Washington College Magazine
Life As Art: Simply Beautiful
by Joan Smith
One of today's most sought-after interior designers, known for her clean lines and light color palettes, once decorated her dorm room in purple and green. It was just a phase.
Victoria Hagan stands with two pieces from her collection, Victoria Hagan Home. The wing chair is ample and, like the three-paneled folding screen (upholstered in white leather and studded with bronze nailheads), reflects Hagan's priorities: simple graphic lines and elegant natural materials.
Photo courtesy of Victoria Hagan designs.
When Victoria Hagan '83 talks design, people pay attention. She is a fixture on Architectural Digest's "Top 100" list and a 2004 inductee into Interior Design magazine's Hall of Fame. Pilgrims to her airy Madison Avenue offices include Hollywood moguls and Fortune 500 CEOs. She has worked with some of the world's great architects—Michael Graves, Robert Stern, Jack Robinson. Last fall, she joined Graves on the list of superstars designing chic but affordable housewares for Target.
But Hagan says no one paid much attention to her design ideas until she joined the class of 1983 at Washington College. "That's where I began to believe in myself," she says. "The art department was very small—I don't think there was a lot of emphasis on it at the College—and I spent all of my time there. I loved it. The instructors listened to me, they encouraged me, and I was not lost there. I think if I'd gone anywhere else I might not have had the courage to pursue design as a career."
Hagan always knew she wanted to be a designer. She even remembers her first design impulse—standing up in her crib and eyeing, rather coldly, the rug on her nursery floor.
"My mother disputes this, but I remember not liking that rug," she says. "I wanted it to be a little simpler, not quite so patterned." She grew up in the idyllic Hudson Valley hamlet of Pocantico Hills, where John D. Rockefeller built his great estate. It's a beautiful place, Hagan says, and when Rockefeller first saw it in 1893, he was rhapsodic. "The fine views," he said, "invite the soul."
"I grew up surrounded by beauty—both natural and manmade," says Hagan. "There was a gorgeous church with windows made by Matisse and Chagall, and the woods were so lovely. I started designing fabric and furniture when I was a child, but it was very whimsical, all leaves and flowers. I'm still inspired by nature, but I'm not quite as literal."
Still, design was considered a somewhat frivolous pursuit in those days, and Hagan knew she was expected to get a good liberal arts education. "I think parents are more understanding of creative professions today," she says. In high school she took only one studio art class and that was during her last semester.
Though she often favors neutrals, Hagan is also known for her sophisticated use of color. The black wing chair is from Victoria Hagan Home.
Photo courtesy of Victoria Hagan designs.
She chose Washington College because a few of her friends from high school had gone there. "I went down to visit them and thought it was a very nice place," she says. "I was drawn to the architecture and the natural beauty. And I liked the people."
She remembers driving down from New York alone, unpacking her car, walking into her dorm with luggage and a tennis racket, and someone saying, "Hey, Hagan!" "I unpacked and it was just very easy. I don't know why, because I'm somewhat shy. But there's something about the College, and about Chestertown. I knew a few girls there already, but I made some great new friends right away."
She spent a lot of time decorating her room. "Purple was the color of the moment for me. It's not what I use a lot of today," she says, wryly. "But I thought it was very cool. And we used to go to auctions in the middle of these fields and find the most amazing stuff." She laughs out loud, remembering one such acquisition from the auction at Crumpton—"a green sofa with no legs for 20 bucks!"—and how she talked someone into hauling it back to the dorm.
"I was on the phone this morning with my friend, Jane Frankenberger '83. We went to high school together and, just by coincidence, both ended up at Washington College, and I was asking her if she remembered anything, and by the end of the call I was just roaring," she says. "I don't usually laugh that way and my husband was just looking at me, like 'Who are you talking to?' But we really did have a good time."
Scott Woolever '77, a nationally recognized landscape and portrait painter who has been teaching part-time at the College off and on for years, remembers being blown away by Hagan's raw talent. "She was a sorority girl and didn't look like the typical 'artist' kid. She looked businesslike, like someone who wore really nice clothes from Talbots. So when I gave everyone this basic design problem, something you do just to loosen them up, and she handed me this thing that looked like it ought to be framed and hanging in an expensive New York gallery, I just thought, 'Wow! Where did this come from?'"
Woolever says he's used that piece to measure the solutions offered up to his design problem by every student since. "I'm still waiting for somebody to come up with something that good."
