This is what you get when you hire Venus Williams as your interior decorator:
an enthusiastic designer who has traveled the world, drawing inspiration from
Moscow to Beijing, but never quite had time to complete formal training; a team
of professionals working with her; and a place on a client list that includes
celebrities and professional athletes.
And, of course, you get Venus Williams.
She’s one of the great tennis players of all time: seven Grand Slam singles
titles, an Olympic gold medal, a woman who changed the face of modern tennis.
Her father gave her a racket when she was 4 years old and told her she was going
to become the best player in the world.
“Most people decide what they want to do later in life, and some people know
really early,” she says. “For me, what I was doing was already decided.
Thankfully, I liked it.” But that was her father’s dream, not hers. “This was
like when you get to make your own choice about what you love.”
And Williams loves, loves, loves designing. She talks about space planning,
construction, lighting and fabric swatches like nobody’s business. In fact, it
is a business: For more than a decade, she has quietly run an interior design
firm in her adopted home of Florida, both capitalizing on and overcoming her
famous name.
She recently unveiled her latest work in the District of Columbia, the
renovated Southeast Tennis and Learning Center, an after-school tennis, arts and
academic program created for children. Other people at the gala saw her as the
tennis legend; she was there as the person responsible for the look and feel of
the space.
“As a designer, you design and it’s beautiful and people feel great when they
walk in – but how have you changed the world?” she asks. “For us, this sort of
project means so much to us because it’s going to impact so many lives.”
Love of creativity
Williams had been playing tennis for 14 years – and was two years away from
her first Wimbledon and U.S. Open singles titles in 2000 – when a letter arrived
on her doorstep when she was 17 or 18. She can’t remember if it was addressed to
her or was a random solicitation, but it invited her to study art and design at
a technical school in Tampa, Florida.
“Oh, I want to go to design school!” she remembers telling her mom. She loved
being creative: She grew up sewing and still has the homemade skirts she made
for her first professional tournament at age 14.
Tampa was too far from their southern Florida home, so her mother vetoed that
plan. But she allowed Williams and younger sister Serena to enroll in a Fort
Lauderdale, Florida, arts school, where they both studied fashion design.
Between training, practice and traveling the world for tennis, they learned
pattern-making, clothing construction, textile design and computer
programming.
It was not, as one might guess, a calming counterpoint to their grueling day
job. “School was not relaxing. It was intense,” Williams says. “I had breakdowns
just like any other student. I worked a little bit slower because I liked
everything perfect.” The other students weren’t fazed by their famous classmate
because “everyone was so stressed out that they didn’t really care.” Williams
graduated in 2007 with a degree in fashion design and launched a small
sportswear line called EleVen to a mixed reception.
But it was interior design that really captured her imagination. While
traveling, she would slip away to explore art and museums – in Moscow, for
example, she loved the intricate ceilings of St. Basil’s Cathedral. She began
reading books on interior design and consulted with professional decorators.
In 2002, after finding a partner who could handle the business while she was
on the road, Williams founded V Starr Interiors, a small boutique firm in
Jupiter, Florida, not far from where her family lived after moving from
California when she was 10 years old. The real estate market was booming; she
thought it was the perfect time to try to break into the field.
Today, the firm has four full-time professional designers, all women. The
operation is housed in a small townhouse with a discreet sign out front, but
there is no hint of the famous owner until you step into the foyer, where there
are small photos and two tennis prints. The second floor is filled with fabric
samples; the third with a workroom where all the designers sit together.
Williams doesn’t have an office; when she’s in town, she perches at the main
worktable with her laptop.
Williams is the only one on the team without a degree in interior design. She
studied it for two years – “I would sit there and draw a line, then erase it,
and draw it and erase it. I drove myself nuts” – before finally deciding she
could be more effective to the company if she got a business degree. (She’s
working on it.) It was, all things considered, the practical choice: Williams,
now 34 years old, heads an estimated $60 million empire.
But she’s deeply involved in all of the design projects, emailing ideas back
and forth while on the road. V Starr began with residential work.
Future in design
On a trip to Beijing earlier this year, Williams sought out an outdoor
antique market she had visited years before. She remembered they had “amazing”
stones and minerals, and wanted to bring back something special for a custom
door design the firm was creating. No one spoke English, and no one really
understood her Chinese.
“I know how to say ‘too expensive,’ ” says Williams, who brought back three
geodes – one for the door, two for herself.
She just sold her midcentury Hollywood Hills house – a project she never had
time to finish – and the plans to build a dream home in Florida are on hold.
“It’s always a dream house until you realize you don’t want all the things you
dreamed,” she explains. “Why am I doing this? I just want a closet and a
gym.”
For the moment, tennis is still her top priority: more majors, a spot with
the Washington Kastles, and one more shot at gold at the 2016 Olympics. She’ll
play as long as she’s healthy and having fun. After that? Designing
full-time.
QueenieAustralia
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