 PHOTO GALLERY: B. Smith's furniture line
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Queen B.
From model to author to Restaurater and TV personality, B. Smith brings her personal style to everything she does. Now she's bringing it to home furnishings
HIGH POINT, N.C. -- As an author, a restaurateur, television host, and former model, B. Smith is a familiar face to many. But not here, in the "Furniture Capital of the World." Last week Smith (the B stands for Barbara) introduced her first furniture line -- a 40-piece home collection with manufacturer Clayton Marcus -- at the High Point Market, the world's largest wholesale home furnishings show.
Smith's line is the first collection created by an African - American woman for national distribution. It's not lost on her that of the approximately 80,000 people in the furniture and design world who converged on High Point, there were relatively few blacks "anywhere, except for those lovely cleaning ladies you see in the hallways," Smith says. Because the furniture industry and design world have been underrepresented by African-Americans, introducing her "At Home With B. Smith" furniture collection feels groundbreaking, she says. "This is a huge, huge turning point in my life," she says. "It's a triumph."
The collection has three furniture groupings, which are inspired by her contemporary penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park, her seaside Sag Harbor beach house in New York, and her global travels, as well as her previous life in the apparel industry; at her opening night party she wore an elegant body-hugging polka - dot silk dress that matched an ottoman. Her furniture received considerable attention here -- the showroom was packed with prospective buyers and members of the press -- even though celebrity-endorsed furniture collections aren't unusual at the twice-a-year furniture markets.
But during an interview in New York three weeks before the show, you sense immediately that her furniture means more to her than just another chance to extend her brand as a lifestyle designer. It's also an opportunity to overcome stereotypes about minority women in the business world.
"She's a unique entrepreneur in America, and she's giving black women and women of color opportunities to see possibilities for themselves," says Smith's husband and business partner, Dan Gasby. "She has overcome a lot of obstacles and is breaking down perceptions of what [African - American] women can do."
Smith, 57, grew up in western Pennsylvania, the daughter of a housekeeper and a steelworker. In high school, she loved home economics: "I wasn't a great student," says Smith. "I loved cooking and sewing." Because blacks weren't welcomed into the 4-H club, she started a home-ec club and made herself president.
After graduating, she went to modeling school, and her first career was as a model in Pittsburgh and later in New York, with the Wilhelmina agency. "I segued from modeling into opening my first restaurant in New York in 1986," says Smith, who has a 21-year-old stepdaughter. "I've always had at least three jobs. I still do."
Smith's impressive ascendance from a fashion model who graced the cover of 15 magazines, including Mademoiselle, to a syndicated TV host, restaurateur, and product designer seems effortless enough. Over lunch at a restaurant near their apartment, she tenders the current issue of "O At Home," an Oprah home - decorating magazine. The front cover folds out to reveal a glossy six-page ad for GE products, featuring herself and Ga sby entertaining in the "sophisticated GE Monogram" kitchens of their two drop-dead gorgeous homes.
But getting here has not been without hardship, she emphasizes. "Racism," says Gasby, "is always an element in what she and I have had to overcome."
"I've had blacks and whites alike tell me to put a curtain up in the window of my restaurant because no one wants to see so many blacks in the window," says Smith, 57, speaking of her restaurant, B. Smith's, in Times Square. (Her other restaurants are in Sag Harbor and Washington . ) "I'd advertise on a classical music station and get comments from people who listen to the station and thought I was white, because I don't speak in a colloquial way. I'd get hate mail."
She acknowledges that "some people maybe won't buy [the furniture] because I'm black." But she says interest, so far, has been strong.
"It's well - done and attractive," says Ray Allegrezza, editor-in-chief of Furniture Today, the weekly business newspaper of the furniture industry. "The Sag Harbor stuff is something you'd expect to see in a well-outfitted home in the Hamptons. The fabrics she used on her upholstery, maybe because of her modeling background, felt like they were something coming down the runway -- vibrant and rich in color. You got a sense she really was involved; this wasn't somebody just slapping their name on the stuff."
Her three collections -- Central Park South (modern), Sag Harbor (seaside cottage), and Mosaic Treasures (globally inspired) -- "isn't about my personality and my style so much as the way I put things together, as I have in my restaurants and my home," Smith says.
"Everyone's a designer now, watching design shows on TV. But when it comes to buying furniture and putting things together, it's not quite so easy for them. I want to help people enjoy their environments. If I can help people feel the way they want in their home environment I've won the lottery in a big way."
It was clear that a lot of furniture manufacturers were trying to win the lottery here last week. The industry is struggling, in the face of a flat housing market, credit-anxious consumers, and growing competition from wholesale clubs, catalogs, the Internet, and overseas manufacturers. What you did not see a lot of was innovative design. You did see manufacturers trying to play it safe with low-risk ideas for designing and marketing furniture.
One formula that's been used a lot lately is attaching celebrities (or semi-celebrities, in a pinch) to new furniture collections; in the last few years everyone from Pro Football Hall- of- Famer John Elway to former Charlie's Angel Jaclyn Smith have discovered their inner designers and teamed up with manufacturers to endorse furniture. Last week, B. Smith was briefly upstaged by The Donald himself who dropped into High Point -- amid much fanfare, including a limousine, white-gloved doorman, and rented fashion models -- to introduce his overstated "Trump Home" line of bedroom, dining room, and living room furniture for Lexington Home Brands. The theme of the collection was "affordable luxury."
Coincidentally, someone else was using the "affordable luxury" gambit -- Paul Burrell, Princess Diana's former butler and self-described confidante, who unveiled his "English Country House" collection for Highland House and poured tea into fine china teacups each afternoon for visitors. The collection included a neoclassical metal bed reminiscent of the gates of Kensington Palace, a English country house-style sofa, and, fittingly, a butler's tray. "I want to show people that to be elegant you don't have to be rich and famous," he said. "I'm a coal miner's son who was catapulted into a royal lifestyle, and I'm sharing some of the knowledge I was privileged to learn."
To see the world through the eyes of furniture manufacturers is to see a world where "people want glamour and more luxury," asserts Ed Tashjian, vice president of marketing for Century Furniture. Century's antidote is a return to extravagance with massive sculptural silk damask settees and pillows made of chinchilla and mink.
It's a world where McMansions are practically mainstream. Both Century and Bernhardt -- well known for its Martha Stewart collection -- are showing what Bernhardt spokeswoman Heather Bloom discreetly called "grandly scaled furnishings." You need a ladder to reach the top shelves of Bernhardt's 9-foot Montelena curio cabinet; Century's Castellan cocktail table has a surface area of 25 square feet, easily dwarfing the company's "Metro Luxe" dining table.
It's a world so dominated by electronics that furniture for almost every room of the house is being designed to accommodate flat-screen TVs and docking stations.
"Armoires used to be the staple of bedroom business for us," says owner Tim Copeland. "Now all of a sudden armoire sales have dried up because people are buying flat-screen TVs."
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
