The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia
Hello and thank you for tuning in today. This is a major milestone episode for Soft Landing, not in terms of numbers, but in terms of the topic. When I first started reviewing TV and movie characters portraying interior designers and architects, I knew this show was the ultimate example. It’s one of the few shows in history that actually centers around an interior design business, and it is legendary. If you’ve never seen the showing Designing Women, it’s a piece of classic TV history about a small interior decorating firm in Atlanta, Georgia. At the time, the show was considered a true envelope pusher because it was centered on working unmarried women. For many, it is still the media reference that comes to mind when the interior design industry is mentioned. So today, we are going to look at what made this show great, where it could have done better, and how accurately it portrays the life of a small interiors business.
But first, let’s talk the Color of the Week. This week, the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee was cause for festivities all around the globe. This four day celebration marks the 70th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II taking the thrown, and includes, a banking holiday, parades, commemorative coins, and bathing landmarks all over the world in spotlights colored a signature royal purple. That’s why Pantone 2613 is our color of the week. This classic, true purple, while polarizing for many - is an enduring symbol of royalty. This is a powerful color that looks magical as an upholstery. Pair it with earthy green tones and soft terra cottas for balance, or if you want to punch it up - add powdery blue and teal for a bold analogus color scheme. It’s an easy way to give your space the royal treatment.
I have to admit I’ve been saving this one, because in my mind this is just the ultimate interior design show. With the 90’s fashion resurgence right now, it just feels so much sweeter to dive back into this series. Designing Women premiered in 1986 and ran for seven seasons. It tells the story of Sugarbaker Associates, a small decorating firm that operates on the first floor of its owner, Julia Sugarbaker’s home. Office manager Charlene keeps things running smoothly, designer Mary Jo works on projects, Anthony does everything from deliveries to drapery installation, and Julia’s sister Suzanne focuses on new business. Julia seems to always be meeting with someone at the bank.
I like the way the characters jobs are structured, all of those roles are real within in a design company, but when companies are as small as five people, typically everyone wears multiple hats, rather than being in such clearly defined roles. Plus, there’s usually also a few more fresh out of college faces - young designers who do everything from drawings to answering the phone.
One of my favorite things about this show is the fashion, decor, and style. It’s all so gloriously late 80’s, and watching the style transition from the 80’s to the 90’s on one show is a designer’s equilavant of watching a nature a documentary. Absolutely wild. If you only watch one episode of this series, the pilot has a lot of zest to it. Just seeing the opening credits, I was flooded with memories of watching reruns of this show in the 90’s. We start with office manager Charlene sitting in a rattan peacock chair, on the phone, telling someone with a healthy dose of sass that the lead time for naughahide is four weeks. This tiny vignette moment in the show is a great clip of what the design profession is actually like. Naughahide, the 1980’s favorite faux leather upholstery, is synonymous with the furniture world, but what we really start to dive into is that custom orders take a number of weeks to fulfill. This has been a huge topic in the design world presently, in the year 2022, because of supply chain issues exacerbating the amount of time that everything takes. But these issues have been around since the beginning of the industry. Custom furniture often takes 4 to 6 weeks to produce, and it's not uncommon for it to actually take eight, twelve, or sixteen weeks and upwards, depending on the piece. It's a conversation we designers have to have with clients over and over again to manage expectations. Sure, there's furniture that's available right now, but it's not going be “just so,” it's going to be what it is. If you want it tailored to your needs, you have to factor in waiting time.
Next, Mary Jo walks in wearing a hounds tooth, popped collar tunic with a bolo tie, a mini vest over it, and hoop earrings the size of bracelets She’s talking all about touring a home for a potential project, and carrying a slouchy bag, slung over her shoulder, filled with rolled up drawings. This is aligning perfectly with design life. Even in today’s paperless world, scaled and measured drawings that get printed on giant sheets of paper are still fundamental tools for any design and building project. Suzanne Sugarbaker makes her entrance is in head-to-toe teal with sequins on just the shoulders. Breathtaking.
Next, Julia Sugarbaker walks in, wearing six strands of pearls, a floor length, black and white gingham overcoat, huge pearl earrings, and four inch high hair. How can you not be in love?
Looking around at the sets, the interior of their office is VERY eclectic- it appears to be a collection of rejected samples from previous projects. We see a little bit of everything - French Country, Bohemian, Victorian, Craftsman, Contemporary. I was immediately wondering if Sugarbaker Associates had a signature design style, and while their office indicates that they are open to a variety of looks, by the final episode it's made clear that they do have a distaste for anything post modern, and tend to lean towards more traditional aesthetics. They make safe choices in their design work, which I imagine was intentional, because ultimately the show is about the relationships of the women, it’s not focused on the design work. The office furniture is also constantly changing. The sofa and coffee table where many scenes take place vary from episode to episode and eventually Charlene's peacock chair gets replaced by a more stately bookcase.
