15 Years After Katrina, A Look at the New Orleans Design Scene

The city’s interiors industry is more creative than ever
By Jenny Adams

Alex Geriner arrived in New Orleans in 2008, seeking a job in journalism. He salvaged a door and few pressed-tin ceiling tiles from a Dumpster. “Every neighborhood was still rebuilding from Katrina,” he recalls. “You could salvage 200-year-old wood for free.” He made a headboard as a lark, and that Dumpster dive “changed his stars,” as the saying goes.

“In the first six months, I sold 20 on Etsy,” he says with a laugh. By 2017, his furniture company, Doorman, was awarded the distinction of Design Master by New Orleans Home & Garden. “I’ve shipped to every continent except Antarctica,” Geriner says. “I even sent a bed to Kabul, to an American in the military, who wanted a piece of New Orleans in Afghanistan.”

Hurricane Katrina has put a continued spotlight on the city: first, when 80% of it was under water (20 feet deep, in some places) and again, as the city’s eclectic culture beckoned to creatives. New Orleans has a design ethos like no other: a three-century-old gumbo recipe of European ironwork and bright Caribbean colors; modern Calacatta marble beneath Hollywood Regency chandeliers; and a historic district still illuminated by gas lanterns. (Those were designed and are maintained by Bevolo Gas & Electric, local since 1945.)

That mix of old-meets-new has only grown since the storm, embraced by young designers and companies like Doorman. Their Eleanor sideboard is fashioned from wide-plank Louisiana cypress, with palm-frond brass hardware. The Josephine bed was originally commissioned for the Henry Howard–designed hotel in the Lower Garden district, and “it’s a 19th-century-French canopy, with a 21st-century twist,” Geriner says. “We removed the drippy, ornate details, gave it a flat-black finish and small brass corner pieces. We pay homage to the city’s French past, but bring it into modern times.”

Nomita Joshi-Gupta, principal and founder of Nomita Joshi Interior Design and Spruce, a wallpaper and fabric shop on Magazine Street, agrees. Her shop was born from the wreckage. “I was pregnant with my second child,” Joshi-Gupta recalls, “and we spent months trying to rebuild from afar. In that process, I studied and collected paint, fabrics, and wallpapers. That’s how Spruce opened in 2008.”

She stocked globally, but also locally, in purveyors like Flavor Paper, a Bywater-born company (now based in Brooklyn) that hypermodernized prints like traditional toile, using wild patterns and metallics. Annie Moran, a local watercolor artist, collaborated with Spruce to turn her heron and crawfish paintings into wallpapers, and Spruce will add a trade showroom this year, offering brands like Scalamandré and Aldeco.

“We gained so much prominence from such a terrible event,” Joshi-Gupta says, “but now, our design remains in the spotlight. Like India, where I was born, people here embrace very bold design choices, particularly vibrant color—green, in every shade.”

“We are always incorporating with our tropical nature here,” agrees Sara Ruffin Costello, interior designer, author, and creative consultant. “We appreciate the interiors as much as the exteriors; how a paint color looks against the live oak trees on St. Charles or bright banana leaves through a window in the Marigny.” 

St. Charles Avenue is the site of her latest interior design project—the Chloe hotel, by the LeBlanc + Smith Group—opening inside an 1850 Victorian house next month. Costello’s guest room designs feature spindle beds, House of Hackney fabrics, and armoires that nod to Narnia. “Several are retrofitted,” she says, pulling one open to reveal the hidden bathroom. The main-floor bar room and lounge spaces feature wallpaper by Fine & Dandy & Co., Chinese Art Deco rugs and Viennese lighting by Woka. Chef Todd Pulsinelli’s cuisine and a tropical pool will draw tourists and locals alike. “The original architect, Thomas Sully, was a bon vivant,” Costello says. “We wanted to make a space that embodies his bohemian spirit, like a private club you might find in New York or London.”

New Orleans has particularly embraced more modern design in the last half-decade. Sabri and Caroline Farouki launched their firm Farouki Farouki in 2015. Their move from New York was appealing both financially and aesthetically. They designed Maypop–a Central Business District restaurant by Chef Michael Gulotta, whose cuisine is a fusion of Southern and Southeast Asian. Mekong and Mississippi river maps were printed onto birch plywood boards, and depending on where you stand, the slanted feature wall presents either waterway.

“We wanted modern, but not cold,” Caroline Farouki says, who initially worried modern might not fly. Their subsequent design of Justine, a French Quarter brasserie, confirmed that the city welcomed a progressive splash. Justine features a sidewalk-café style up front, anchored by a vintage cartoon mural of a paper tiger. Glittery maps of Paris and New Orleans by local artist Ellen Macomber fill the back walls,  alongside velvet banquettes, pink neon, and custom brass vertical light installations by local firm E. Kraemer. “I think Justine hits on exactly what visitors want—that old European feel—and what locals crave: something avant-garde and modern,” says Farouki.

Something else locals are demanding is sustainability—there’s no laissez-faire attitude on climate change post-Katrina. “We have to be focused on sustainability,” says Jordan Rose, owner of GoodWood Nola, which repurposes its sawdust at a local chicken farm. Other notable efforts include mentoring post–high school students: “We want to create diversity in a white-male-dominated industry,” Rose says. His mentees learn his passion for salvaged wood, updated with midcentury leanings. GoodWood’s art-meets-function residential and commercial interiors can be seen at District Donuts restaurants and the Krewe sunglasses stores.

“Since the storm,” Rose says, “this city is proving that world-class custom furniture can be sourced sustainably, from down the street.”

Down the street at their expanded facility in Algiers, Doorman is 50% solar-powered, aiming to be at 90% by 2021. “We live one bad storm from being wiped off the map,” says Geriner. “But it gives New Orleans a scrappy spirit. Our influence is African, Haitian, Spanish, French, and it took a brave melting pot to create this wacky place. We hold true to that lineage–especially in design.”