Former TP pupil bootstraps her solution to an award-winning inside design studio

All of the areas are divided, and related, by arched partitions – a nod to the historic Elgin Bridge.

Lastly, we arrive on the luxurious personal workplace of White Jacket’s founder, Patricia Ho Douven. 

Her desk, product of wooden and leather-based, is sculptural and expansive, and unexpectedly naked save for a MacBook and a few brand-name stationery. Even the freestanding playpen, for Ho’s new canine, appears wealthy. For one, it takes up half the room. 

It was exhausting to imagine that somebody might begin all of this from scratch. It was even more durable to imagine that the award-winning White Jacket studio, with shoppers like Intercontinental, JW Marriott, Shangri-La and Starwood, was a one-woman present that began in an residence simply 12 years in the past. 

However sitting down with the 44-year-old founder, I started to grasp. 

“I DIDN’T TELL ANYONE”

Ho had at all times needed to have her personal design studio. It wasn’t only a pipe dream both. She had spent her twenties working for inside design corporations and saved what she might understanding that she would in the future depart to start out her personal enterprise. 

That day got here unexpectedly. 

In 2009, she was retrenched from her place as a design director, which got here with a clause barring her from working with the corporate’s shoppers for 12 months. 

“That put me off-track a little bit. For a few months, I largely stayed residence,” stated Ho.