Glenn Gissler and the alchemy of interior design: from the first show room of Micheal Kors to residential projects for Ian Schrager & Calvin Klein
In this episode, David Frangioni sits down with Glenn Gissler, interior designer and president at Glenn Gissler Design, and discusses Glenn's journey of manifesting his childhood dreams of being an interior designer. He tells us all about how he entered the field of Interior Design, the ups and downs he encountered along the way, and how he got to create designs of luxury for clients such as Micheal Kors and Calvin Klein. "What we do is to create what I call the context for [the clients'] future to take place," Glenn says. How does this approach differ from others in his field? What attribute has made Glenn stand out? How has he created a career in the world of "luxury in full effect?"
What you'll hear about in this episode:
- About Glenn (1:33)
- Working with Micheal Kors (10:05)
- The Journey of Glenn Gissler Inc. (13:59)
- Meeting Calvin Klein (19:27)
- Glenn's approach to Interior Design (22:39)
- The Influence of Technology on Interior Design (24:47)
- What's next for Glenn Gissler Inc. (35:10)
Mentioned in the episode:
- Glenn Gissler Inc. Website: https://gissler.com/
- Glenn on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.ch/glenngissler/
Find Glenn Gissler online:
Learn more about David Frangioni:
Learn more about Justin Leigh:
Transcript:
David Frangioni 0:33
Hello, Everybody! This is David Frangioni and Welcome to Life! L.I.F.E., Luxury In Full effect. My partner in crime Justin Leigh is traveling the world today. So I'm flying solo, but we've got a great show and I'm very excited to have Glen Gissler from Glen Gissler design. They're an award-winning Manhattan-based design firm. They've been around a long time and they have done some amazing things. I'm really excited to welcome Glenn to the show and learn more about him and have him share his life and experiences and art with you. So Glenn, welcome.
Glenn Gissler 1:07
Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here.
David Frangioni 1:09
Now. It's our pleasure. So Glenn, let's start with tell us about your story and the beginnings of how you found your passion in design.
Glenn Gissler 1:31
Well, it's a curious story, but I guess good stories are curious. When I was 13, it would have been in the early 70s... around 1971. We were asked the question, what do you want to be when you grow up? I was the class hippie 1971 and I sat on the table in the front of the room with patch jeans and my ever-growing long hair and said I wanted to be an interior designer.
Glenn Gissler 2:00
At the age of 13, I was thinking about a mellow lifestyle hanging out of this. I had everything right about the balance between business and creativity, except that it was going to be a low key lifestyle. It's very busy, but it's a freaky thing to have made that declaration and then manifested in my life. It's almost embarrassing because it's weird.
David Frangioni 2:21
Well, when you think back and it's amazing that you were able to see that at a young age and declare it and then have it become real in your life. I can share with you a very similar thing happened with me not quite as spoken as you said in the classroom that day, but I never saw myself doing anything but music and then later on technology from an extremely young age. But we're in my case, it was going through trauma as a kid and then having my parents somehow introduced me to the drums. I don't remember I was two years old at the time. I don't know if I asked for it or they asked her who knows. But what happened in your case? How did that happen?
Glenn Gissler 3:03
Well, I think that I've been fortunate to have people in my life that have been inspirational. In this case, it was a family friend who was an artist. She did some interior design, but not the way I do it. My mother was taking painting classes from her and I was taking Saturday classes from her and she became a kind of a family friend. She's the only thing I knew that was kind of like an interior designer. She was a big bold personality and didn't live like anybody else. And I found that to be inspirational. Also, I'm still in contact with her if you can believe it. I mean, that's going to be 62 so it's almost 50 years. She was like permission granted, it was okay to be a boy and be creative and follow what was interesting. I think that was sort of outside support.
David Frangioni 4:00
Well, it's in your bloodstream. If your mom's painting, there's creativity in the family genes.
Glenn Gissler 4:09
Sure. Well, my father's family is from Central Sweden. We have paintings by my father did, his father did, and paintings that his grandfather did from Central Sweden. And so there was creativity. It was never like a full-time artist sort of thing.
David Frangioni 4:31
So where are we when you were 13?
Glenn Gissler 4:35
A suburb of Milwaukee near like Michigan.
David Frangioni 4:37
Oh, okay. So Midwestern. So how's the trek start there and getting pretty soon after?
