Leslie Banker Discusses 'Think Like a Decorator'

As the daughter of a decorator, Leslie Banker says interior design was part of her life growing up, but whenever she was asked if she would follow in her mother’s footsteps, her quick answer was “absolutely not.”

“It seemed too obvious,” Banker said during an interview last week to talk about her new book, “Think Like a Decorator: To Create a Comfortable, Original, and Stylish Home.” She pursued writing, but eventually she did become a designer herself as well, and her books merge her two fields.

She will sign copies of “Think Like a Decorator” during East Hampton Library’s Authors Night on August 12 at Herrick Park in East Hampton Village.

Banker said the book is designed to be accessible while also focused on high-end design.

Her mother, the late Pamela Banker, was an interior designer who founded her own business in the mid-1960s and in the 1990s joined Parish-Hadley, the firm of renowned designers Sister Parish and Albert Hadley. Around the same time, Banker finished college and was thinking about jobs.

“There wasn’t really an opportunity to work with her in the ’90s, and I sort of forged my own way,” she said.

She wrote essays, worked for the cultural preservation organization Tibet House, and in 1997 was a Southampton Press reporter, covering Quogue and Hampton Bays. She then began freelance writing in New York City, and due to her background, was often writing for interior design magazines.

Then in 1999, Parish-Hadley closed, and her mother relaunched her own business, calling it Pamela Banker Associates. Banker agreed to work for her mother for a couple of months just to help launch the new office — setting up phones, acquiring furniture, things like that. But she stayed and worked with her mother on a book, “The Pocket Decorator.”

“That was my attempt to try to pick her brain to teach myself how to decorate,” Banker said.

Her mother died in 2013. Banker carried on the business, and eventually rebranded as Leslie Banker & Co., based in New York, but working all over the country, from Florida to Maine and Colorado.

The mother-daughter team’s original book proposal was for a very comprehensive how-to book.

“We had these notes and ideas and outlines, but at the end of the day, what made more sense was to do this much narrower,” she said.

They ended up with a compact book on the terminology and history of interior design.

She retained the notes from that initial attempt at a broader book and drew from those notes to prepare “Think Like a Decorator.”

“There’s something really nice about 20 years later — 20-plus years later — finishing the project,” she said.

Each chapter features a Q&A with a different contributing designer and photos of the designer’s work, including Alexa Hampton, who also wrote the foreword, Amanda Nisbet, Katie Leede, Tom Scheerer, Lilly Bunn, Katie Ridder, Corey Damen Jenkins, Kristin Paton, Kirill Istomin and Christopher Spitzmiller.

“It has these 11 great contributing writers who have snapshots of their own ‘how to think like a decorator’ throughout the book,” she said.

To think like a decorator, Banker explained, spend the time to really think about how you want to live and, broadly, what the space should look like — before you start thinking about individual pieces or colors.

“This book aims to break down the process of decorating an interior design project,” she said. “ … There’s so many decisions, it can feel really overwhelming to start an interior design project, even with a designer, but especially on your own. And what this book seeks to do is break down the process so that it walks you through.”

The book explains what to think about before even shopping for a sofa, she said. “The idea is to really edit and focus and not get overwhelmed.”

And an interior design project doesn’t have to solely include new purchases.

“I’m a huge fan of using what you have, and I think it’s really important as you go through life — and even if it’s from house to house — to build a collection of things that you love and that you’ll carry with you and to get rid of things that aren’t working that you don’t want to carry with you,” Banker said. “But I love using old things that someone already has or things found at auction.”

Banker also considers that homes are meant to be lived in, and in a home with kids and a dog, materials need to hold up.

To that end, she noted that designers are using more and more performance fabrics and rugs made out of performance fibers or materials.

“Some places are more formal than others, but I think the common denominator is it has to be comfortable,” she said. “… I always say to people, if you want white marble countertops, but you’re going to be freaked out every time someone drinks red wine near them, then don’t do it. Don’t put that stress on yourself, and we’ll find a quartz or Caesarstone that has a similar look and will be more resilient.”