Clodagh, founder, Clodagh Design

Stacy Shoemaker Rauen: Hi, I’m Stacey Shoemaker Rauen editor and chief of Hospitality Design magazine with HD’s What I Learned podcast. Today, I sat down with Clodagh who’s a trailblazer in the wellness space. The Irish born designer first got her start in fashion, but is now known for her zen-like designs for the likes of Six Senses and Miraval that immerse the guests in all five senses.

SSR: Hi, I’m here with Clodagh. Clodagh, thank you so much for joining us today.

Clodagh: It’s my pleasure.

SSR: So good to see you. Let’s start at the beginning. You grew up in Ireland, correct?

Clodagh: I did. I was part of a downwardly mobile family so I moved five times before I was 17.

SSR: All throughout Ireland?

Clodagh: Throughout Ireland, yeah.

SSR: Did you always know you wanted to be a designer growing up?

Clodagh: I didn’t know what a designer was. I knew I had an awful lot of energy that I wanted to expend, but I didn’t even know how to do that. I was tucked into boarding school, you know, plops down.

SSR: You started off in fashion first right, before you even got into interior design?

Clodagh: Well, the reason I started out in fashion actually, and it was a moment of truth, I had an enormous horse that I was jumping. I galloped off up the field without lunging him, and he bucked so hard he broke the saddle and I flew off onto very hard ground and broke my back. I discovered that having admitted that I was in severe pain and so and so forth that I would have to lie on my back for months. As I was lying on my back with my hands in the air reading The Irish Times, I saw and ad and it said ‘Why not be a fashion designer?’ I thought ‘I wonder what that is? Yeah, and why not be a fashion designer? Yes, I’ll be a fashioner designer.’ I took off from there.

SSR: Did you go to school or did you get a job first?

Clodagh: I got kicked out by my father because in his world people did not go into what he considered was trade, otherwise buying and selling things. My mother gave me 400 pounds, and I left school and started my own business.

SSR: Did you have any sort of I guess experience or knack or did you figure out these talents along the way?

Clodagh: I had no experience whatsoever. I went to [The Grafton Academy of Fashion Design] and spent four weeks trying to learn how to cut patterns and stuff like that. I rented a little office in the middle of Dublin and a place where I could stick some seamstresses and then invented myself basically. What happened was that when you finish your course, your brief course, at the fashion academy you usually show a couple of pieces of clothing. Somebody caught up on them and liked them, and I got a little piece of publicity in The Irish Times where I’d learned about fashion in the first place. Somebody came from the Irish Cancer Society and asked if I would give a show in honor of the fundraise for the Irish Cancer Society so I said yes. I’m not very good at saying no. I did my first fashion show. I was in my late 17s. It took an enormous amount of nights to put it all together. It took 24/7. I modeled in it myself. I got a commentator, and I did it. We raised a lot of money for the Irish Cancer Society, and I was off and running.

SSR: That’s amazing. What kind of fashion pieces were you creating? What was the look that you were doing at the time?

Clodagh: My look was simplicity and glamour and also kind of a nod to the past. I had some painted velvets, I still have a piece with scrolls from the Book of Kells on them and natural linens and Irish tweeds. It was a small show but a decent size show at the same time.

SSR: Especially to do in your late teens.

Clodagh: This was a moment of compressed time. I can’t tell you that I had very much sleep.

SSR: You did this fashion show, what’s next? Where do you go from there?

Clodagh: What happened then I started to get a clientele. People from Vogue came in, and I was in Vogue in the States. I was in Vogue in England and people started to know about my clothes and a couple of retailers like Lord & Taylor and Henri Bendel and so on trotted into my small showroom and bought some stuff. Then Ireland was promoting its goods at the time. They flew me over [to the U.S.], and I had shows in the Plaza and a lot of the big retailers came in and it went from there. There’s a company called Montgomery Ward, huge catalogue, and they decided to put me on their design advisory counsel. I found myself flying around the States with Pucci and all sorts of well-known designers. It was crazy, you know.