Glenn Gissler 4:45
Well, I graduated high school early, then took a year off. Then I started college at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, which was a great state school. I was in a fine arts interior design, history, sociology but after a couple of years there, they told me I could create my own degree. And I thought five years I would have a BS in General Related Arts from the University of Wisconsin Madison, that I'm not feeling it. So it was a great experience. But then I transferred to a work-study program in architecture in Boston.
David Frangioni 5:26
That's where I'm from. We're doing Boston.
Glenn Gissler 5:29
Back Bay, it's now called the best of Boston architectural college. It's a work-study program where you work full time for architects during the day and take classes at night. I moved into the deep south in which at the time it was kind of a no man's land full of artists lofts. It was the era of new wave and it was a lot of students from the museum, school and punk bands and new wave bands. And I remember it well, right. I did that for a couple of years and then I realized it wasn't a great program. Then after four years in college, I told my parents I wanted to transfer again. This time, I got accepted to the Rhode Island School Design, which I'd heard about as a sophomore in high school. But my parents had never heard of it. Now, when I think about it, in hindsight, it's the smallest State of the Union and an art school in that state. And if you've never heard of it, it has no meaning. But in fact, it's a magnificent school.
David Frangioni 6:27
I've heard of it. It's a great school. When you're in Boston doing the architecture, are you working for an architect as an intern?
Glenn Gissler 6:34
I'm full time for an architect and then going to school at night. So it was a very intense program.
David Frangioni 6:40
And this is your first taste of real-life working for an architect. Correct. That's a whole another lane, even though they're related. People are interior designers. People are architects. It's a little more unique to have someone be both. So you're starting with the architect and what's happening is you're like seeing what Real Life architect world, especially if they're doing high-end work.
Glenn Gissler 7:08
Well, I guess what I should do is go back a step or so is that I was very involved in historic preservation. It starts at, let's say, age 18 and historic preservation and Midwest because the buildings aren't as old. Especially in the 70s was not such a rigorous and well-known practice. And so as I got more involved in historic preservation, it seemed like a good way to bring design and interior design together. And the further I got into that people said, I should study architecture. I was interested in what they used to call adaptive reuse, reusing existing buildings for new purposes, which was an avant-garde idea in the '70s. I was actively involved in historic preservation in Milwaukee and Madison. And then Boston is such a historic city, it seems to what a great place to go. It was magnificent for that. But I still really was focused on wanting to do interiors, not buildings, not new buildings from scratch. So it was fantastic being in Boston, but the program wasn't great.
David Frangioni 8:16
Right. And for our listeners out there who have not researched Glenn, at this point, you should know that the whole preservation of entities
Glenn Gissler 8:27
historic buildings, right?
David Frangioni 8:29
Yeah, that's become a major passion in your life. And so it started early, almost simultaneous, in a way with the interior design might have come at different times in your life. But I think the seeds were there early because they happen almost concurrently at a very young age. And because you're still doing it, you've taken it to a very high level, which means that the seeds were there, and it was something that was important and you've stuck with it.
Glenn Gissler 8:57
Absolutely.
David Frangioni 8:58
So let's jump forward to New York and starting your firm when things start getting into the action. As far as how Glenn Gissler will start impacting the world with his design, ideas, and goals.
Glenn Gissler 9:15
Well, I probably should dial it back a little bit when I was a transfer student. I was in Providence for three years. It was a tremendous experience but I came to New York during summers and had summer jobs working for interior designers. So when I graduated college with a degree in architecture and Fine Arts, I already had a job waiting for me in New York. I moved to New York, in Spring Street, West Broadway, in the center of Soho in 1984, which was the epicenter of the contemporary art world and worked for what I would guess we call Architectural Digest. 100 interior designers and I worked for him for a couple of years. And then I worked for what's now a global architect and graphic Elven Yoli and helped him set up the interiors department in his architecture office. I was asked by a friend who was a young fashion designer if I would design a showroom for him and his name was Micheal Kors.
So that was 1987, he was sleeping under the table in his studio. Michael is now an exceptionally successful fashion designer but in those days it wasn't quite hand-to-mouth. He was starting so I quit my job. And that was my first client in doing 10,000 square foot project but my budget was $200,000 all in...
David Frangioni 10:43
... in Manhattan and ends up being Micheal Kors's first showroom then right, correct? Yeah, amazing. And so, this success is an understatement, right? Right. What a moment and so did you have a feeling at that time that you were dealing with like a future Armani, Versace, Gucci kind of heavyweight are you?
