As a young child, interior designer Jeremiah Brent and his mother visited open houses and model homes in his hometown of Modesto, California, as a form of daydreaming. Brent walked through the houses, imagining the people who might live there, building a fantasy around what these homes could be. Since then, Brent has turned his childhood design obsession into a sprawling career: He runs a 50-person design firm, moonlights on Queer Eye, and recently brokered his first bedding deal with Target.
Having come up in the industry through a series of audacious bets on himself, Brent has developed a sense of humor and pragmatism around his relationship with creativity and his role as a founder, designer, and collaborator. He’s quick to poke fun at himself, noting that he’s working on his control issues. (“If I had it my way I’d touch every hinge, every doorknob, every finish.”) And he’s clear that he absorbs as much as he can to consistently shape and influence his creative output: from a personal archive of design magazines to pop culture. (“I watch terrible, terrible TV.”)
As Brent enters the second decade of Jeremiah Brent Design, he says his relationship with design and creativity has become more rooted in storytelling, informed by the clients he works for and the team he works with.
“As time goes on, my work is known for a real kaleidoscope of design styles,” Brent says. “Everybody is so different, and their stories and their narratives are so different. I really want to be known as somebody who executes your story, not somebody who executes what I do really well. I don’t want to be one thing.”
I’m an early riser. I don’t need a ton of sleep. I usually get up around 4 or 4:30 a.m. I have the mornings to myself; my kids are all sleeping. I’ve got three hours of uninterrupted silence with far too much coffee. Music on, candles lit, and I work. A lot of times, I write, which is new.
I didn’t start with a degree in design. It really was just one of those things that happened through osmosis. When I started the firm, I wanted it to be me and like five people sitting around the desk, dreaming up the most insane spaces, the most beautiful things.
I’m super visual. My office is like a serial killer. A controlled serial killer.
I’m creatively always hungry. I’m always pulling and looking. I’m particularly inspired right now by the contrast and conflict between design styles and materials. When you bridge what was going on in, like, France in the 1930s with what was happening in the States in the 1980s? I think that conflict, and that contrast is where all the original ideas lie.
Somebody asked me, “Do you think taste is genetic?” I don’t think taste is a recessive gene. I think it has so much to do with curiosity, audacity, travel, absorbing.
At my core, I’m a good storyteller. That’s really where my strength is. I can listen. I can hear the nuances of what people need, and sometimes they’re not even saying it. That was the basis for the firm. I didn’t imagine it growing to the scale it has. Even though the company is 50-plus people, we still have that same synergy of five people sitting down at a table. There are so many different ways to make something beautiful. So that’s where I’m at now. It’s defining my lane of creativity and how I participate, how I nurture the creativity of my team.
I always feel the most creative when I’m with the people I’m creating for. The biggest part of it is getting to know the people and understanding where they’re from. What was the first room that ever held you? What was the most important space that you remember? At least this part of the creativity, for me, is earning people’s trust. It’s something that you’re not given. You’ve gotta earn it.
The fantasy part of what I do is where the love story is. So I always kind of call out one of the most important moments of your day. Where does it start? Where is the middle? Where does it end? And that acts as the beginning of the ripple. You build from there. You know, the fantasy, that component of that conversation with a client assures them that you understand what they value. And then I work backwards.
I sketch everything. I have to see the space and how you’re going to move through it first before I dig into the intricacies of breaking everything down. It’s all visual. So I’ll draw everything, build the space out, prioritize. It’s changed over time, and it changes with clients, but you know, it’s always a conversation around what matters most to the client.
I’ve never said no to work, even when I should. This was the first year that I’ve had to be like, “Okay, well, we can’t do that yet.” Or “That’s not gonna work.” That feels weird to me. I feel a pivotal shift in my tenacious appetite for growth. The evolution becomes everybody else’s, too. It’s not just mine now. So I’m making sure I’m executing and illustrating the balance that I want everybody else to have in their life. I joke all the time with everybody I work with. I want you to make a lot of money, and I want you to love what you do.
I just need to move and to travel, sometimes. We live in New York City . . . but then we have this farm in Portugal. I realized this year that I live between two extremes: I need the volume turned all the way up, or I need to go to Portugal, where the volume is completely turned down and nurtures me in a way that I never even thought was possible. In Portugal, I’m a nighttime person, and in New York, I’m a morning person. Each gives me different things.
I think trends are great if you’re not beholden to them. It’s a great way to have a conversation. It’s a great way to travel visually and maybe look at something that you would not have normally seen. To use them as a marketing tool is annoying. Just because turquoise is a hot color right now doesn’t mean you need to paint your room turquoise. But let’s examine turquoise. What do we like about it? Where did it start? It’s fun.
I’ve had a crash course on how to collaborate because I married another interior designer. Which I do not suggest, because there are a lot of opinions from gay decorators in the house. I think it was an interesting exercise for me, because, especially creatively, if I had my way with our home, it would be dark with one dimly lit room with one bowl on a table. Very wabi-sabi. It’s my husband’s worst nightmare. He would live in, like, you know, a French château. He’s like Marie Antoinette. So, we have found a balance and a joint style that works for the both of us.
I’m not pretending that I’m the most talented person in the room. I may be the most passionate, but definitely not the most talented, and I’ve seen so many different times from collaborations how far you can take a project with other people.