SSR: It must have been amazing.

Clodagh: In the interim I had three boys and a husband.

SSR: You were quite busy.

Clodagh: I was quite busy.

SSR: How do you think you managed it all or you know was there something you take from that as a lesson learned during that time?

Clodagh: Well the lesson learned is you can do it. If you set your mind on a goal, you can definitely do it. You can’t shilly-shally about it. I mean, I had one pace and I think is fast forward. Pedal to the metal.

SSR: You are in Ireland, did you decide to come to the States then. You went to Spain first, correct?

Clodagh: Well, what happened I was married. It wasn’t the greatest of marriages. Fabulous children. I got a separation and found somebody else and changed husbands, countries, and careers and went to Spain. The fashion business, closed it down.

SSR: Just up and moved to Spain?

Clodagh: With all the energy I have, I found myself in Spain. We had bought an old crumbling townhouse in a beautiful little square. I didn’t speak Spanish so I said to my husband, ‘Maybe I can put this house together in some way while you do your real estate investment and planning and development.’ I took over the house. We hired a local architect. I was there with my dictionary and my opinions, and he really didn’t understand flow or how you would work out a bathroom or any of that stuff. I was constantly drawing over his drawings.

The day demolition started, the sun came in through the 14-foot-high shutters onto an old square and it hit all the dust and there was a mote of light. On that mote of light was clearly written for me ‘You’ve got to do this, you’ve got to be a designer because you’ve clarified this space. It feels beautiful now without all the clutter.’ When my husband came back from wherever he was I said, ‘I’m going to take the office downstairs, and I’m going to do architectural design.’ As soon as the house was finished, I opened my design business.

SSR: Just like that?

Clodagh: Yeah, just like that. Sometimes I wish I had more training and then I think maybe if I had more training, I wouldn’t have been quite as courageous. When you really get into it, you realize you need the courage.

SSR: Exactly. How did you go out and find your first client. I mean you were your first client, but your second client?

Clodagh: Well getting the first client was actually quite funny because the minute I hung the thing that said Clodagh Design, I went back upstairs and the door bell rang. I toddled back down the stairs and there standing in the doorway was this absolutely beautiful guy and he said in a very heavy accent ‘Are you the English designer?’ I said ‘No, I’m the Irish designer.’ Long pause. ‘Close enough. Would you design my English bar?’ What could I say but yes. He went away, and I raced back up the stairs and I said to my husband ‘I’m out of my mind.’ He said, ‘Oh, go do it. You can do it.’ The next day I took our Land Rover, drove down the coast, went and took the building size, and started to work.

SSR: What town was it in?

Clodagh: Almería. It was a resort actually, Roquetas de Mar, which was quite close by.

SSR: Did you end up designing a lot of places in Spain?

Clodagh: Yeah, I did. I consulted on a really nice hotel, a golf hotel. Being Irish, doing bars was easy. I did a corporate retreat. I did all sorts of things. A lot of the time I spent actually in the Land Rover with a companion, a Spanish woman, driving up into the village and finding wonderful arts and crafts and weavers—very much what I’d done when I was in fashion. You’d see the Land Rover coming down with the rack three chairs high.

SSR: Did you take a lot from what you did in fashion into your spaces then? Did they inform one another?

Clodagh: Fashion is brutal training. Unless everything is there when the dresses go out on the show, the dress can’t go out on the show. I have learned to assemble all the ingredients for design. I make endless lists and programs and protocols for getting our jobs out.

SSR: Were there any early challenges starting your own firm? Any obstacles you faced or did you have a niche in Spain that no one else was offering?

Clodagh: I really had no competition in Almería. I was not working in Madrid. The challenge was that each place I worked in was quite remote from the town where I lived and it was a lot of driving going on. Getting up at five in the morning and going out to do the construction, you wanted to start before the sun got really hot in summer. I think a challenge for all designers is prosperity and understanding how to manage money.

SSR: There’s the business side.

Clodagh: The business side. We weren’t allowed to talk about money in our house when I was growing up.

