If you could put Holiday/ Inspiration/ Interior Design/ Spirituality and now the debut of jewelry all in one pretty package tied with a bow this would be it. I’m speaking not only of Katie Scott’s showhouse room called “Private Spaces” on view at Holiday House NYC (2 East 63rd St.) until December 2, but also about the woman at its core. Katie Scott is an award winning Houston Based interior and jewelry designer who lets her heart and soul guide her in the way she lives her life. Encouraging others to join her on this journey she begins a new project by asking her interior design clients how they want their space to make them “feel.” I attended a press breakfast to highlight both her jewelry and the diminutively elegant space.
 |
| Stanton Scott and Iris Dankner |
Designing baubles came out of Scott’s wish for contemporary inspirational jewelry to “reflect how I was feeling on the inside and match it on the outside.” Both her interior design business (started in 2005) and her jewelry designs (2013) began as she sought greater fulfillment spiritually and found her inner peace after a bad divorce. She recounted the story of how she initially reconnected with her current husband and business partner Stanton Scott (they had known each other briefly in college), after realizing that the phrase “Let It Be” had become her mantra as well as becoming the title of her book, or spiritual “documentary,” on display here on the bookshelf.
 |
| Let It Be by Katie Scott |
“At that time I didn’t even trust my own ability to know what was right for me” she said “but when I saw Stanton (at a tennis tournament) and we had just started talking, the band began playing ‘Let It Be’ and I knew.” She literally thanked God for the sign. There is also a philanthropic angle — 30% of the sales of her signature “Let It Be” bracelet and ring will go to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BRCF). This is the eighth season of Holiday House NYC which brings together top interior designers creating original holiday-themed living spaces with proceeds also going to BCRF.
 |
| The scene |
In true fashion to her beliefs, Scott has taken what some might consider lemons (through a lottery she was given two small passageway rooms to design instead of one of the Grander salons, and I do mean GRAND!) and made sweet lemonade. “My room at the Holiday House truly is a jewel box. What others may have seen simple as a ‘pass through’ between other rooms, I saw as an undiscovered space, ripe with possibility,” she explains, “it reminded me that sometimes the small joys that cannot be seen at first are the ones that truly adorn our life in the most radiant form.”
 |
| Katie Scott displays a pendant |
Indeed, the room works perfectly as a dramatic dark canvas to showcase her jewelry including a specially designed “cuff stand” for her leather or python cuffs with interchangeable screw-off attachments. If for instance, one day you feel like displaying a jeweled sapphire burst (one of her most iconic designs present in her new logo), and the next you want to go with a diamond hamsa or a cross, you have the ability to do so.
 |
Her jewelry ranges from archetypal Judeo-Christian symbols including the Star of David and crosses on pendants and cuffs; to the more fanciful: angel wings, rosary or meditation bead rings, thorn cuff and stunning diamond studded Full Moon Wish Collar — open to the front and featuring pave diamond circles just above the collar bones. Prices range from under $200 for smaller talismans without stones to around $10,000 for some of the show stopping jewel encrusted pieces. Materials used range from silver to rose gold, diamonds to leather. The jewelry can be purchased at Neiman Marcus as well as online at katiebydesign.com.
 |
| Cuff Console and mirror |
“When confronted with a small space such as this you would think to go light, however this works!” remarked Amy Rosi of Aros Communications, branding manager of Scott’s jewelry, as we took in the black brass beaded linear wall and ceiling covering which Scott chose because it resembles wax drippings. “I didn’t intend this but everything that I’ve chosen here resembles a piece of jewelry” Scott mentioned as we took in the Natasha Badaran Cuff Console (shaped like a sculptural cuff with “swiss cheese” type openings), the Lindsey Adelman and Jean de Merry Chandelier which reminded me of a giant brass pendant, as well as the de Merry over console mirror which resembles an interesting brooch or earring.
 |
| Jewelry alcove |
I also had the fortune to meet Iris Dankner, Founder & Co-Chairman of Holiday House NYC, who looks uncannily like a better preserved Carine Roitfeld. Dankner, a breast cancer survivor of 19 years, also believes that the “Supreme Being” works in mysterious yet remarkable ways in allowing early detection of the disease for which she had no family history. In a story similar to Guiliana Rancic’s, Dankner learned that she had breast cancer while undergoing infertility treatments.
Highlights of the Holiday House include the top floor’s “Glamping” bedroom complete with bear by Vicente Wolfe and a very untraditional living room which features contemporary portraits of Kate Middleton, Carolina Herrera and Iris Apfel along with a stuffed skunk taking up residence on an armchair. Interestingly, I think that each of the featured showhouse designers would need to call upon some inner strength or enlist the help of a higher power — they only get five days to install a whole room here! I guess that’s not a big deal for The Almighty who created the whole world in seven including a day of rest.
For more information visit holidayhousenyc.com.
– Laurel Marcus
