Though it may not have a single style, Charles & Co. does have a touch, and its lack of ostentation has led it to have a stealth influence on the way spaces feel, far beyond those it designs. Blake Lively, who is in the early stages of a Charles & Co. project, tells me that \u201ceveryone who knows, knows. Vicky Charles is the talent, heart, and soul who contributed to much of what we see in stores, magazines, mood boards, design shows, hotels, restaurants, and homes today.\u201d<\/p>\n
WITH THE GRAIN
The dining room of the Brooklyn brownstone includes a custom stenciled floor from Pintura Studio.<\/p>\n
Photographed by Gieves Anderson. Stylist: Dominique Baynes. Courtesy of Charles & Co.<\/p>\n
Vicky and Julia first met through Nick Jones, the founder of Soho House. Vicky had worked for Jones in various capacities since she was an 18-year-old waiter at his Cafe Boheme restaurant in Oxford. For a while, when she first moved to New York, she worked for him in hospitality. \u201cYou have to be really good at getting on with the mayor and also be prepared to clean the WCs,\u201d Jones tells me. \u201cIt\u2019s a top-to-bottom job, literally.\u201d By the time Vicky and Julia met, Vicky was head of design at Soho House. Julia had moved to the city for six months while her husband, James, starred in a play on Broadway, and both women had new babies. They became fast friends. Not long afterward they were in LA having dinner with Jones and\u00a0James\u00a0Corden.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was about to turn 40,\u201d Vicky remembers, \u201cand James was saying to me, \u2018What are you gonna do for the next 20 years?\u2019\u2005\u201d He pointed at Jones, his friend. \u201c\u2005\u2018Are you still gonna work for this loser?\u2019\u2005\u201d<\/p>\n
She realized she didn\u2019t want to be at Soho House when she was 60.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, I\u2019ll help you,\u201d Julia says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew the design world, but I didn\u2019t know how to set up a business,\u201d Vicky explains.<\/p>\n
\u201cNeither did I!\u201d Julia insists.<\/p>\n
When they were coming up with a name for their company, Julia paused over \u201cCharles and Corden.\u201d She remembers feeling: \u201cI think somebody\u2019s taken that name\u2026.\u201d (Her husband had it in fairly constant use.) But she liked the old-world abbreviation for \u201cand company,\u201d and it allowed her to smuggle in the first two letters of her last name.<\/p>\n
Before she met James, Julia had worked in a talent agency and then at the nonprofit Save the Children. Nick Jones had told her that Vicky was, aside from being highly creative, \u201camazing at dealing with \u2018tricky\u2019\u2005\u201d\u2014a skill Julia felt she could also claim. The two friends quietly evolved a business through word of mouth. \u201cFor me, it was a project about elevating Vicky\u2019s talent,\u201d Julia says. \u201cAnd I suppose,\u201d she reflects, \u201cin a way, I do that in my daily life with my husband.\u201d<\/p>\n
Behind the scenes is where Julia prefers to be. (\u201cIf more than three people look at me at once I go red,\u201d she says.) Though she is too discreet to say which clients came through her, it\u2019s clear that her experience of the spotlight helps. \u201cThey know that we know what an NDA is,\u201d she explains. \u201cThe types of clients that we attract really, really appreciate\u2014and probably pass on the message\u2014that we won\u2019t step over that line.\u201d<\/p>\n
THE ITALIAN JOB
Villa Cacciarella, a vacation property designed by Charles & Co. on Italy\u2019s Monte Argentario peninsula, overlooks the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n
Photographed by Danilo Scarpati<\/p>\n
Charles & Co. has offices in London and Northern Italy but New York serves as its headquarters: The space is on the 21st floor of an Art Deco building in Midtown. Light streams in from all sides. The main room is surrounded by trolleys of stacked steel trays full of samples\u2014each trolley a different project, each tray a different room. Shelves of Perspex boxes contain fabrics, wallpapers, and tiles in every conceivable color. In preparation for a client meeting, Vicky has arranged some samples on a large wooden table, but the client has canceled: His family has been evacuated from their home in Malibu because of the threat of wildfires. A sign of things to come.<\/p>\n
Vicky\u2019s spatial awareness is such that whenever she enters a room, she clocks every inch of space. \u201cShe does this thing,\u201d Julia says. \u201cHer eyes sort of flicker, genuinely like a sort of robot vibe.\u201d Then she\u2019ll make a pronouncement: That wall needs to go. Or: You need to move that window. She has a few governing principles: Start with the rug. Have lighting at different levels. Don\u2019t put cold colors in a bathroom because when you\u2019re naked, you\u2019re going to want to get something nurturing back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Though it may not have a single style, Charles & Co. does have a touch, and its lack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88,1766,11105,17526],"class_list":["post-18930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-magazine","tag-splitscreenimagerightinset","tag-storytypereporting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}