SSR: You had to figure it out all on your own. What made you decide to come to New York? What prompted the move across the ocean?

Clodagh: Well the husband that I still have actually decided to move to New York from Spain because his parents were getting very old. He thought he wanted to be with them. First, I didn’t want to go. I wanted to go to some other city: Paris, Rome, Seoul, anywhere. But I liked him, so I followed him.

SSR: What year is this?

Clodagh: That’s 34 years ago now.

SSR: Did you keep a small shop in Spain or just close that down and open up a new one in New York?

Clodagh: No, I closed down Spain and I had a little store there too called Trastos, which means things. I closed down Spain, just closed out completely and again I was thinking what am I going to do. I’m coming back to this big city where I was known as a fashion designer but now I’m wearing a different coat. I was walking down Madison Avenue, and I ran into a guy who had photographed my house in Ireland for some magazine. He said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve just come to live here.’ I know, he said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m doing design. I’ve been designing interiors in homes and bars and stuff like that.’ He said, ‘Well hold on a minute. Would you design my apartment for me?’ I said, ‘How can you ask me something like that, you’ve never seen what I do?’ He said, ‘I’ve been in your house in Ireland, and I loved it.’ He loved what I did, and he gave me his offices to do, an advertising agency, and then the architect recommended me and …

SSR: Off you went.

Clodagh: And 0ff I went.

SSR: What was your first kind of big project moving over to the States?

Clodagh: The first really big project was 57th Street where the big red nine is. Working for a company called Primerica.  A wonderful man hired me. It was very big offices, the head offices for Primerica. An awful lot of research took place. It was an interesting story, actually, because clients are clients. I said to him ‘How often do you want to meet during the process?’ He said, ‘I don’t need to meet you during the process. I’ll just come in when it’s finished. Just give me the presentation and I’ll come in when it’s finished.’ That’s very scary actually. The day that he came, it was finished and you know flowers were on the table and I had a bottle of Champagne for him. I was standing shaking like a leaf because I have this really big executive. What if he comes in and doesn’t like it? He came in, walked around, came back and hugged me and said ‘This is amazing.’

SSR: How often does that happen?

Clodagh: It happens sometimes but not that often.

SSR: You’ve made a name for yourself with sustainable design and wellness and creating these beautiful, zen-like spaces. Was that always something that was of interest to you or is that something that you developed as you grew into becoming an interior designer?

Clodagh: The zen-like spaces and the minimalism was first triggered by the fact that we moved so often. I mean the antiques went out to send us to boarding school, but a lot of stuff was moved except for the family china, the family silver, and all this stuff and I hated it. We children had to clean it, you know. There was early minimalism and then sustainability came because I was curious why we had to feed the dogs certain things so they’d win at dog shows and the horses certain things so they’d jump higher. I thought as I was lying in my bed on my back with a broken back I wonder how we could apply this to people. At the same time, more or less, as I started my fashion business, I went out and found some healers. I’d been brought up with a compost heap and you didn’t use anything else but your own compost on your garden. You wouldn’t put any chemicals on your garden. We had an organic garden, we just didn’t know it was an organic garden.

I figured out you are what you eat. That was helpful. The only thing I thought would send my father into the most violent rage was if somebody cut down a tree. I was very aware of what was around me. I’d take long rides in the country side and you know you become very aware. You realize you want that to live on and people to be happy in it.

SSR: It’s become easier now, but at the beginning, was it hard sell to your clients to includ this or did you find the right clients to help you know create these spaces?

Clodagh: Actually, better still, just when I discovered Feng Shui, I just did it. You don’t necessarily have to educate clients in the beginning. You know it’s bad enough for a client to face up to the tension of having to make decisions about their own home or their own offices. If you sling another load of stuff at them, it’s hard. My theory is just do it, and you can say that this is sustainable but you also say this is durable. We don’t want to create land fill, do we? There’s ways of placing it. Nobody should feel admonished when you’re asking that we use sustainable materials. They first thing is they have to be beautiful.