Everyone has a desk, but they are peppered around the living room, which is a little unusual. Charlene is right by the door, Mary Jo is over next to kitchen, and Julia is towards the back, next to the stairs. It's very strange to see desks without computer monitors or laptops, but that was just how it was - plus big monitors would block the actors during conversations.
There is a drafting board tucked away in the back of the room, although we never see anyone spending too much time there. The drafting board is surrounded by random samples. There's a mix of yard samples of wallpaper and fabric which come on big rolls, and a menagerie of vintage antiques like toy horses. From what I can see in their office, they don't have a proper materials library. This is the backbone of any interior design business, no matter how small. It's critical to have a personal collection of swatches and samples of everything from fabric to wood flooring. This takes up a lot of real estate and requires a very organized person to manage. Sometimes firms have entire dedicated roles to maintaining the material library. A real design business would be spending a huge portion of their time in the materials library. But Sugarbaker Associates spends most of their time either snacking at the kitchen counter, or gossiping in the living room set up. Or at least that's what we see. It doesn't look like they have a dedicated meeting room for clients either. They often go directly to a clients home, but a meeting room would come in handy for them. They tend to have clients come and sit on their sofa which is a little bit too informal, especially when a new client is meeting with you for the first time.
The episode format often falls into the structure of having some business oriented office chit chat, followed by the main plot line, which is almost always completely revolving around one of the character’s personal lives. So the first two to five minutes is where we get all the design references - and these are often rooted in very accurate topics. For instance, Mary Jo once sat at the coffee table, ripping up magazines, talking about trying to communicate with upholsterers that don’t speak English. She was clipping out pictures to show them what she wants without using words.
This is so spot-on. At big firms, we will send 3D renderings to be done by consultants who have dedicated perspective drawings businesses. It’s common for these to be in other countries, and designers have to be able to communicate how they want the rendering to look without using too many words. A lot of times it’s just finding a similar image and pointing to where you want it in the space, or drawing a rough sketch.
I noticed that the characters use the terms designer and decorator interchangeably, and I think it's fair to place a little bit of the blame on the show for the general public’s confusion between the two professions. If you're curious about that topic you can check out the episode “Call Me Maybe” for an in depth explanation of the differences. They do spend a huge amount of their time talking about drapery and window coverings, in fact out of any interior element they talk about those the most. They mention pink valances and measuring for drapery constantly. They also mention things like going to the major design center and traveling for design expos, or working on a design house, which is a featured home where up-and-coming and prominent designers each design a single space in the home and then it’s open for tours. I liked hearing all of those things mentioned because they are real and important components of the industry and it added some depth to the plot lines. I felt like whoever did the research about the industry for the scripts did their due diligence.
Julia often speaks about money, banks, loans, and bills. None of which is going well for Sugarbaker Associates. Financial hardship is a continuous theme that is used throughout all seven seasons like a ribbon. This is one of the topics that makes the show so successful and true to life. The interior design world does not always have the highest profit margin's compared to other avenues of business. People who work as designers, do it because they love it and not because they're going to be paid exorbitant amounts of money. Are there exceptions to this? Absolutely. I am generalizing. And believe me, in this luxury profession, designers make enough money to survive and occasionally thrive. But, this often means projects have tight timelines and strict budgets, and designers have to know how to work within those constraints to make sure that the project is actually profitable. It's not unusual for projects to just break even or to even lose money in some cases. But we don't do it for the money, we do it because it’s our calling.
We get to see an aspect of the interior design world that is rarely spoken about, let alone included in the fold of the small screen fantasy of design life. Julia is always fighting for what she believes is right, which is a huge part of owning a small design business. She spends many episodes having just come back from the bank, getting loans turned down, and most importantly chasing down unpaid bills. I remember an internship I had in San Francisco, and we had an open office plan so everyone could see and hear each other. I was usually sitting at my desk, probably drawing furniture, and I overheard multiple lively phone calls, some of which got put on speakerphone so that multiple principles could put their two cents in with a client who was demanding more work and had not paid up on their bills. It all seemed very dramatic to me at the time, like I remember thinking what's the big deal? But now I understand that getting clients to agree to and follow through on paying for services is a major asset of any good project manager. I love how much the show focuses on these conversations. They feature the nitty-gritty of that dance business owners have to do with some clients.
