Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:39:21 · Nate Berkus, Alexa von Tobel, S2
[00:39:21] S0: 100%. [00:39:21] S1: It's just... It's it's a really, really beautiful thing. I... We're gonna get to talking about tech and design because you really are in a position to be a thought leader about how that's how that's hitting the world and also all of the things that could worry us about it. [00:39:39] S0: Yep. [00:39:39] S1: But I I wanna take a minute because I picked up a new book that I'm pretty [00:39:42] S2: pumped about, [00:39:43] S1: which will be in all my all my places. And it comes out November 18. Nate, you've written... You've you've done so much in life. What made you write... What what made you put this together? And, also, it's stunningly
00:39:56 · Nate Berkus
[00:39:56] S0: beautiful. Thank you. I didn't want a photo of me on the cover. I wanted it to be really beautiful, sitting on a table or in someone's bookshelf. I wrote Foundations, comes out November 18. I wrote it because it is more, the thought process behind it was also very clear. I wanted to write what felt like a thank you note to anybody who has ever followed me, who has ever bought a bath mat, who's ever enjoyed a TV makeover or seen one of our projects published, and I thought thirty years into this business, I can kind of do what I want. I could put out $150 monograph of all of the fancy places we've designed and beautiful interiors, or I could do like a $50 ish book and just put everything I've learned in the last thirty years and every question I've ever, almost every question I've ever received on a DM on Instagram, back in the days when people used to email Harpo, we kept all that information and I just spit it all back out in a beautifully photographed volume that's divided by area of the home, so you don't have to read the whole thing, but if you're renovating your bathroom or changing your kitchen or furnishing your dining room, you can turn to dining rooms, bathrooms, and there's styling tips. I made the photographers stand and take aerial shots of every coffee table, every mantle, every night table, because I wanted people to see the details the way I see them and start thinking about design the way I think about design. There's a lot of information out there, a lot of it is I find very self serving. This is the opposite. This is me taking a mirror and shining it back on everybody that supported me all these years.
00:41:51 · Alexa von Tobel, Nate Berkus
[00:41:51] S1: Nate, but first of all, you just said something where you're like, I could have done the $150 book, but instead I did. You were a man of the people. You really... Actually, I just... It's like, Nate, should we have Nate Berkus run for president, everybody? [00:42:04] S0: Oh my god. No. Thanks. [00:42:05] S1: You've never been a snob. You pay it forward. You wanna welcome people into design. I just love that about you. Okay. I wanna talk about the future of design. So we are sitting a few years into an explosion of AI. You and I have had many tech talks about what's happening in AI. We're in a really unique moment where now these incredible computers, LLMs are just... They're able to do so much. They are able to copy so much. How do you think about the future of design? And I... I'd love just to get a sense of, like, what are you excited about and, like, what worries you?
00:42:41 · Nate Berkus
[00:42:41] S0: So again, that has not been linear for me. I was initially panicked that somebody could put in, show me a Nate Berkus and Jeremiah Brent interior, and here's the photo of my room, how do I do it myself? Obviously there's so many industries that are gonna be affected by AI and be rendered obsolete at some point. Consulting, all of that stuff is super scary to me. What I think AI is never going to be able to replace are the relationships that are built With families that we've done three, four, five homes for, where we know their inventory, we know what they loved, we know what sofa or mantle they stood in front of for every Christmas card, we know how to recreate that in an Aspen house or a Palm Beach house or whatever it is that we're doing because we are a family. We have a role that we play, but we are playing a role in that family and there's an intimacy around that that I don't think will be threatened. For math and for people who aren't looking to build relationships with a designer over the last twenty five years, that is a very different scenario. And I have to tell you, I'm really excited about it. I think everybody deserves to live well, and I was excited when Instagram became massive and design inspiration could be found and accessed by everybody. I was excited when Martha Stewart brought Living Well to the general public as the first pioneer in our industry. I think the more people talking about it, the more people that have access to it, the more people that see how design, good design can impact our lives and make us more productive, make us calmer, make us feel again like the best version of ourselves in these beautiful spaces, then bring it on. Am I worried that, you know, sure. Sometimes, you know, it takes a lot to assemble an interior, by the way. It's not just an image that you can copy and recreate. Even if that image has been tailored to you by AI with your top five designers and beautifully crafted visually, What size is it? What fabric is the right fabric that goes there? It be welted? Right. It I mean, there's 68,000 decisions and details that go into every renovation in every room. So, you know, I think the real designers are safe. I think the Instagram editors should probably be a little bit nervous.
00:45:52 · Nate Berkus, Alexa von Tobel
You know, the people that just kind of gather all these great images and have a beautiful homepage, but have never installed a room, never faced what it is to manage a project. But overall, I'm bring it on. Like, let's get everybody talking. [00:46:13] S1: I I like... I I love it. And actually, I... You kinda just painted a picture in my mind of we really can democratize. You know, design doesn't need to be reserved for the top 10%. Like, it should be something that everybody... And I know that you've always been about that, by the way. Have, like, your target line. I mean, I'd like... I have consumed so much of what you've created for people, But but I think you're right on that. Actually, one of the questions I I was gonna add. So, obviously, with ShopMy, a company I know you know well, the podcast, and I... You know, you've been involved with them. It... The future of cur... Curation is what's happening. I think there's an explosion of more products just in general. Right? You... When you and I were growing up, maybe there were 10 beverage products. Now there's 10,000. If we were gonna go buy something from a home store, there were maybe 50 big home stores, but now because of Etsy and... There's 50,000 decisions you could make. And I think curating through that is hard. And at its core, you're a curator. Just how do you think about the future of curation right now? Because at its core, you are effortless at, as as you said earlier. How do you think about curation and how that's evolving?
00:47:40 · Nate Berkus, Alexa von Tobel
[00:47:40] S0: I think it's fascinating in that listen, the challenge I have around curation, and I am part of ShopMy and I take that super seriously. I review every product that's going on my ShopMy page. It's literally all the things I use and wear and put on my face and my hair and when I find something I get excited to add it to ShopMy, an obscure Portuguese cotton company that make car coats that fit everybody that I wear almost every day, that goes on my shop my page. I still have a little bit of a reservation around me as a person in design and in home choosing to share what moisturizer I use. It still feels a little bit weird for me personally. My team is like, What are you talking about? Move on. So I do it, but I think what, I would prefer it to be a little bit more directive. I would prefer there to be a few more guardrails on it. I don't really care. Kim Kardashian is a brilliant businesswoman and an attorney and a really smart investor in many ways, and she knows vintage, and she's an auction junkie. I'd like to know that from her, but I don't know if I care what socks she's wearing. Yep, yep. Know? So Her [00:49:19] S1: could be guardrails, I like that. [00:49:20] S0: Yeah, that's what it feels like to me. I just, I don't know that ate a burrito on Instagram the other day because my team was like, go to this burrito place. And I was like, I'm only doing this because I really want a burrito.