SSR: You’ve done this in many different projects, but one of your more recent ones was the EAST, Miami. It’s an urban development but it still has your signature touch and you can feel it when you walk in. What was it like trying to breath your spirit into an urban building in an urban context?

Clodagh: Well, what I tried to do is to make people feel that they’re coming home when they come into a hotel. That there’s a feeling of getting a hug. Miami is a city of gleaming spires, and I just thought that tumble travertine, a split-faced travertine, would give a feeling of permanence and grounding. Most of us spend a lot of our time in either in airports or in the air or driving around, so you want to ground people. The lobby is all about grounding. After that, bringing in Wynwood graffiti artists came easy.

SSR: You had a lot to work with.

Clodagh: Yeah, so basically what you’re doing is you’re being contextual, and at the same time, you’re designing to make people feel comfortable. For me, first comes comfort.

SSR: Right, then everything else layers on top.

Clodagh: It layers in on top. Contextualism is incredibly important.

SSR: You bring in others to help you, right?

Clodagh: It’s really to create harmony and balance. Feng Shui creates harmony and balance and prosperity, which is extremely important. We have a Feng Shui master in New York, Sarah Rossbach, who we’ve been using since I discovered Feng Shui, which is now 33 years ago. We have a wonderful guy called Alberto Amura, who flies in and heals. He can do remote healings on the ground and measure any toxic rays there might be. He works with biogeometry, red esthesia, and if something bad has happened there before, he does a cleansing ceremony, in fact, the Feng Shui master does too. Very often something bad has happened when you’ve got a big size, and you just want to clear it away. In fact, if you had been standing in front of the Seychelle building in Santa Monica five years ago, you would have seen me with a shovel putting pink quartz crystals into a certain area because Alberta couldn’t do it and said ‘Can you go out and dig?’ I went out and dug. The results are in that the buildings have these treatments that are healed and balanced actually sell well and rent well.

SSR: Yeah it’s a return of investment.

Clodagh: The developers have begun to understand that it has a value. It’s not so ‘woo woo’ really when you think that I was standing outside with my dinner date last night and 17 images came in in color on my iPhone. It’s all about moving energy around.

SSR: Right. You’re also working with some great wellness pioneers. Miraval and Six Senses and especially and most recently in Turkey and Portugal for Six Senses. Can you talk a little bit about what you’ve done for these properties and working with a brand like Six Senses?

Clodagh: So we helped to rebrand Miraval, maybe 14, 15 years ago in Tucson. Then, of course, they moved to another owner. Now, they’re going to be and are in Austin and Lenox, Massachusetts. The branding is the personality of the brand. It’s understanding the personality of the brand, what does the brand represent? Branding is one of our specialties, digging down deep and reframing it so it can be delivered easily, so people understand it. Miraval is a really great brand. I love their horses and all the things they do. It’s been such fun working with them and bringing in great artists.

Because of my background in Feng Shui and all the healing modalities (biogeometry, biophilia, and colored therapy) when I first started to work with Neil Jacob and Six Senses, it was like I was a solo player quietly playing my violin and being asked to join one of the best chamber music groups of the world. It was talking the same language, pushing the same way, always looking for the best, making it sustainable for people, and making sure that everybody left any of the projects that they stayed in with a totally viable usable health practice.

SSR: Withthose properties, it’s almost every step of the way, right? You’ll see it in our March/April issue, your latest one in Turkey for Six Senses, how you turned a helipad into a labyrinth, like a meditation walk almost. You said in the interview that you want to make everything beautiful, every step of the way. I just love that, it resonated so much in what hospitality spaces should be.

Clodagh: It’s the pathway really to wellness, and the corridors to wellness, and the stairs to wellness as you’re moving around in a building or outside it. Everywhere you walk, everywhere you look you should see something beautiful. Why should a helipad look like a helipad? We did a moon garden there so you can lie on pillowy berm grass and watch the moon rising out over that beautiful bay in Kaplankaya. Opening up the kitchen so you can see the chef because you should be able to see what you’re going to eat.

