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ELIZABETH BETTENDORFFour women have formed a tight bond through their shared love of all things interior.
HYDE PARK - A few weeks ago, the four designing women got up long before the sun cracked the sky, and they boarded a flight to Charlotte.
Of course, the uncivilized hour didn't dampen their legendary charm.
They were chatting away excitedly when the flight attendant strolled over and said: "Ya'll are just adorable!"
Adorable.
All weekend at the International Furniture Mart at High Pointe, N.C., they kept calling each other "adorable."
A few days later, the four women were in a restaurant, chatting as usual, and a woman sitting at a nearby table sent them cheesecake with a note telling them they were "cute" as could be.
"Cute and fat after all that cheesecake," jokes one of them, Ginger Tarr Shea.
Tarr Shea, along with Pat Kelley, Karen Brown and Christine Keene, is one of four interior designers working out of a sweet, 1914 daisy-yellow bungalow on Brevard Avenue in Hyde Park.
Visitors walk into a cozy showroom of handsome furniture, landscape paintings, pretty topiaries and porcelain rabbits. The four women work out of small offices in various rooms of the old house, but they hold regular brainstorming sessions at Tarr Shea's old family dining room table.
Gorgeous, of course.
Cherry. With Hitchcock cane-seat chairs.
At this table, they give each other advice on clients, swap secret shopping haunts and occasionally collaborate as Shea and Kelley did recently for a retail shop a client was opening in Qatar on the Arabian Peninsula.
Though they maintain separate businesses, they pool resources for overhead costs.
They also share, share, share.
They share good painters, carpenters, tile layers and workers.
They combine coveted samples, stocking their already extensive library with swatches of carpet, flooring, wallpaper, fabric and window treatments.
A visit here is more fun than the cosmetics counters at Saks.
They've been a team for about six years. Karen Brown and Christine Keene worked together as interior designers at Ethan Allen in Brandon. Pat Kelley and Ginger Tarr Shea were already a business team when they serendipitously sat next to the other two women at a design conference on Harbour Island.
The chemistry, of course, clicked.
"We talked the whole time and then they asked us if we wanted to join them," Keene recalls.
So, are they really like the girls of late-great Designing Women show fame?
"All they did was talk on that show," quips Brown, 41, a former high school English teacher and five-year captain of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers cheerleading squad. "We actually get work done."
They each have their own styles, too.
"We're all very different," says Christine Keene, 47, who is revered as the "resource" person because of her knack for finding good shops. "For example, I love traveling to antique shows and hunting for good finds."
Pat Kelley, 66, started off as an interior designer working in Tarr Shea's family furniture store, the Tarr Furniture Company.
"I actually knew Ginger when she was in college," recalls Kelley, who specializes in new home design and remodeling and helps clients choose items that are "timeless."
Tarr Shea, 60, who has a master's degree in interior design from Florida State University, is a third generation designer. In 1927, her grandfather Russell Tarr built a seven-story furniture store at the intersection now known as Kennedy Boulevard and Hyde Park Avenue. Tarr Shea now concentrates on residential design and remodeling and has a knack for incorporating the stuff a client already owns.
"It's fun to work with inherited antiques," she says, "to figure out what works and what doesn't."
Christine Keene grew up in Leone, France, the child of parents who owned a textile factory. She grew up loving silks and fabric, color and texture. She loves combing antique stores and flea markets, and is good at blending traditional and contemporary design, a style she calls "eclectic."
Karen Brown is the think-out-of-the-box girl with a gift for hand-painting furniture. She worked as an adviser to the curator during the restoration of the famous Ca' d'Zan Ringling mansion in Sarasota. She tries out regularly for the plethora of new television decorating programs. She was one of the designers selected for HGTV Designers Challenge for an episode last year in Beach Park and was recently invited to audition for Trading Spaces Family.
Though the group practices all kinds of interior design - residential and commercial - they've noticed a surge in home remodeling in recent years. It's something they attribute to clients choosing to remain in their current homes by updating kitchens, bathrooms or expanding square footage.
Other trends they've noticed?
Clients willing to experiment with bright colors.
A new crop of cabinets for entertainment equipment and plasma TV screens.
An attractive selection of home-theater furniture now produced by major residential lines.
Clean lines, less fussiness in overall design.
Great flooring options: slate, bamboo, great tile, patterned carpets.
Fun ceilings adorned with fabric, molding or painted interesting colors.
Lots of bold pink and greens; browns and blues are hot right now, too.
Comfortable, livable spaces that make the most of every room.
But perhaps the biggest trend they've noticed is this:
"Husbands are getting much more involved than they used to," Pat Kelley explains. "They used to just OK the final selection and write the check, but now they're getting into it more, which is good because it's their stuff, too."
Now the women say they've equally honed their diplomacy skills. Several clients have asked for decorating help with first newlywed homes, needing to meld the black sofa and big-screen TV with girly all-white furniture with flowered upholstery.
"I don't try to push an agenda or take sides," says Karen Brown. "It's really about both sides of the story."
Says Tarr Shea: "We're really sort of psychologists and psychiatrists, too. We know when to compromise."
And have fun at the same time.
And, Kelley adds, recalling the famous words of the flight attendant: "We're adorable, too."
- For more information about the designing women, call (813) 251-8816.