Isaac the Girl
isaac the girl is a designer originally from the bay area who works with people and spaces on the Mendocino Coast to Southern California. She is one of the most analytical, brilliant, out of the box thinker’s I’ve come across. A sharp dresser, with a torrent of curly hair, she is self-possessed, a deep thinker, strong and graceful. In other words, Isaac is not easily forgotten. One of her clients said she asks questions that “make me realize how little I’ve thought this project through.” While that thought may be daunting, this is exactly the type of person you need to make a dream turn into a livable, functional reality.
I asked Isaac how she got into design.
“One of my first memories is of my mom, who is a a super creative, very supportive woman. I grew up in an environment where we were allowed to make messy art and personalize things. She used to let me and my sisters, when we shared rooms, make little partitions in the room so we would have our own little bitty private space. We got to chose whatever cloth we wanted. I remember us all doing this crazy stuff… My sister, who later became a conceptual artist, made a crazy web once.”
“That is the first time I remember noticing how dramatically different the same space feels if just one thing is changed. [How it can feel] a little bit wider or warmer with a different color. Seeing how a room can change and how much that changes the feeling inside ones body. There’s an emotional and visceral shift.”
Isaac’s comments reminded me of a famous story from Broadway Theatre. A director could not get a scene to work. On the page and in other productions it was a gut buster of a scene, truly funny. The actors, the set, and the lines were all perfectly executed, and yet it was flat no matter what they tried in terms of timing, delivery, staging. A famous director stopped by and watched the scene and said “The towel in the background should be yellow.” They swapped out the white towel for a bright yellow one and suddenly the scene was hilarious.
Isaac’s approach to design is rooted in a philosophy unto itself. Some might call her approach radical.
A philosophy of beauty, how it is experienced, defined, and created is often called Aesthetics, which is a field of study defined as “a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste.” A quick google search on aesthetics will pull up fashion movements circa instagram in the 2020s, with names as diverse as “cottagecore” “bubblegoth” to “light academia” to “grandmacore.” These terms categorize the clothing, color schemes, filter preferences and background tastes of influencers. This presetting of aesthetic is a far cry from the personalized, site specific work Isaac does.
“Whatever you like, it is not by accident. Each individual client will have different needs around how they like their energy to rest in their house. They have different work needs. There is no one-size-fits-all how to-make-the-sexiest-room formula..”
She continues, “[It’s] very rare that I actually create a space from nothing. You don’t try to make it into a different space. The essence of the space remains the same.”
When I asked her how she works with clients she explains that the first question she asks is: “‘What is your favorite thing you own?’ It could be a carpet, art, fabric, a lamp… and then from there comes the entire color palate to a space. If this thing that they hold makes them feel harmonious vibrationally, then that’s their color palate.”
Many designers make clients buy all new furniture, redo everything. Isaac tends not make anybody buy anything new unless they want to try new stuff. She espouses, “Take the stuff you love and own and care about and make it new and beautiful and comfortable in your space.”
She explains that we all have different awareness levels as far as how a space affects us. She says some people may remember that a space “feels calm or say ‘it is a comfortable work space’ or ‘I can concentrate well in that room.’ For some people it is very visual. For me [the visual] has to tickle the beautiful. It is individual what’s beautiful to us. People know more about their aesthetics than they think they do… a lot of people say they don’t know what they like. They feel that way about their clothing too, but they do know. Some people like curves or angles, stripes or polka dots. I’m a detective on their behalf. Aesthetics is the language I speak so I’m trying to translate between – is it this color or that color?”
As a realtor who sees a lot of country property, I could not help but ask Isaac about hoarding.
“I’m not one who adheres by a lot of rules, some stylists if you go into a space – if you haven’t worn it in a year, it’s gone. I don’t say “you have to get rid of ____.” Each of us has to decide what feels good. If your stuff is organized, what’s the problem? People do sometimes decide they want to own less. Aesthetics is about organization. It is hard to make a space comfortable if it does not have a plan.”
“You do have to pick up the piles that are inevitably by the front door. There’s a vortex of mess in this house. How can I manage this vortex? Pretty storage is one answer. I can have stuff or not, that’s a different question.”
I asked her “What do you wish people knew about design?”
“They think you pick paint first. What do you do first? You look at what you have. There’s this common misconception. They say “New house? Oh I want my kitchen to be yellow and my bedroom pink instead of basing the exact tones off the hardscape of that space. Paint has a million colors, but the hardscape – tile, hardwood in that space, hue of the land, color of the glass…We cannot change the tone of the tile. You cannot change the tone of the floor. You make the paint work for you.”
And when you do get to picking paint, Isaac says you pick furniture before you pick paint.
There’s a touchstone to her philosophy: “Base it off what people love.”
“I make people make a box of goodies. Their favorite piece – any samples you like along the way,” it all goes in the box. That way when folks get lost or aren’t sure, they can come back to this touchstone and see what’s there and be reminded.
I asked her if she had any thoughts or opinions on current design trends.
“Trends are not what draws me to aesthetics. I find style is very interesting. Trends tend to be about forcing a one size fits all. It happens in clothing and design. And it is not respectful to the individual space or person. It doesn’t matter what’s in fashion! What’s your favorite color?”
She self describes as a maker that came up through theater, dressing sets, making props, costuming dancers and actors. She sent years working alongside a lighting designer, doing on-set lighting for dance. Like organizing and creating beauty in people’s spaces, she defines the essence of her work as “changing the mood and making people feel good. I want each space to feel like its own little world that you step into.”
She notes that in the design world, there are tons of toxic chemicals used in manufacturing. “If you buy new couch, it has to offgas, even high end. I prefer to buy old things over high end new things because they’re made of plastic and low grade materials. If you are gonna use that stuff you’re gonna need new stuff real soon. You can’t repurpose particle board. It makes sense to take care of our old stuff, reupholster, shore up old shelves. That makes the most sense environmentally.”
Isaac works with clients directly, but I was lucky enough to ask her advice for people doing it themselves. She espouses the following:
“Avoid putting all your furniture against the walls like a dentist office, break up your spaces. Make a color palate based on things you can’t change – like tile or floor, or your own furniture pieces.”
No interview with a designer is complete without a few pointed questions about their personal taste. She throws out a smattering of phrases, my favorite of which is “deeply ugly” alongside “kitch” and “gaudy.” She continues, “for me personally there is a lot of humor in my own personal aesthetic. I get joy out of 80s jackets that someone designed made on purpose… when I find the most god awful thing and it makes me happy that someone made that.” In all seriousness, she says her main aesthetic is “modern and clean.” One wonders if there are a few “deeply ugly” pieces thrown in for good measure.
I asked her about her peak moment of the last year. “Floating in a steaming mineral pool with my sweet little one, watching the storm of the season blow in from the coast.”
To find out more about Isaac and her work, visit: isaacthegirl.com