It’s about taking advantage of the rich tapestry of Turkish culture and putting that into a totally contemporary building. There’s a kind of caravans array of kilim-clad ottomans when you walk in the door. I got the most ancient olive tree I could find, about 600 years old with three trunks. I said ‘Come join me in the courtyard.’ We built a reflecting pool so the olive tree is sitting there, so happy reflecting in the courtyard. We built living walls on either side. It’s this wonderfully harsh landscape, so we made green moments. Also honoring the olive tree, which is very important to the Mediterranean was a very good thing.

SSR: They seem like simple moves, but how you execute them and it’s easier said than done, right?

Clodagh: We put ourselves in the guests’ and the workers’ clothes and shoes. When you drive in after a lovely drive or a winding rocky place and so on and so forth, you want to come to somewhere again that gives you a hug. My olive tree is there already and the green walls. You walk in, and you’re in Turkey and you’re inside as well as out.

SSR: You know where you are. Wellness right now is having such a moment. From my perspective and HD‘s perspective, we’re very excited that wellness is now being integrated into so many different ways and peoples’ lives and especially hospitality. Why do you think wellness is now having its moment, or you know becoming so important. Why do you think this is happening now?

Clodagh: Wellness is having its moment because it’s becoming easier. You can go onto your search and get every kind of advice whether it’s from cancer or whether it’s for asthma or whatever it is. Information is there. I think people are empowered by that. You’re not taking your sickness to the doctor, you’re taking something you’ve looked at deeply to the doctor and maybe getting the right medicine for it or the right advice to be well. There’s never been more emphasis on what you eat. You are what you eat, let’s face it.

You’re also where you live. It’s the toxins that are in the air in people’s homes because they use toxic cleaning products  that cause an awful lot of the allergy attacks and asthma. There’s enough information on that. If you’ve got asthma, you can look it up: What might trigger asthma? You know, you’ve got a headache, what might have triggered that headache? It’s just easier, and people are taking a bit more responsibility.

Again, back to when I was 17, my then about-to-be husband had a woman working with him, who we made vice president of the company and she said to me, ‘You have to be your own doctor. You have to be your own health practitioner, you have to be your own lawyer, you have to be your own priest’—she was Catholic, I’m not—’You have to be your own nutritionist. You’re responsible for all of that.’ Before you go anywhere, think as you move through life. Have that moment of contemplation when you ask what’s going on. Does that answer your question?

SSR: It does. It does perfectly. Do you translate this into your office and into your home as well, how you design and how you think?

Clodagh: Yeah, I translate it everywhere and try to do it in the hotels. I go back into the back of house to make sure back of house is comfortable and happy. The energy of back of house is what really is the motor that makes a happy place to be. I get my clients to buy larger fridges, so they can have more prepared vegetables. Absolutely every inch of the way. For instance, I have a country cottage we go up to. I look under the sink, it’s practically the first thing I do, to see if somebody, one of the cleaners, has left something toxic there. I’m really vicious about it. It gets into our water system, you know.

SSR: It’s very true. Everything has an effect.

Clodagh: Everything is connected and interconnected. All living things, all growing things. We’re all reliant on each other.

SSR: Is this why you have expanded into product design to take this into the products that you create?

Clodagh: Well, I got into product design for several reasons. One is when I started everything that I designed had to be custom made. I thought it would be nice to get it out for the use of others. Then I realized the use of others plus royalties was a very nice thing, so I proceeded to seek licenses, and it’s been very successful. It makes me very happy.

SSR: Do you have a new collection or anything that you’re working on right now?

Clodagh: We’re working on a collection for Koroseal, which is going to launch quite shortly. There are new rugs, new carpets; there’s a list. Also, I have a new photography show, which is in a sense part of the collection. It’s my first gallery show ever for my own photographs in Tribeca, and it’s just launched. It’s really been interesting because again it’s like putting yourself out there. If you have the talent that you think you have, don’t sit on it. Do the flow through, you know, bring it out. and if you’re not successful, pick yourself off the floor and do another thing.