Glenn Gissler 11:05
Yes. He's a remarkable talent and he was earmarked for success forever. I mean, the first store he ever sold close to was Bergdorf Goodman.
David Frangioni 11:14
Oh, wow. Okay, so, yeah. I mean, he never went anywhere, he went bigger or went home.
Glenn Gissler 11:20
Exactly right. And I learned a lot. I worked with him intermittently for a long time doing residences for him and learned a lot about how to navigate. He skipped college. He went to one semester of F.I.T and then basically started his business. And so that learning by the seat of your pants, which there are pros and cons to leaping into the fire at an early age. Now I look back and I was 30 years old at the time, and I think what was I thinking?
Glenn Gissler 11:49
I mean, I think I had $5,000 and that was it.
David Frangioni 11:54
And you quit your job to help for what now is an easy person to say “let's work for”, but then was a gamble, right? Yeah. And on top of it, you don't know how any of this is going to play out. Now the interesting thing is, you end up having a client because of what Michael’s done, as anybody in that world has done is you either fail miserably and you stay virtually hand to mouth or you hit a giant home run and end up being an extremely wealthy person. It's kind of an all or nothing proposition with what that world looks like, and so he made it. Now you have a client that goes from hand to mouth to you doing multiple residences, and he's all of a sudden not so limited by his choices for luxury.
Glenn Gissler 12:41
Well, truth be told, I'm not doing work with Michael anymore. He's so global that he's got a whole coterie of people. Many of them in-house doing things for him but he was a very important early client and a long term friend, and a compatriot in terms of how to navigate as an ambitious young designer in New York City.
David Frangioni 12:59
So how many years did you end up working for Michael? When you do jobs like that, like yourself, I've worked with so many clients that people have heard of. Unless you work in that world, it's hard to understand why changes are made and why you're not with somebody forever. When you're in that world, you realize that 10 years is a very long time with that clientele because they're moving at such a fast pace. The kind of growth they experience brings them resources, other cliques of people, ideas, plus, as we get older and more mature, we're all changing styles anyway. So it's not that uncommon for people to have transition 10 to 15 years at a time. But as clients, we want to work with our clients as long as we can stay inspired and valued.
Glenn Gissler 13:50
So how long were you? I think I worked with Michael about 20 years.
David Frangioni 13:54
Yes, that's a very long time and that's awesome. So that gets you started and here you are, Glenn gets to learn design incorporated is in business. Correct? What's the journey look like? Because it's a fascinating story so far, people in the world want to know your first major client and test your future. Whether you end up going out of business and back to work for somebody or take the path that you ended up creating for yourself and succeeding. What happened?
Glenn Gissler 14:24
Well, I would tell you that for myself. I can also tell you that from Michael's point of view, there are ups and there are downs. It happened to when I started my business two weeks later. It was a big economic event called Black Monday which I was so naive about business. I thought it's not going to affect me because none of my clients work on Wall Street but the stock market dropped 30% in one day and so my startup period was very long.
David Frangioni 14:49
And that test you right from the beginning. The universe's way of saying, are you just looking for a quick hit? And when the times get tough, you get going,
Glenn Gissler 15:02
Right? Well, I persevered. A couple of years later, the New York Times used to run on Thursday. They had a section called home and they used to focus on design. I had met one of the editors and showed her three projects. One, which was Michael's showroom, my apartment in Soho, and another friend's apartment I had done. And she said, Okay, this is great. We'll shoot pictures on Monday, and we'll run it next Thursday. And I'm like, What? So she shot all these pictures, ran this huge story. It was like five square feet in the New York Times. There were 7000 businesses.
David Frangioni 15:35
The business you're about to get from a feature like that. No publicist. How do you get something like that? You can't.
Glenn Gissler 15:41
There were seven pictures, three of which had me in them. And I thought, Oh, my God, I made it. But that's not what happened. I got one phone call from that interaction. He decides from friends calling and saying that's great.
David Frangioni 15:55
And did that phone call lead to business or was it just a long show?
Glenn Gissler 15:59
Well, it was a woman, she said: I'm calling for Mr. Ian Schrager. He's in the hotel business.
David Frangioni 16:05
Oh, yeah. Right.
Glenn Gissler 16:07
This was right after they did the Royalton. He and Steve Rubell were just a couple years out of prison for tax evasion from Studio 54. And so when I met with him, he wanted me to work at a beach house in Southampton that he and Steve Rubell had just bought.
