Residential Influence

Ultra high-end residential interiors have been Jamie Drake’s focus since he launched his eponymous New York-based firm, Drake Design Associates, in 1978. That side of his business remains strong—notable project clients include Madonna and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg—but within the last seven years Drake has branched out into product licensing and hospitality design work.

His next goal? Hotel interiors. “My greatest desire, after 30 years in business, would be to design a hotel,” he says. “My ideal project would be to create a stylistic branding for a hotel company that would bring my vision of wit and sophistication, to create memorable experiences for the guest.”

It’s a logical next step for Drake, who regularly designs for showhouses around the country from Hollywood to the Hamptons, and is a regular on the speaking circuit, often presenting at the High Point Furniture Market and various kitchen and bath design shows.

The hotel design world knows Drake’s work best through his product licenses, a segment of his business he has carefully cultivated over the last seven years.

“After having developed for many years special products for my clients in a more couture fashion, I had the opportunity to think about what was missing in the market, and I was excited to begin licensing and designing product for a broader audience,” he says.

To date, Drake’s ventures include kitchen sinks for Elkay, bath accessories for Labrazel, furniture for Lewis Mittman, fabric and wallcoverings for Schumacher, bath faucetry for THG, art for Soicher-Marin, and—his newest partnership—rugs for Safavieh.

“As a designer, I always envision individual product items as they might be placed either in a residential situation or in a contract or hospitality installation,” he says. “Many of [the products] lend themselves to re-engineering for maximum durability. I strive to create designs that have a certain flexibility, and I always can envision other designers using them.”

In particular, Drake says his Labrazel bath accessories have been notable favorites of designers working on high-end Las Vegas suites, and his Mittman furniture often is re-engineered by the company’s contract division for boutique hotel installations. 

Drake notes among his personal hotel-design favorites: the lush Amanjena Hotel in Marrakech, the cosmopolitan London West Hollywood in California, Paris’ historic Le Meurice and the iconic Raffles in Singapore.

His list of favorites reflects his personal attitudes on the evolution of hotel interior design. “Where high-end travel always was defined by faux-French or faux-English styles, we now see a broad spectrum, from minimal to Zen, club-like interiors,” he says.

In 2005, Drake published his first book, Jamie Drake’s New American Glamour (Bullfinch Press), and the interiors showcased in the book reflect his love of all things colorful.

“All too often, there’s a blandness to so much we see,” he says. “One trend I would like to see expanded upon in hotels is one that creates an even greater sense of fantasy in a way that is fun and magical.”

As housing goes, hotels go

Upscale boutique hotel guests are the same residential consumers Drake designs for every day, and the trends he sees among his clients mirror hotel design trends.

“I have been pleased and surprised by the evolution of client sophistication in their requests,” he says. He attributes this to today’s consumer who travels more and experiences more cultural diversity.

“As much as the trend in hospitality design is the influence of the residential interior, the opposite is equally as valid, with clients who come back from vacations who want to re-create those moments in their homes,” he says.

On the residential side, Drake’s firm currently is finishing an apartment that blends historic preservation and contemporary interiors in New York City’s Dakota, a gut renovation of two Upper East Side townhouses in Manhattan, and what he calls a “top-to-bottom renovation and decoration of a magical, fairytale-like” castle-like home built in 1908 on Long Island’s North Shore.

Drake Designs also is designing two radiation oncology clinics in Jacksonville, Fla.

“Based in NYC but working around the world, we have had only one major project cancelled” because of recession-era cutbacks, Drake says. “Although things seemed as frozen as an iceberg, we have sensed a thawing, starting in April, with new business inquiries coming in.”