SSR: You said you started doing these art pieces and people asked who designed it what was your initial reaction?

Clodagh: That’s funny because I bought a good camera when I went to Tibet about seven years ago. I realized: ‘My god, this is great. In a nanosecond, I have an image that I can print. I can do something with. I don’t have to wait four years through value engineering and meetings and stuff like that. I can do something myself.’ I liked some of the photographs I took, and I started putting them where it was appropriate on the presentation tray. People started to buy them. I didn’t even say they were mine quite honestly until afterwards. Recently, I was out in Santa Monica at somebody’s apartment (and we’re now doing art consulting as well), and I put one of my photographs I thought would be wonderful. She said ‘I like that. Who’s the artist?’ I said, ‘It’s an emerging artist.’ I waited about half hour, then I told her.

SSR: What was her reaction?

Clodagh: She said, ‘That makes it even more precious. Thank you.’

SSR: Has it just been an amazing creative outlet? I mean a different way to express your creative that you didn’t realize you needed or wanted?

Clodagh: I think Susan Sontag was the person who said ‘Sight is the most promiscuous of the senses,’ and I’m really hot on all the sense, but sight … even driving down here today, I saw seven photographs I want to take. We made a note about where they are. I’m constantly looking for something that will inform my work, inform others, make the work of the studio a broad spectrum. I don’t like the word interior design by the way. I’m a designer.

SSR: You’re a designer. I love that though because you design so many different things besides just interiors and you go far beyond just regular interiors.

Clodagh: A nice thing is that I have a wonderful crew at the studio, and they empower me to do all that. This not something you do alone. The photography, yes, but putting a good project together that’s environmentally sound makes people happy requires quite a few people.

SSR: When you talk about your crew, tell us a little bit about your office. How many people?

Clodagh: We’re around 25. Sometimes a four dog day, sometimes only a three dog day. Dogs and children are welcome. No crying children please. That’s another thing. We really have an extraordinary group of people. Very creative people. We have healthy snacks, filtered water, music, nontoxic cleaning materials.

SSR: It’s a beautiful space.

Clodagh: It’s a lovely space because I’ve got three giant skylights, so I can see colors really purely and it’s great.

SSR: Light changes an environment immediately.

Clodagh: Yes. It really does. Light is life. I think lighting design is making incredible advances due to the warming up of LEDs. I want to put the hospitality back into hospitals. It’s that kind of terrifying place where you’re being wheeled down a long corridor  with glaring white light. That should end. I want to design hospitals.

SSR: Maybe that’s your next chapter.

Clodagh: Maybe it is.

SSR: Looking back in starting your firm, what have been some of your greatest challenges or obstacles or even successes that you know you’ve learned from, that you’ve you know taken with you throughout the years? You’ve done so many different things. Has there been any kind of lessons learned or piece of advice that you would share with others?

Clodagh: I think never be afraid to show your ignorance. Encourage people to check things and broaden the platform on which they’re working. I think that’s one of the things. The other thing I think is very important is to encourage people to have some business training because we sit in meetings and I sometimes just put on the table ‘Who’s paying for this?’ You’re allowed to blue sky a lot in the beginning, which we do. We come up with ideas and so on. Then there comes a point, who’s paying for this and how would this fit into the budget?

SSR: Goes back to having the business sense plus the creative sense.

Clodagh: Yes, exactly. Also, what we’re encouraging people to do is to speak up. We’ve sent people to presentation classes, speech classes—a couple of people who have soft voices so they can actually speak up and present. I think everybody should be able to present at any time.

SSR: That’s really important, especially with the clients and putting them out in front of people and you know allowing people to grow.

Clodagh: You’re presenting every day of your life one way or another.

SSR: Very, very true. We ask everyone this question, but you can learn so much from your successes but you also learn so much from your mistake or failures. Is there one that you have in your career that kind of stands out or that you remember and have used moving forward?

