The Doctor of Design
Christopher Lowell is the man many women seek out to get over home-decor hang-ups
Christopher Lowell relaxes easily in front of the fabrics, pillows, paints, and assorted paraphernalia that crowd his large Los Angeles production studio. For the interior designer, TV personality, and bestselling author, these are the tools of self-expression and creativity. But for the millions of women (and they are mostly women) who look to Lowell for home-design advice, the accouterments are often instruments of fear--fear of failure, fear of change, fear of taking control of your life.
That can be a lot of baggage to haul around when you're simply trying to shop for slipcovers, as Lowell well knows. He has quietly built a thriving company by separating women from their hang-ups and showing them that interior design isn't so much about the space in your living room as it is about the space in your head. "Look at your home, and look at yourself. Everything around us is a clue of who we are," says Lowell, with his trademark exuberance and you-can-do-it attitude. "Change your home's interior, and you change your mental interior, too."
Lowell's message of decorating as empowerment therapy is playing particularly well these days, as homes are getting bigger and the competitive pressure to make a design statement of equal size is growing. Homeowners, especially women caught between work and family, want to put together furnishings, paints, and fabrics without an anxiety attack. And manufacturers and retailers eager for a bigger piece of the $100 billion-plus shelter economy are increasingly turning to celebrities like Martha Stewart, Chris Madden, and Lowell to lift their nameless products out of a sea of sameness. "Celebrity brands have been growing steadily over the past five years because they provide a comfort level for consumers and let them embrace a particular image or style that makes it easier to make decisions," says Jackie Hirschhaut, vice president of marketing for the American Home Furnishings Alliance. "Christopher's already strong connections to consumers make him an ideal person for that."
TV titan. Those connections stem largely from more than 10 years on the Discovery Home Channel, where 1 million viewers a week tune in to Wall to Wall and The Christopher Lowell Show. Lowell also has published five books, including Christopher Lowell's Seven Layers of Design (now in its 12th printing) and his newest personal-growth promoter, Christopher Lowell's Seven Layers of Organization (subtitled Unclutter Your Home; Unclutter Your Life). He has a stack of licensing deals, including with 3 Day Blinds and Office Depot, where sales of his not-so-officey office furniture have logged double-digit increases each year since 2003, the company says.
And this week Lowell's extensive new line of fabrics, trims, and home accessories is rolling out in nearly 600 Jo-Ann Stores, the nation's largest fabric and craft retailer. The collection, with its 80 different fabrics and hundreds of matching trimmings, is expected to account for 12 percent of the stores' stock. "It's decorating for dummies ... in the nicest sense of the word," says Lowell, 50. In self-improvement speak, that's "Change your color, change your fabric, change your life."
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