Kelly Wearstler on What Waiting Tables Taught Her About Design

**Imran Amed** (0:05)
Hi, this is Imran Amed, founder and CEO of The Business of Fashion. Welcome to The BoF Podcast. It's Friday, August 14th.
When the designer Kelly Wearstler was five or six years old, she made little drawings and small sculptures out of cans and cartons, laid them out on the table at family gatherings and put price tags on them. She grew up in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, raised by what she calls fiercely independent women who took her to thrift stores, flea markets and auctions. She got her first job at 13 She studied graphic design in Boston, apprenticed in New York with Milton Glaser, the designer behind the I Love New York logo, and then moved to Los Angeles where she waited tables at a Beverly Hills restaurant until one of her regulars became her first client. Today, Kelly's design studio has 60 people and six verticals, interiors, architecture, licensing, creative direction, a gallery, and a substack newsletter. Next month, she launches a 29-piece collection with H&M Home, the first time the retailer has put furniture into a designer collaboration, and the first time it has worked with one designer across both home and fashion. This week on the BoF Podcast, Kelly joins me to talk about advocating for herself before she had any track record, what waiting tables taught her about designing restaurants, and how she is using AI inside her studio. Here's Kelly Wearstler on the BoF Podcast.
Hi, Kelly.

**Kelly Wearstler** (1:44)
Hi, Imran. How are you?

**Imran Amed** (1:46)
I'm good. Welcome to the BoF Podcast.

**Kelly Wearstler** (1:50)
Thanks so much for having me. So good to see you.

**Imran Amed** (1:53)
I actually can't believe we haven't done this yet, because I thought we would have done it by now. But I learned so much about you when I was going through the research for this conversation that I didn't know before. So I think it's actually going to be quite a fun chat. And of course, there was the big news earlier this year and then last week that you've done this quite landmark collaboration with H&M, which we'll talk about later. But I want to go all the way back to Myrtle Beach, which is a place I've never been to. So for me and for everyone else who doesn't know anything about Myrtle Beach, that's where you were born, right?
Tell us about growing up in Myrtle Beach.

**Kelly Wearstler** (2:40)
Well, Myrtle Beach was Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. And I grew up by fiercely independent women, my mom, my grandmother.
And my mother was quite young when she had my sister and I.
And, you know, it was like anywhere else. It was, you know, everyone was into, you know, music and just hanging out and being together. And, you know, it wasn't filled with culture. So, you know, we would seek that out. We would go to Charleston. We would take trips to New York and really kind of search out a little bit of culture. I was very curious growing up. You know, my mom and my sister and I loved going to thrift stores and flea markets and auctions. And my mother just loved design and loved fashion. And so my sister and I tagged along with her all the time.

**Imran Amed** (3:32)
And so that's really interesting. So you're in this place that's maybe a little starved for big city culture. So you find your inspiration and passion in going to flea markets and thrift stores. Like, what were you discovering there and finding there that caught your eye at that age?

**Kelly Wearstler** (3:53)
I remember, like, fashion, like scarves. My mother, you know, we didn't have a lot of money growing up, so she loved scarves. I have an amazing collection of vintage scarves and her and my grandmother and, you know, just belts and magazines. I remember just seeing all these, like, magazines from the 60s and 70s and just piled up and really just going through them and seeing fashion and what life is like in these other places, you know, in the world.
And just I'm super curious. I was always turning things over. I was looking at tabletop and I was looking at furniture.
And I think that really kind of educated my eye and so many different elements of design. Like I love typography and I think that really came from, you know, the magazines and what really resonated with me and evoked an emotion. And so, you know, we're constantly going to these, you know, interesting auctions. We would go to them in New York, we would go to, you know, Atlanta had a few. And this is obviously before online auctions. And my mother was, you know, was collecting also, which, you know, I actually still have a few pieces that I still treasure.