Home Stories: Nicky Bush and Debra Nowell

Posted on 14 September, 2018

When I was in New York a few years back, I went to MoMA and had a bit of a ‘moment’ when I discovered their second floor was dedicated to celebrating mid-century furniture.

So much so, that as they were closing up the museum for the day, I snuck back up another set of stairs to pretend I just walked in with the hope of having an extra few minutes.

It didn’t work. The security guard recognised me from the hour before and the fact that I put on a super thick accent and said, “I come here all way from Polski, English not good, want to see chair” just infuriated him even more.

I never had an experience like it again, mostly since we don’t really have design museums here in Australia and seldom are there exhibitions celebrating modern industrial design. But then I met Nicky Bush and Debra Nowell, who own a property styling, furniture showroom and interior design business. An opportunity to relive that experience presented itself.

Debra has a long career in interior design but Nicky, her daughter, doesn’t actually have a background in styling or interiors at all. However, she is perfect proof that your passion and dedication can take you very far. It’s really empowering to know that any of us can apply ourselves to interior aesthetics despite our backgrounds, either in a professional or personal way. Though perhaps you shouldn’t apply the same rule to architecture or engineering—it’s easy to get it wrong without the right quals. It’ll probably look great at first, but soon enough, someone will get crushed by your creation.

As Nicky walked me around their showroom, which they use as a retail space, a styling showcase and studio space, it became very evident that this otherwise simple space was made rather stylish through three principles; bright white surfaces, clusters of tonal arrangements and an absolute lack of clutter.

Now I know most of us don’t live in warehouse-style loft apartments (I may as well keep the New York references running) but we can easily apply these principles to our spaces. Slick on a fresh coat of paint, jam the clutter in the garage and group your rooms or sections using tonally related pieces and décor items. Before you know it, you’ll have a showcase home (…and most likely a tricky time manoeuvring the car around all the crap in the garage).

I really enjoyed viewing the furniture arrangements in isolation of their usual home environment. Just like at MoMA, it felt like the pieces were celebrated against a blank white canvas to be admired or criticised at a heightened level of perception. Moving from ‘room’ to ‘room’, we discussed the fact that interior design doesn’t have a universal standard and it’s exciting to mix influences and styles to suit them to the purpose, the user or their home.

“People get overwhelmed with choice or sometimes lost in fads and influences,” Nicky explains. “It’s good to use the same principles as in fashion where you start off with a few quality practical pieces that appeal to your sense of self, then build the rest of the look around that.”

I have to agree—if you stick to that principle, you’ll find that having lots of choices is an enabler to fine tune your taste. And I should add, we’re quite lucky in Canberra to have plenty of décor places under one roof at places like Canberra Centre’s Monaro Mall.

Once we were done with the showroom, Nicky took us to the second warehouse which felt like the art store (well, for me anyway), but with an OCD-level of organisation.

Around every corner were sections for art decorations from celebrated brands such as Designer Boys, wardrobes jam-packed with soft throws, a library full of designer fashion books, shelves of vases and of course massive lines of stools, tables, beds and cabinets.

As we moved around the furniture and décor sections, I started to curate the next exhibition in my head. I think I’ll call it ‘Level 2’ as an ode to MoMA. I’ll launch a catalogue, of course, and ensure that everyone leaves through the gift shop. If I get it right, perhaps heaps of people will have ‘a moment’ too and get inspired to love their homes even more.