PAST PERFECT So just how does a former dancer become one of the industry’s leading designers, creating rooms of piercing sophistication that still feel like you can put your feet up on the couch? “When I look back I had the perfect education for it without even knowing it. I was a dancer, so I see in lines and forms. I innately understand balance and proportion from years of ballet classes and learning choreography. When you study dance you exercise both sides of the brain as you learn to be able to dance with both sides of your body. You have a daily discipline of reversing all movements and repeating them on both sides so that you do not have a weaker side. You develop an acute sense of balance, and can identify what is not in line by watching your reverse image in the mirror. This is a unique type of exercise on the brain. So you really develop your visual skills to a hyper degree,” notes Smith. Her advice to injured and hungry ballet dancers? “Become decorators!” Inspired by decorating greats, Elsie de Wolfe and John Saladino, and working with some very famous clients and storied residences, including the epic Mitchell Cottage in Maine (formerly owned by Kirstie Alley and originally designed by famed interior designer Sister Parish), Smith seems very at ease when others might be daunted, a disciplined grace and ease ingrained from her dancing days, perhaps. “That house was an amazing canvas. It had its own vernacular that I just let inform me. I generally work on restoratives so it’s important to not impose your design will onto these elegant homes. With Mitchell Cottage, I just had to imagine the way this gracious home felt at the genesis of its existence. Who was there and how did they live in the home? I then, with the upmost respect for its DNA, just gently pulled it forward into my client’s slightly more modern lives,” she remarks. Which is exactly how she tackled her latest project. “It is a very choreographed house. There are five kids in the family, so if their lives weren’t orchestrated properly, there would be chaos. Keeping their busy lives contained and satisfying the desires of many [was the challenge at hand.] We wanted a beautiful and sophisticated home, yet still child-friendly.”
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