ESTATES WEST article, “Rugged Good Looks”

by Elizabeth Exline – Holiday 2005 issue

If the west is a breeding ground for pioneering spirits, then the Colorado-based interior designer Beth Slifer is exactly where she belongs. In 1984, Beth Slifer arrived in Vail, Colo., as a newly married woman, equipped with an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and a plan to telecommute to her former office in the Windy City. While she had no inkling that she was about to embark on a new profession that would revolve around fabric swatches and color wheels, it was then that she began to cast about for a career change.

“I really started looking around for a niche that needed a service that nobody else was providing,” Slifer recounts in her lilting southern accent. “Because my mother was an outstanding designer in Northern Florida, I knew what quality design work looked like, and I knew the services that were supposed to go along with it. I just didn’t see anybody in Vail doing it.”

And Vail really could’ve used it. At the time, the town was drowning in an economic recession, and realtors were scrambling to unload properties that refused to sell. So when Slifer spruced up a condominium as a favor to a friend and that condominium sold within a week for its asking price, Slifer Designs was effectively born. “How I got into it was really by liking business, recognizing there was a void in the marketplace and having the benefit of my mother <for> consulting,” Slifer says. “For a year, I was calling her almost every day. ‘How do you measure the carpet? Whom should I hire to do draperies?’”

Slifer got the hang of it eventually, but not before she sated her creative curiosity. Like a kid in a candy store, Slifer dabbled in projects that ran the gamut from banks to a doctor’s office in Japan. “In the early days,” she says, “we experimented with anything anybody asked us to do…We did a log of things that we found were neither our expertise nor our passion. So we have narrowed and tried to define our business as things with residential characteristics for resorts.”

As its specialty shifted into focus, the company itself expanded. Today, with 60 employees and one consolidated showroom in Edwards,Colo., Slifer Designs is a multimillion-dollar business and a self-styled leader among resort second-home and hospitality interior design firms.

Slifer’s employees operate in two realms: Some teams specialize in residential interior design (which comprises the bulk of Slifer Designs’ business), while others tackle hospitality projects. There’s even a “Green Team” of professionals who research and implement environmentally-sensitive building alternatives. For Slifer, it’s all part of staying current. “Green building has become very important,” she notes, “and a lot of people care passionately about (it).”

Considering Slifer’s apprentice-style introduction to interior design, it is perhaps ironic that she now prefers to hire designers who have formal training and, preferably, technical skills as well as some experience, perhaps as an intern. The advantage to not having to wholly educate new employees (beyond the firm’s processes and standards) is that Slifer and her crew can channel their energy into more projects across the country. From Florida to California and Mexico to HAWAII, Slifer’s telltale designs dot the map. They beckon you to burrow inside of them, invite friends over or take time to sip a glass of wine over a delicious read. “It’s very important that we select furniture that is a) comfortable, and b) durable and can withstand a vacation lifestyle,” Slifer states. “The owner (shouldn’t have to) constantly say, ‘Take your feet off the coffee table,’ because everybody wants to be able to put (her) feet on the coffee table when (she’s) on vacation.”

Like most designers, Slifer relishes the creative process of each project –finding fabrics, selecting styles and determining design directions –but having done that for more than 20 years, her approach has necessarily evolved. When she started out, she had a brief interlude with southwestern design, which morphed into what are now her three trademark styles: the ever-popular Mountain Rustic, the more elegant and oversized Mountain Chateau and the scaled-back Mountain Modern, which intertwines mountain-style accessories with clean-lines settings. Despite these design niches, Slifer’s firm does tackle all styles that are appropriate for resort clients in Hawaii, Nantucket and elsewhere.

Slifer, of course, has had ample opportunity to implement, refine and update these styles, especially in the projects closest to her heart – resort residential ones. “One of my favorite projects was a series of cabins that were newly built but intentionally rusticated with all the modern conveniences in a golf-club environment outside of Aspen…called the (Roaring Fork Club),” the designer divulges. “I got to do 25 cabins, and they were all different. And these were not small cabins – they were three- and four-bedroom cabins, so they were spacious and fun with a lot of variety but all rustic and Western in feeling.”

Slifer, however, isn’t some country bumpkin who is ill at ease without her animal hide and antler furniture. She counts the Tuscan-inspired casitas the Mayacama Golf Club in California’s Sonoma Valley among her preferred projects as well. There, no hint of mountain rusticity can be found among the soft colors and crackled finishes.

With every new second-home project Slifer takes on, she starts with a single word: lifestyle. Whether you’re Kathie Lee Gifford, former President and First Lady Ford, a FORTUNE 500 company chief executive or an average joe (and Slifer has worked with them all – her company even redesigned Gifford’s TV set once), Slifer will ask you how you want to live. She’ll inquire about who will stay there and how you’ll entertain.

Above all, though, Slifer will integrate the setting of your vacation home into the house itself. Clients, she says, want their second homes to be as independent from their primary residences as possible. “They want it to feel different, because they’re going to act differently,” she explains. “ think second-home owners really want their home to reflect the culture and the environment, the lifestyle, even the activities (like sporting activities) of their vacation homes. They want it all reflected inside.”

As a result, Slifer employs different standards, materials and tools when she tackles a primary residence. Although the looks may vary – primary dwellings often utilize a hodgepodge of mementos and styles accumulated over the years, while secondary home benefit from a deliberate design approach determined by the setting and lifestyle – certain traits appear in all of Slifer’s projects. “We are not about creating museum replications,” she says. “We are about creating fun, comfortable places for family and friends to gather.” That goes for every clubhouse, vacation home, hotel and primary residence she has designed. Slifer, after all, is her own pioneer.

Beth Slifer on…

Her favorite finishes – “Homed sandstone (and) white Carrera marble.”

Her favorite look – “Simple luxury, Tuscan style.”

Most overrated design trend – “Modern, open lofts.”

Most underappreciated design trend – “Timeless, classic.”

Her personal motto – “The final product of design is lifestyle.”

Her favorite color – “Red.”

Worst design faux pas she has seen – “Petite furniture in rooms with vaulted ceilings.”

Failsafe sources of inspiration – “Billy Baldwin, villas in Tuscany, national parks architecture.”

Her design trademarks – “Comfort, colorful, unpretentious, timeless.”

What makes a resort spectacular – “Consistent design direction.”