In the final season, the financial shakiness of the company is front and center. The storyline was criticized as it seemed every episode was about finding a rich client that would solve Sugarbaker’s money troubles, only to be in the same position in the very next episode. While viewers didn’t really enjoy seeing this, it’s an accurate reflection of the feast or famine structure that can show up in many design firms. So many interior designers and architects are one client away from closing their business, and it’s something we as designers are constantly trying to problem solve in the way we structure our fees, how much we charge and how to diversify our offerings.
The show is an advanced level course in client management. And that course is taught by the one and only Julia Sugarbaker. Throughout the course of the show, Dixie Carter, who plays Julia, became noteworthy for her scathing verbal takedowns of clients who wouldn't pay their bills, rude passersby, or anyone who wasn't respectful of Julia's boundaries. Even in episodes where it looks like the crew has to overlook some of their clients behavior, by the end Julia can’t take it anymore and just lets them have it. Like the time the firm was hired to redecorate a wealthy clients condo for his mistress and his wife's bedroom, the whole team felt uneasy about it, but when the mistress ended up insulting Anthony, that was the last straw for Julia. She told her off and quit on the spot. It takes that kind of audacity and intelligence to run a design business.
Her expertly composed monologues read like the revenge fantasy I have the day after a conflict, where I finally think of the perfect thing to say. But Julia always thinks of the perfect thing to say on the spot. She is an unapologetic heavily left-leaning feminist, and she suffers no fools. She’s even given the nickname of the Terminator. Ironically, Dixie Carter was a devote conservative who had to be bribe and cajoled every time her character went on a tirade. But she found a way to deliver every word with authenticity and meaning, and these take downs alone make the show enjoyable to watch.
Another focus of the show is bringing in new business. This is where Suzanne Sugarbaker, played by Delta Burke, comes in. Suzanne is not a designer, but is an investor in the firm, and spends all her time schmoozing with Atlanta’s most powerful, networking and getting in on projects like reupholstering chairs in the suites at the Braves stadium. This is such a critical part of the interior design business and often the responsibility is given to seasoned designers who have charismatic personalities and are generally easy on the eyes. But design experience is usually a prerequisite, part of pitching a job is being able to talk about the work that will be done. There is one episode where Suzanne tries to be a designer and ends up burning down the house instead.
This leads to one of my biggest issues with the show. Suzanne’s character is often the butt of many jokes, but she also says her fair share of racist, ableist, homophobic, and fatphobic comments. The other characters don’t agree with her, but they mostly brush her off as a big personality, and the show doesn’t age well because of this unfortunately. There are some moments that are really hard to watch.
It seems like sometimes the other characters have to be so golden hearted, and so outspoken just to balance Suzanne’s toxic energy. Mary Jo takes a stance against beauty pageants, Charlene is always sticking up the underdog in any situation, Julia’s zero tolerance for perceived injustices of any kind, and Anthony is always kindly and patiently reminding the whole crew of their privilege.
Anthony's presence in the company provides the most balance out of any of the other characters. He is calm, rational, and caring; and knows just when to pipe up when the titular women are going down the wrong path. So of course later in the show Suzanne and Anthony become completely bonded besties, as they say opposites attract. And Anthony goes from an unjustly incarcerated youth; to delivery person, site surveyor, and drapery installer; to a college graduate, law student, and full-fledged partner in the Sugarbaker business. This is something I don't see a lot of in the interior design world, the idea of someone starting with a lower level job and working their way up in a single business- it’s more common when the person jumps from company to company. But seeing Anthony become such a pivotal member is a heartwarming plot line.
The show is actually full of heartwarming plot lines, because the majority of the episodes focus on the women's personal lives. We see everyone's families, romances, personal struggles, and friendships. The group spends holidays, birthdays, and major social gatherings together. Not because they are working so much but because they are all best friends. They definitely set the precedent for the idea of an office being like a family, and this is something that bothers me. The show has a complete lack of work life boundaries. The days of workplace getting away with using the family analogy as an excuse for overworking their staff is coming to an end, but it’s shows like this that have helped build the fantasy around a seamless work/life integration where your boss attends sleepovers at your house.
Even though designing women focuses on the personal relationships of the characters more than it does the design industry, the moments that we do see the characters talking shop are rooted in so much truth and accuracy. If you want to have a taste of what being an interior designer is like, without leaving the comfort of your home, this show is not a bad place to start. The one thing that's lacking is maybe a little work actually being done. Most designers work long hours and are totally devoted to their projects.
But this show even focuses on the less glamorous aspects of the design world like chasing down unpaid bills and finding new clients. Designing Women is iconic for a reason, and there are so many other elements to the show that could be discussed in depth that are beyond the scope of this podcast. The show is definitely worth a watch, you can find it on Hulu and I would really recommend taking some time to enjoy it. Until next time, I'll talk to you in the next episode. Bye!
