Designed This Way!
The 10th year.
I have been designing since I was 10 years old.
Not professionally — but in the way that matters. Rearranging furniture. Obsessing over light. Knowing instinctively that a room could feel different, better, more like itself, if you just moved one thing.
That instinct became a career. That career became Vanessa Katzen Design, a NYC-based luxury interior design studio built on the belief that a space should feel inevitable. Like it could never have been any other way.
But here’s the part they don’t put in the press release.
The process is messy. The decisions are hard. Clients change their minds. Materials get discontinued. A room you were certain about suddenly isn’t working and you have to figure out why at 11pm the night before an install. And then, if you’ve done it right, there’s a moment where everything clicks into place and the space becomes exactly what it was always supposed to be.
That moment is why I do this.
And this Substack is where I’m going to write about all of it. The process. The philosophy. The mistakes I made so you don’t have to. The materials I can’t stop thinking about. The clients who pushed me. The rooms that surprised me. The business of building something beautiful from scratch and what luxury actually means when you’re the one constructing it.
I’m here because design deserves a more honest conversation. Not just the finished photography and the press placements but everything that happens in between.
Pull up a chair. The best part is just starting.
V