having a great home that sets the scaffold for that is… cannot be undervalued. I had dinner last night with my kids and I lit candles and we did a whole thing and it’s just a regular school night, but I was like, wow, I mean here we are. We’re sitting and we’re having a conversation and you know what? Two years ago when I was on the amped up hamster wheel and I was coming home from a meeting and doing this and getting on a plane and doing that and then all of a sudden I slowed down, it allowed me to appreciate, one, how important, not only my family and my extended family is, my friends, but also how important it is to have a place that they can come home to and congregate. 

My son said to me last night, he said, “You can never sell this apartment mom; you can never sell it, because it’s my childhood home.” And I was like, you’re right, and you know, feel that, and I’m glad you feel that way. And I’m glad it sustained you through the pandemic and I’m glad that you’re very permissive of your designer mom who changes the furniture schemes all the time (laughs) and I know you don’t really like it, but I’m grateful that you’re along for the journey with me.

Amy: Yeah, that’s beautiful and it makes perfect sense. You can’t really think about what would make people happy in their own homes unless you’ve built that home for yourself. 

Christiane: Exactly, and you know what, at the end of the day, it’s not about stuff, it’s just about the feeling, right? 

Amy: It’s about the feeling and how the stuff can help create that feeling. 

Christiane: Well exactly, because if you’re happy and the things that you surround yourself with make you happy, the feeling will be exactly what you want it to be. It’ll feel like home. 

Amy: Yeah, that’s so beautiful, thank you so much Christiane, this has been really wonderful talking to you and I really appreciate you sharing your story. 

Christiane: Thanks Amy. 

Amy: Thank you for listening! To see images of Christiane’s work and read the show notes, click the link in the details of this episode on your podcast app, or go to cleverpodcast.com where you can also sign up for our newsletter, subscribe to Clever on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you would please do us a favor and rate and review - it really does help a lot! We also love chatting with you on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook - you can find us @cleverpodcast You can find me, @amydevers. Clever is hosted & produced by me, Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan and music by El Ten Eleven.  Clever is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit airwavemedia.com to discover more great shows. They curate the best of them, so you don’t have to.

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Many thanks to this episode’s sponsor:

Gild Insurance

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Lemieux Home designs

Showroom

Christiane and her kids

Dwell Studio catalog cover

Showroom

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Clever is produced and hosted by Amy Devers with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Ilana Nevins and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.

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Clever is produced by 2VDE Media. Thanks to Rich Stroffolino for editing this episode.
Production assistance from Ilana Nevins and music by El Ten Eleven—hear more on Bandcamp.
Shoutout to Jenny Rask for designing the Clever logo.

Clever is a proud member of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit airwavemedia.com to discover more great shows.

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