Clodagh: Funny enough, the most stupid error I’ve ever made, I think, and it was actually a very small one, but it actually informed every decision I’ve taken since that. I had a client, head honcho executive, and he wanted his closet designed in a certain way. I hadn’t checked whether he folded his shirts or hung his shirts. He hung his shirts and he had this huge bit of rage and I felt like a total imbecile. I really felt so stupid that I hadn’t checked that. You have to observe the clients, and this is the microcosm of it, but this explodes over everything. It’s like when you come into a hotel room where do you put your suitcase? What’s the first thing you do? This disaster, because I really rarely had anybody that mad at me, triggered off a desire to check everything, to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’.

SSR: Being one of the most successful women in this industry too, I mean has there been anything that you could impart onto other women trying to launch their own firms or who are coming up into this industry that might be a good piece of information or bit of advice?

Clodagh: There’s a long list actually of advice for women. O. Henry said ‘There are two sides to every quest and let us first look at the other.’ Women tend not to want to speak up in meetings, they tend to suppress themselves. There is a tendency, like it or not. Looking at the other side, you realize the other side will feel encouraged and safe if you speak up because that means you have an opinion. Having an opinion is very important. It’s really owning yourself.

I was terrified of public speaking in the beginning. I mean I would throw up in January if I had to speak in September.  I was so terrified. I went to a speech  coach, and she said that the only important thing when you’re speaking is ease of self. If you’re easy, and that comes back to the presentation, you have to be comfortable in yourself. No wardrobe malfunctions, please.

I think training yourself to be comfortable with what you’re wearing and how you look but how you feel inside. There’s a deep truth there that what you’re saying is actually what you feel. Have you ever watched somebody giving a talk and you realize their lips are moving but the heart isn’t there?

SSR: It has to be true to them and authentic. Clodagh, is there one quote that drives you or gives you inspiration to continue doing what you’re doing?

Clodagh: There is one. It’s a very strong quote and always makes me a bit teary when I say it. The ancient Egyptians when they arrived at their version of the pearly gates, they were not allowed to enter paradise unless it answered in the affirmative to two questions. Did you find joy? Did you bring joy?

SSR: That’s amazing. Last question for you because we just love what you’ve done besides design and really pushing wellness and sustainability in this industry, you also are a humanitarian and you have an amazing foundation called the Thorn Tree Project. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how it came to be and what you’re doing there?

Clodagh: Yeah, we’ve always given. Since I was a little girl, we’ve all given. The studio’s given to this that and the other and had fundraisers. What happened was in 2002 my friend Jane Newman was driving a Jeep up through Africa and the Jeep broke down in the Samburu desert where the Samburu tribe live. Night was falling. These people came out of the bush and approached the Jeep and she and the two guys she was driving with were quite nervous. Instead, one person leaned over the Jeep and said in English, ‘Can we help you?’ They took her in while the boys took care of whatever was malfunctioning and when she was leaving a couple of days later the chief said, ‘Where are you off to now?’ Jane said, ‘I’m continuing my journey and going back to the States.’ She said, ‘How can I help you?’ He said, ‘Help us to educate our children because the customs of our tribe will be vanishing. We have so many droughts, the cattle die, we need to educate our children.’ Only 3 percent of the kids went to school and practically no girls whatsoever.’

She came back and walked into my studio and said (she has a very British accent) and said, ‘Clodagh, I need your help.’ I can’t say no to a friend. I suddenly find myself the second founder of the Thorn Tree Project. We gave an instant kind of what they call in Ireland the bring and buy sale where everybody brings food. We raised enough money, it wasn’t that much, it was a couple of grand but two grand in Africa multiplied by 20 and we were able to sponsor a preschool for a year with that amount of money. Since then, I’ve been working flat out on helping. It’s wonderful to go up and I’ve been up a couple of times and see the kids just so happy. We’ve got graduates now who are going to high school and college. We’re getting sponsors. By the way, the hospitality business has been incredibly generous to us.

SSR: That’s so great to hear. Well, thank you for all that you’ve done and for being here. It’s always such a pleasure to catch up with you.

Clodagh: Oh, thank you.