Kitty Hawks

Job description: Interior decorator
Current projects: I’m an adjunct faculty member in interior design at Parsons and a very active board member at the Municipal Art Society and the Design Trust for Public Space.
First step on a project: Trying to find the visual hook. That, if I can do it, usually starts with
a rug on the floor.
Last step on a project: Turning on the lights and walking out the door
How do you break a creative block? I’m happy to say I’ve never had one—only when it comes to my own things.
Why do you do what you do? For years I didn’t really think of myself as a very creative person, but once I started to do interior design, it tapped into something that I didn’t realize I had.
Education: A lot of my education came from the good luck of having a parent—my mother—who had enormous visual curiosity. And then I went to architecture school at UCLA when I was thirty. That’s when I began to realize how much I loved the process of design.
Mentors: It’s not like, I want to grow up and be Billy Baldwin. I have books on everybody, and I pick and choose and see how different people have solved different problems.

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World-saving mission: I wouldn’t say “world-saving” because at the moment I’m passionate about New York. I’m also a hopeless dog lover. I’m a big abandoned-animal saver. They’re all mutts.
First act as ‘design czar’: Make magazines stop asking us what the next color is and what the next big style is, because there is a generation of waste and disposability that is grotesque.
Dream team: Hans Holbein to paint the walls, Gertrude Jekyll to help out with the garden, Frank Lloyd Wright to design the house, Dale Chihuly to design the glasses I drink out of, Georg Jensen to do all the silver. Most of the people I would call on are dead, unfortunately.

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Office chair: A cream leather Eames Soft Pad
Office sound track: When I’m drawing I usually have a movie on. If I were in an office with other people, I would be probably plugged into Thriller, by Michael Jackson, over and over.
Favorite tchotchke: My dog Virgil, the big one. He sleeps on my feet when I’m working.
Most useful tool: I love my power drill.
Bookmarks: 1stdibs, Netflix, Moviefone, Amazon, Google, and the White Pages
Best place to think: There are times when I’ve been having a massage, and because I’m physically pinned and I can’t get up and get distracted, I’ve solved enormous problems.
Current read: The Architecture of Happiness, State of Denial, At Canaan’s Edge
Old standby: My library

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Something old: My baby pillow. It travels with me, and it has a name, Jerome, for reasons I can’t possibly explain.
Something new: A string of pearls that my husband gave me last year for our anniversary
Guilty pleasure: Really good tequila: Reserva de la Familia, by Jose Cuervo
Favorite space: The nave of any beautiful church. St. Patrick’s is not a bad place to start.
Underrated: Silence
Overrated: The constant barrage of sound

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Learned the hard way: To keep myself quiet when other people are talking
Command-Z (undo): Unkindnesses that I have visited on people
Dream job: Doing the interior for an architect whose work I admired and who is willing to admit that I could do the inside better than they could. Can you think of one who would admit that?