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Unconventional Taste

A New York Times piece this week extols the “unconventional taste” of Washington and Lee alumna Hollister Hovey, of the Class of 2000, and her business partner and sister, Porter Hovey, who have recently established Hovey Design.

As the story in the Home & Garden section of the Times notes, Hollister and Porter had been considering pooling their talents and tastes into an interior design firm. They made the big move after they were hired to decorate a penthouse in The Edge, high-rise condominiums in New York’s Williamsburg area.

The sisters’ taste in things “unconventional” was already known by way of an earlier New York Times article, “The New Antiquarians,” back in 2009. Their own loft in Williamsburg is decorated with “late 19th-century relics like apothecary cabinets and dressmakers’ dummies.” Have a look at their personal space on the Design Sponge blog.

This is not a new interest for Hollister, a journalism major whose day job is as senior director at Lazar Partners, a health-care communications firm. As early as 2007, Hollister had started a design blog to “help the classics have a place in this cyber-world filled with ubiquitous modern design.” Although the blog now redirects to Hovey Design, you can still find Hollister’s picks on her Tumblr site, titled simply Hollister H. Hovey, and featuring images of some very cool stuff. That blog was cited way back in 2008 by the New York Times in a “Shopping with Design Bloggers” feature.

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