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Interior Design: Nicole Hollis
Dwell Magazine

Interior Design: Nicole Hollis

To call interior designer Nicole Hollis’s portfolio “eclectic” is an understatement. On one page you’ll find a modern man-cave with a colorful LED-lit staircase and on the next, a rustic kitchen outfitted with copper pots and wicker baskets. Each project has its own merits, but Hollis’s greatest strength as a designer lies in her chameleonlike ability to channel her clients’ desires.
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After working for famed Napa Valley architect Howard Backen, Hollis founded her eponymous San Francisco firm in 2003. "I was turning 30 and thought, What do I want to do?" she remembers. "I didn’t have a Rolodex of names but I knew I wanted to do my own thing and had my own ­vision." That vision included preserving the craft of carefully curated interiors. "I worry that the art of architecture and design will be lost on today’s disposable society," she says. "I don’t think there are five easy steps. You can’t just Google ‘the art of living.’ Anyone can pick a chair but is it the right scale, fabric, proportion, weight?"

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Miyoko Ohtake
When not writing, Miyoko Ohtake can be found cooking, training for her next marathon, and enjoying all that the City by the Bay and the great outdoors have to offer.

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