With Jeremiah Brent, Bunny Williams Shares What Shaped Her Interior Design Sensibility And Iconic Career 

There are few trajectories as stellar as that of interior designer Bunny Williams. So of course, when she sat down with Jeremiah Brent for the Ideas of Order podcast, the conversation was as insightful as you’d expect, as she reminisced about the early days of her career and the origin of her passion for interior design. 

Brent and Williams’ conversation takes us to the very beginning of the designer’s personal story: her upbringing in Virginia, which she recalls fondly. “You were always ready for people to drop in, can you imagine today?” Williams says with a laugh. “Your house was open and it was so much fun.”

Growing up in a world where hosting was so paramount laid the seed for her passion for the home. “It’s the origin of why I do what I do,” she tells Brent on the podcast. 

“What was the instinct that you were trusting most?” Brent asks her about the days when her career in design was starting to take shape, working first as a receptionist at a New York antiques shop. There, she met designers Sister Parish and Albert Hadley, who would then hire her as their iconic firm’s secretary. “Passion and curiosity,” is Williams’ answer. “I felt that if I was going to do this, I needed every piece of knowledge that I could get and expose myself to everything.” 

And one of the things a young Williams was exposed to in those early days was media mogul and socialite extraordinaire William and Babe Paley’s apartment on Fifth Avenue, where Hadley had sent her to bring over samples. “The big living room was painted taxicab yellow, with Gauguin paintings and all paintings that are now at the Museum of Modern Art,” Williams recalls. “Brown satin sofas… My jaw dropped to the floor. I’d never seen anything so beautiful, but it was still cozy, as grand as it was. And I thought to myself, would I ever be able to do this?” 

In her conversation with Brent, Williams touches on all the different aspects of her sensibility as an interior designer, such as the importance of sourcing furniture and decor firsthand (as opposed to ordering on the internet or from catalogues). “Nothing’s more interesting than going into a shop and talking to a dealer,” she says, emphasizing the need to return to a more experiential approach to interior design. 

“You have to feel a room, and you can only feel a room if you’re in it,” Williams says as she and Brent reflect on the abundance of pictures on social media and Pinterest boards that are transforming design today. It comes as no surprise that Williams is having this conversation from the Connecticut home she’s owned for 42 years. “Maybe we can go back to having a place that you live in for a longer term,” she reflects. 

Listen to Jeremiah Brent and Bunny Williams’ full conversation, including how Williams launched her own firm after climbing the ladder at Parish-Hadley, and how she and her husband, renowned antiques dealer John Rosselli, make their passions coexist at home, on the latest episode of the Ideas of Order podcast. 

About the Ideas of Order podcast

Ideas of Order, the California Closets podcast, is produced by Rob Schulte at SANDOW DESIGN GROUP and is part of the SURROUND Podcast Network. Discover more shows from SURROUND at surroundpodcasts.com.