Nest Maker

So deep is the talent of Sheila Bridges, she can refine the lives of hip-hop entrepreneurs and former Presidents

By Belinda Luscombe

(TIME) -- Interior design is not considered the most noble of professions: it's shopping with other people's money. It is seen as the vocation of bored wives with not quite enough to do. These attitudes stem in part from society's depreciation of tasks traditionally handled by women, like making a home. They also betray a misunderstanding of what interior designers do.

Not only must Sheila Bridges inhabit the lifestyle and taste of each of her clients, she must also translate them into chairs, tables and rooms, often while educating her clients along the way. This can mean telling people who are paying her money that some of their stuff is hideous. And it means pulling off some alchemy that joins materials, colors, furniture, walls into a unified whole called home. A place where people she barely knows will feel perfectly comfortable and justifiably proud.

Bridges doesn't stand out among her peers only because she's young and black; she also stands out because of the range of people for whom she can make such homes. When she started her business in 1994, most of her customers were wealthy African Americans. Since then, her clientele has diversified. Her work on the several homes of hip-hop entrepreneur Andre Harrell is masculine, bold and warm. She uses classic pieces but freshens them with brazen upholstery or colors. The home she made for Eileen and Peter Norton, of Norton Utilities fame, is more eclectic, incorporating the Nortons' vast and pluralistic art collection, but it's not jumbled. She knew their home could withstand the iconic force of Frank Gehry and Marcel Wanders chairs. This year she decorated President Bill Clinton's new offices in Harlem with surprisingly modern furniture and light colors. "Very soothing," she says.

None of the interiors she has designed look capital-D decorated. Also not for her are the empty recesses of stark minimalism. She understands that people collect stuff, and finds a way to let them, without causing clutter. This balancing act lends her interiors a certain timelessness. Her own home, which she decorated seven years ago, mixing custom-made pieces with a chair found in the trash, is still being photographed for decorating magazines.

It takes an enormous amount of confidence to ask people to hire you for your interpretation of their taste. Bridges has that, but without hubris. "People have such a glamorous image of interior designing," she says. "There are days that I play delivery person, attorney, psychiatrist, tech-support staff and bill collector." Decoration isn't social justice. It does take a lot of shopping. But to do it well is to improve people's lives in a way they couldn't do themselves.