David Frangioni 16:30
Did you do the job? I did. Awesome. Another iconic client, whether it's a big job or little job.
Glenn Gissler 16:37
Right. Career. Now it was fascinating. Then from him, Steve died shortly thereafter, maybe a year or so later. I called him at one point and wanted to see how he's doing because they were extremely close. He talked very fast. He wanted to know if I'd heard from Kelly, and I said, Kelly? Who's Kelly? He said, Klein. As in Kelly Klein. No. Then Kelly Klein called me. I did work for Calvin and Kelly in their beach house. Again, they were these small jobs, but it was an inside. Yeah, unbelievable work.
David Frangioni 17:13
Right. And now this is the depths of the high end, it's the only word of mouth. When you got the call from the Times, it truly means that that article was able to give the reader a sense of your talent, your passion and, your spirit. Normally, those I call them ads, articles or whatever they're great for resumes and presentations and proof of concept that you have a career and that you've done some cool things but as you shared in the story, they rarely deliver many leads. In fact, you got that one and of all people is a serious one that opens the door for the opportunity. I think one thing I want our listeners to get from this is that you're hearing these fascinating, interesting stories that Glen's worked with colorful, iconic characters, but there's so much work that goes into it. There's so much result that has to be accomplished because if you're with Micheal Kors for 20 years, and Ian is referring you to Calvin and these kinds of things are happening. You're not just getting hired, you're delivering the goods. And part of that is the inherent talent that you started to feel inside and want to bring to the world as early as 13 years old. And part of it has to be work ethic and homework. So what are some of the things you think were the clients were seeing in you that gave them the confidence and the interest in saying, Hey, this is the guy for me?
Glenn Gissler 18:48
Well, I think that even when they did the Morgan hotel, and then the royalty and they were working with cutting edge people in the world, those people had been originally supported by the New York Times. So the same writer who had brought those two people to America was the one that did the story. So it was kind of I'd been given a seal of approval.
David Frangioni 19:11
Yeah, you had chosen one man fry.
Glenn Gissler 19:14
Wow. So with Ian, he's into very fast results. I had six weeks and a modest by $50,000 to produce some results that it was a hair raising, but I produce the results. And then I got this call from Calvin and but it was actually from Kelly. They wanted a version of something I'd done for Ian, which was dining room chairs. One day when I write the story of my career, there'll be a chapter called cheap chairs for the rich and famous. And because I did chairs for Micheal Kors, Ian Schrager, and Calvin Klein, all within about a two year period which were very inexpensive slipcovered chairs. They were dining chairs but they were done in mass. And so I did that for Calvin and Kelly, and they said, Well, we've got some more work to do. Could you come out to the house? Right? So it's like, Okay, great. Can you come out on Saturday? So sure, I'll come out on Saturday. And then I hang up the phone. It's like, what am I supposed to wear to Calvin Klein's house on a Saturday? And it's like the talk about fashion pressure. Yeah. Right.
David Frangioni 20:19
I don't know what brand to wear.
Glenn Gissler 20:21
right? Well, yeah, I guess. So I thought I was just meeting Kelly and I got out to this house, which was a very well known house. It was the second to last house on a dead-end road on the ocean and Georgia pond. And at the time, they were in like maybe $15 million, which in those days was unheard of sum of money. I thought I was just meeting Kelly out there. I go out there and I met by the butler. There were fires burning and all the fireplaces and she's gorgeous and relaxed and the house was beautiful. She starts walking me around and we walk upstairs to the second living room. Thankfully on the phone, there's Calvin Klein and he casually waves to me. And so I would say that the thing that Calvin and Kelly like was the fact that I was unpretentious. I was not trying to be somebody who I wasn't. So Calvin came in and he said, he knew high-end interior designers from all over the world. And they all said, Oh, he's Calvin Klein. So we'll sell him some really expensive stuff. Calvin said this is the beach and I want this now. So he had come and said, Oh, hello, my name is Calvin. And I'm thinking to myself, What? And I said, Well, I'm glad. And he said, Well, I want you to understand that this is the beat. And I said, Well, I'm from Wisconsin, people have Lake houses. They've got the mismatched furniture, the mismatched clothes and probably the silverware doesn't match but that's part of the charm. I said, but you're Calvin Klein, so your dishes are kind of patchy, but I get it. You want something that isn't trying too hard. You want something that's kind of easy and so I ended up doing a fair amount of work on their house. So, again it was fascinating to be in that world and see how they navigated.