With encouragement from teachers like Woolever—"they recognized my talent and, more important, my passion," Hagan says—she transferred to the Parsons School of Design in Manhattan at the beginning of her junior year. "It was overwhelming at first," she says. "I lived at home and commuted. I had to take a train, then a subway, and be in class by 9 a.m.—which was very different from Washington College, where I'd roll out of bed, go down to Miss Dee's (the snack bar) and stumble into class."
Parsons was more like a job. "We worked 24 hours a day; there were no parties. My friends at Parsons were jealous because I'd had a chance to experience college life." But, despite the hard work, Hagan was happy. She was doing what she wanted to do, and doing it well. "They taught me to think outside of the box, while understanding the box. It's excellent training, because so much of what I do is about solving problems for people, pushing things to another level."
At Parsons, too, she started doing real work and getting paid for it. "Teachers would recommend me for projects they didn't want, like designing a shower curtain, which is not something you learn in school." She was given the names of a few designers—someone might be looking for an assistant. One was Simone Feldman, who would become one of the most important people in her life.
This grand dining room is everything Hagan values most—elegant, simple and comfortable. She loves finishing a room and presenting it to clients ready for use—complete with flowers and lighted candles.
"She was the only one who called me back, and I showed her my portfolio. To be honest, I don't think she was as impressed by what I'd done in design school as by something I'd done at Washington College, a watercolor of an iris—see, it's that purple thing again. She said, 'Obviously, you draw very well. Maybe you can draw some things for me.'"
Hagan was thrilled. "I was really just doing errands and running around, but we got along very well and I thought she was extremely talented. She had a devoted clientele." When Hagan was about to graduate, she announced that she was going to start her own business. "I was getting enough work and I wanted to do something conceptually challenging," she says.
Feldman suggested they become partners. "We had this great synergy and I said I'd like to, but I wanted to do bigger projects and show houses," says Hagan. "So she thought about it and said, 'I'm game,' and that's how it started."
Feldman approached the Southampton show house, one of the most prestigious showcases for designers. Every year one of the mansions in the eastern Long Island resort is turned over to established designers—each designer gets a room—and the results are open to the press and public. "Simone was on the phone and I was sitting next to her and I whispered, 'No, no, isn't there anything we can do?' So she said, 'Isn't there anything? We'll do anything.' They said, 'Well, actually, there is a little bathroom, and a little landing, if you want to come over and look at them....' We ran right over and said, 'Great! We'll do it.'"
That little landing ended up on the cover of New York magazine and made their reputation. "At the time, what we were doing was a little unorthodox—I'd mix an Austrian Empire sofa with a George Nelson molded fiberglass chair, so it was neither modern, nor traditional, but a little of each. I loved white walls. And architectural details."
They quickly did another show house, and soon their work was appearing in all the design magazines—Hagan's own apartment was photographed for House & Garden. Then Feldman was diagnosed with leukemia. "I was in my 20s and she was in her 60s, but we were partners and best friends," Hagan says. "She kept it from me for a while, and then, suddenly, she died. It was horrible. Vendors started calling, saying they weren't going to ship because they thought the business would fold. I remember thinking, 'Do not underestimate me.'"
Distraught as she was, Hagan worked harder than ever and, young as she was, her clients stuck with her—most are still with her today. She named the firm Victoria Hagan Interiors and was soon one of the best known designers in the country. In 2001, she created Victoria Hagan Home, her own line of furniture, fabric and accessories.
Her trademark is an elegant, but eclectic simplicity—she uses a lot of white, a lot of natural materials, and she blends periods and styles so deftly her finished rooms seem inevitable. "Balance" and "comfort" are two of her favorite words. She keeps the firm small—about 25 people—because she likes it that way. "My relationships with clients and staff are very personal," she says. "I grew up in a small town, went to small schools. That's where I'm comfortable."
She has twin sons and a supportive husband and, if there's a choice between work and attending her sons' hockey game, it's no contest. "I'm a real working mom," she says. "I'm home for dinner every night. I have breakfast with my kids. Seeing Simone die so young, I understood early that life is not a dress rehearsal. That's what I learned from her. That you only go around once, so you might as well do what you love and do it well."
Joan Smith is a former books editor for the San Francisco Examiner. She recently joined the staff at Washington College as coordinator of the George Washington Book Prize at the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience.
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