Nate Berkus - The Things That Matter

Copyright 2012 by Nate Berkus

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

S PIEGEL & G RAU and Design is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Berkus, Nate
The things that matter / Nate Berkus.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-679-64432-3
1. Berkus, NateThemes, motives. 2. Interior decorationPsychological aspects. I. Title.
NK2004.3B47 A4 2012
747.092dc23 2012032445

www.spiegelandgrau.com

Photography by Roger Davies

Additional photography by Rainer Hosch and Kevin Trageser

Book design by Gabriele Wilson Design

v3.1

Ive always believed your home should tell your story. That pine table over there? I found it in a shop just outside of Mexico City. The sun was beating down and I was a little hungry, but I saw it and I knew I wanted to look at it every day. Those cuff links? They belonged to somebody I loved; we picked them out on one of the most perfect days we ever spent together. That tortoise shell on the wall? There was one exactly like it in my mothers house and I cant see it without thinking about a thousand inedible family dinners. Each object tells a story and each story connects us to one another and to the world. The truth is, things matter. They have to. Theyre what we live with and touch each and every day. They represent what weve seen, who weve loved, and where we hope to go next. They remind us of the good times and the rough patches, and everything in between thats made us who we are.

NATE

O ver the years Ive read lots of stories about people who knew exactly who and what they were going to be by the time they were done teething. In fact, I envy anybody who can make their way through childhood and adolescence with that level of confidence. In any case, it did become clear early on that I was a creative person, but when youre a kid growing up in suburban Minneapolis, its hard to imagine that youll be starting your own design firm at the age of 22, let alone joining the Oprah Winfrey team, flying all over the country doing makeovers, writing books, producing films, hosting your own TV show, and developing a home design collection thats accessible to everyone. I dont know where you were in junior high, but I was way too busy praying for clear skin and debating whether Madonna was really better than Cyndi Lauper to worry about the big picture.

I did know I felt out of place, and restless, and adventurous in a way that some of my friends did not, and I knew there were things I wanted to see and do and experience in my life that most of the people around me could take or leave. I always sort of sensed there was a wider world out theresomething beyond just taking the bus to and from Hebrew school.

I may have resisted acknowledging it throughout my teenage years, but I now understand that the joy I take in transforming interiors comes from my mom, an interior designer, who has always been about creating a beautiful home. Rooms in our house were in perpetual motion. Fabric samples were laid out everywhere. Overnight a storeroom would become a spare bedroom; a spare bedroom, a TV watching den; a den, a spot for wrapping presents. If my mother wanted to hang a huge canvas in the living room, but couldnt find a painting she could afford, or one she loved enough, she would just paint something herself.

My mother had, and has to this day, an unbelievable sense of scale. Shes an artist who is amazingly skilled at laying out a space. Not only are her rooms comfortable; they make perfect sense. Thanks to her, my earliest memories center around design, collecting, and figuring out where everything should go. While other kids were studying algebra, I was studying my moms collection of tortoise glass. Instead of watching The Love Boat, I was watching as she pounded hooks into the living room wall, or helping to stuff a newly reupholstered chair into the trunk of her car.

But it wasnt only my mother. For my dad, an entrepreneur and businessman, everything had to be the best, the finest, the top of the line. His shirts and suits back in the 1980s were all custom-made and immaculately tailored. His shoes were Italian, his cars were hot. As a founder of the National Sports Collectors Convention, he was able to bring his business sense in line with his collectors mentality, a nostalgists love for old, high-quality things. I remember him saying to me, You have to dress well in this world, because everyone notices what youre wearing and they make a decision about you immediately. And anything you say after that, well, if theyre smart, people will listen, even if theyve already sized you upbut Nate, most people are not that smart.

With parents like these, it was hard not to absorb a love of design, harmony, precision, quality, and beauty. Their lessons lastedtheir marriage did not.

My parents split up when I was 2 years old. We were living in Los Angeles at the time, and after the divorce, my mother and I returned to Minnesota, where her parents lived, and where she eventually met and married my stepfather. Throughout my childhood, I would fly back to California to visit my dad. I was what the airlines called an unaccompanied minor. Over time I developed such precocious assurance that when the flight crew told me they could release me only to a parent or guardian, I would answer with all the breeziness of a 6-year-old kid, Its okay, my father is meeting me downstairs. I know what to do. And then Id go down the escalator, find my suitcase on the carousel, head outside the terminal, flag down my dad (or the driver hed sometimes send), and that was all there was to it. Today, when I tell this to friends with young children, their jaws drop and they all say how fortunate I am that my face never graced the side of a milk carton. But hopping on a plane to see my father was the only thing Id ever really known and it felt perfectly natural to me. I was a capable kid and I think the experience taught me to navigate the world with a degree of independence and flexibility and fearlessness that still serves me well.