David Frangioni 22:08
Well. Yeah, I mean, that's for sure. What did you end up doing? Besides dining room chairs.
Glenn Gissler 22:14
They had bought the 18th century four post bed from the Andy Warhol sale after Andy Warhol died. So they didn't want it more than it had been done, decorated, kind of traditional. I did it much more kind of out of Africa. I did curtains in several rooms. I just did some stuff in the upper living room. I did a whole slew of things that were finishing out in the house within their point of view.
David Frangioni 22:39
Well, It sounds to me like this is your meeting clients, and you're there to serve, right? It sounds like your approach before any preconceptions or any kind of sales pitch, your main goal is to serve. So that requires like you just described these little one-off projects, but they're extremely important to Calvin and Kelly. Right? They're not entire apartments or homes where you're going shopping for 15 or 20 rooms figuring out paint wallpaper, carpenters and all that. But still, if you can serve and you can pull this off for them, then it sounds to me like Mission accomplished.
Glenn Gissler 23:26
It's true. Well, even today, I would assert that interior design, you have to make selections on furniture and all the things that are the results, but you've got to isolate what the problem is. Here's a living room how many people are going to sit in here? What is the intended? When is this useful? What time of year? What's the intended lifestyle? How do you want people to feel? How do you want to feel as you isolate the problem and solve the problem? So that's really where the service component is, and people don't even necessarily understand all of the criteria and questions that go into isolating the problem. And then finding the solution. And then you got it, then you got to do it with panache and make it look easy.
David Frangioni 24:06
Well, yeah, without a doubt, you're just describing one room, right? Look at the size of people's homes, especially today, and especially throughout places like Manhattan in the Hamptons. There's a lot of rooms, there's a lot of spaces that have to cohesively be designed. So you have done a lot of renovations. You've worked on significant New York properties. You work as the go-to guy on a project where you'll oversee on behalf of the client. All of the associated components to this architecture, landscape, etcetera, which means that you have to have a strong project management side to you or you won't be able to take all that for the client. So I have to ask since my world is technology. What are you getting in the technology world of client's needs in all of these projects that you're doing, especially if you're doing renovations and the properties are older, and you're bringing them up to date? Their technology in some cases, you can tell me whether it's some or a lot. There wasn't even technology in existence when it is home for now and not only have it available, but you haven't really as a key threat of fabric in most people's lives. So now here you are in the home. So how's that? What's the story with that in your career?
Glenn Gissler 25:26
Well, thankfully, it's the 21st century and wires are less important. So, Wi Fi.
David Frangioni 25:35
like a true designer,
Glenn Gissler 25:36
right? No, I mean, look, there was a certain point where the only way you could get the TV or the stereo, whatever was to rip out and hardwire everything.
David Frangioni 25:46
Right. There are more wireless options than there have ever been right? But what are you finding the clients? Like for instance, are you finding the clients want lighting control across the board? Even if they're not techie, what you can give them with setting up the ability to store and recall scenes, especially in large Ryan's with complex lighting setups? Isn't that kind of 100%? Like, I gotta have lighting control, I gotta have motorized window treatments like beyond the standard sound and picture, which everybody knows. Right. It's part of technology and that varies depending on the needs of the client. But what has become more de facto standard?
Glenn Gissler 26:25
Well, one of the criteria that I use around technology is can my mother operate it?
David Frangioni 26:33
Yeah, that's an important question.
Glenn Gissler 26:35
So that just because you can doesn't mean you should, and a lot of people aspirational folks want to have all the bells and whistles but the bells and whistles require maintenance update. There are challenges and so I honestly try and keep things as simple as possible to make it usable for more than just a techno-wizard like you.
