Design of the times

When one walks into these two designers’ showroom, the feeling is light, like it’s daytime all the time. There’s thankfully no brocade, no flower prints, no loud colors on the pieces. Instead, you get champagne, cream, white, ecru, beige, eggshell – what you’d find on the color wheel under "earth" or "neutral." The colors of your hot drinks, in fact – cappuccino, mocha, cafe au lait, etc.

People who love color argue that white is a non-color and that neutral is a very safe choice and has little personality. Neutral colors may be reliable, but when used incorrectly in any space, even the safest cream could be as disastrous as red. Without putting the right accessories to bring the room to life, neutral can be as boring as watching paint dry.

At interior designers Ivy Almario and Cynthia Almario’s showroom, you see how neutral takes on a whole lot of personality. Their designs are almost like chameleons. You see the same colors in different settings and the pieces fit like a glove. You put the bamboo-painted screen behind the sofa and it becomes a lively picture; you change the throw pillows from brown to luscious red and it suddenly feels romantic that you almost expect Barry White music to be playing softly in the living room; you change the accessories from the tall, minimal arrangement of orchids to a stout glass vase with roses and it becomes instantly young.

The tricks are endless and that’s because the girls’ designs are so adaptable to any environment they take on the personality of anyone who buys them and any accessory you put around them. (I call them "girls" because that’s how Ivy and Cynthia have always struck me since I met them years ago – you can’t find a closer relationship than theirs, always giggling and finishing each other’s sentences, knowing exactly what the other is thinking.)

Their showroom at Federal Design Expo on Pasong Tamo Extension is a dream come true for both of them. After practicing in the United States, and in Manila where they designed homes for some of society’s top personalities and the hottest restaurants and boutique hotels, they’ve now taken on a bigger market: the public.

"Vivian and Jeffrey Ng, clients from before with whom we had done projects for a period of nine years, opened Federal Hardware. For some reason, the Dutchboy warehouse beside it became available and they said, you know what, it’s such a big space (2,400 square meters), why don’t you girls design something for us?"

And so they did. It was hard at first, say the sisters, especially since their interior design projects did not let up. They had pictured a type of store where they could ask clients to wait a month or two before the furniture would be available. "Like stores where the showroom is perpetually immaculate because nothing is sold off the floor, so the designers and their suppliers are so relaxed. But Jeffrey wanted retail. If a customer liked it, she should be able to buy it right then and there, so nakakalbo yung showroom."

Ivy says, "Having a store is like having a baby. You cannot put the baby back into the womb. It’s 24/7."

Cynthia calls it a "happy problem" because the pieces are moving so fast "we always need more furniture." A girl from Cebu once saw the entire showcase and bought everything. "It’s a happy problem but stressful, we didn’t anticipate the reaction."

Months after opening their atelier, the girls are more in rhythm with how a retail store operates. "We’ve learned to look at the small picture instead of looking at the big picture all the time. We’ve learned that there are different strokes for different folks, that retail is real hard work, very detail-oriented and doing the pricing is quite a challenge."

They’ve also learned that good pricing practically clears the inventory. "We once sourced wooden plates from Hanoi, Vietnam and sold them for P2,500 while others were selling them for P8,500. One lady wiped out our stocks."

In our previous interview, these designers described the perfect client as somebody who gave them carte blanche, who told them what they wanted, what they needed, and then let them work their magic. Having a showroom of their own isn’t as simple as working with one client. It was a learning experience for Ivy and Cynthia when they opened Federal Design. First of all, they had to cater to different economic brackets – the A market, who wouldn’t think twice about buying an expensive armchair; the B market, who would think twice about buying the same expensive armchair but eventually buys it; and the C market who will walk away from an expensive armchair and will probably never come back.

"Realistically, we had to cater to all three markets," says Ivy Almario.

That meant that aside from reissuing their favorite designs which they created for different clients, they had to offer lines on a different scale – not overstuffed, not too large, not too grand. It also meant mixing their own designs with other people’s. "We tried to accommodate the condo market, so we brought in furniture from Malaysia. We went to the trade shows in Shanghai and Guangzho. We also ordered furniture from catalogues, but we found out that what really flew off the shelf were the furniture we hand-picked at the shows, the ones that we saw, sat on and tried. The slow moving ones were the ones na di naming na-upuan."

They sourced furnishings from Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Bangkok and in April they plan to go to High Point in North Carolina, where some of the world’s best designers come to set or observe design trends.

The furniture at Federal Design takes inspiration from contemporary design, furniture that have become classics in their own time, like Barbara Barry’s Baker chair, designs by Minotti, Michael Taylor and Donghia, companies that make furniture for the upper-upper-class.

What Ivy and Cynthia do is interpret these designs, downscale them to fit medium-sized condos and houses and add their own touch. "The reality is we have to downscale it some more to accommodate the new line of condos where a three-bedroom might be under 120 square meters," says Ivy.

These spaces for the C market (or maybe even B) may be smaller but they’re not settling for just any furniture.

"The market is now more aspirational," explains Ivy. "With the way our economy is going, salaries will not necessarily get higher in the next few years, but because everyone has access to lifestyle programs and design magazines, the taste is getting to be sophisticated. They want something good-looking for a price they can afford."

The sisters trained the Federal interior designers to help them explain to customers why, for instance, a piece of furniture is priced the way it is. "There are some people who’d say the furniture is from China, why are they expensive? It’s the material and design that make all the difference. So we’re also educating them on why we chose what we chose to sell."

I have seen a few of Ivy and Cynthia’s houses (and a hotel) and they certainly know how to create luxury in a space, how to bring the room into focus by adding splashes of color in silk.

Cynthia laughs at how they reacted when one Federal Design Expo customer said, "We need more color." They went to Bangkok and bought Jim Thompson silk to add to the settings. The deepest reds, the bluest blues, the quietest greens and mauve. Earth colors never had such elegant partners as with the best silks from the Jim Thompson House.

"When we have more time, we’ll get chenilles from China," Cynthia says. They also have plans of going into leather furniture and to source the material from Italy.

Next year, the showroom will be expanding its inventory. The girls confide that they’re coming up with a children’s bedroom line and dining room. Actually, there are some dining room sets on the second floor of the showroom, but they’re not the Almarios’ designs (they’re Italian classical, for god’s sake!). Cynthia says with a laugh that they did have dining sets, except that the tables kept getting sold even before the dining table would arrive – they didn’t seem to be on the floor at the same time.

"So now we’re ordering in multiples!" says Ivy.

The children’s line is another new thing. You don’t’ see much designer furniture for children. "We want it to be something like Pottery Barn or Crate and Barrel – very kid-friendly and in pastel colors."

"We’re also going to design more lamps," Ivy says.

And in the first week of January, the store will be displaying lacquerware and stone sculptures which the designers bought in Vietnam.