David Frangioni 26:58
Well, thank you. To me, the techno-wizardry is entirely based on how easy the systems are to use. Because it's one thing if I'm building something for a recording studio or a digital facility, right? That whole goal is based on technically trained people utilizing it. When you go into the homeworld, and you're creating technology for residential use, and even pie in like corporate boardrooms, if you're like, it's the exact opposite. It's been a great learning experience for me, as an integrator because I'd only done Pro. When I would go to do home, it would be a train wreck, because it would be way too complicated. I wouldn't even have a frame of reference. If I had only done home and then I went to do Pro, it would have been way underserved. Because the tech guys would have been like, well, how do I patch this into that and rub that into this and things that a resident would never even think to do? So the two worlds as much of behind the scenes as they might be connected at the end-user level, they're entirely different. The ease of use that a system has is what I call a good system. Now usability and functionality will essentially implement on a project because there's always a client Rep. And that person is essentially saying, here are the things we have to accomplish: that this home requires easy to use TV control and easy to use sound playback so they can entertain or they're really into it. A media room or a theater, but besides that, there are needs of different lighting going on. Like fiber optic lighting, DMX and LED lighting that has all kinds of color choices. All of the recall ability of that has a huge impact on when you turn the apartment over. Okay, here's my vision based on your vision and needs. Mr. And Mrs. client, the technology is working for you. Right?
Glenn Gissler 29:29
Well, as I said, I tend to keep things simple. Let's say I'm going into a living room. The audio is going to be controlled from your phone, or your laptop or your iPad and the lighting, predetermine scenes I'm an ambiance guy. Part of what we do in my business is to create ambiance, and so the lighting changes during the day and through the course of a year. And so I want to go into a living room and flip a switch and have lamps go on and have the architectural lighting go but I want to be able to modulate what's brighter and what's lower. So I put them on to it simple, like dimmer technology, and show my clients how to adjust it because there's a notion of I don't know what I'm trying to think of like a fashion metaphor. There are party clothes, but they're not right for every party. Right? So the lighting for dinner party or something smaller is different than it is for a blow out fill the house with 200 people kind of party.
David Frangioni 30:31
so you have to have lighting control, because there's no way for you to have that recall ability without it.
Glenn Gissler 30:37
Well, I don't have it.
David Frangioni 30:42
But typically don't you get the scenes to come back?
Glenn Gissler 30:46
I show the clients how to manage on the odds.
David Frangioni 30:49
Okay, and they can just do it in real-time. If I want a scene like this and if you have to group lights and the lamps at one level, you'll just have a road dimmers.
Glenn Gissler 31:03
Right. Okay. And my mother can control them too.
David Frangioni 31:06
Right because you're not even dealing with keypads at that point.
Glenn Gissler 31:10
Right. And you know what the problem with keypads too is that typically they mount the keypads at the height of a light switch. So I wear glasses, if I don't have my glasses, I can't see the keypads. But then I'm down to my knees looking at the keypad up at eye level because that's where you want your art. The other thing about this kind of technology is that you put it into your house, and five years later, it's obsolete. They're not servicing it or it's updated, or just do it once and it's good forever. It's just not.
David Frangioni 31:39
Well, that's a good point! As a technologist, we could get into that discussion in great depth as you can imagine. In some areas of technology, what you just said is 100% true, especially in the video world, where the changes are often like 4K, 8K, 12K, and 1K resolution. This stuff is changing all the time. In the lighting control world where you have motorized window treatments, lights, temperature, security cameras, alarm and fountains, just what we'll call non-video to control the time and I'm just saying this, so our listeners are educated in it as much as they can be. Those technologies tend to have much longer life cycles, and you tend to have closer to 10 years, then two or three or four, whereas video will turn every year or two doesn't mean you have to change. You can still have clients that have TV's for 10 years and even though they're behind the times, technologically speaking, they're very happy with what they experience with it. But as far as functionality and what things can do. We get much longer periods from the overall control items, but it's no different than anything else in technology. Even though it looks different, it's the same where if you have. If whatever your needs are, some clients have to change technology every few years, because they're so crazy about it. They just want the most cutting edge, the fastest, the best image the best sound. And some clients have the technology for function sake and it lasts, and they're fine with it. They don't care that there's a newer lighting keypad or there's a newer TV note that's got a sharper image, they're happy. And so I think there's a balance and it depends on the client's needs.
Glenn Gissler 33:39
Well, but you talk about video audio, I still have a regular VCR, a DVD and a European VCR for old videotapes that are European movies. I don't want to get rid of them because they say everything's going to be online. It's not all online. Yeah, it's so true.
David Frangioni 33:57
And I have a DVD server. I have so much great content on there. As a drummer my whole life, I've burned a lot of drum DVDs that I own. They're legitimately own but I have a server that legitimately was purchased to store them. It's all above the table. Of course, the only way I would consume content is to just be able not to dig through the DVD's, but it's DVD, right? It's three generations of video ago, that was the king after LaserDisc, and VHS, as you described. And here, I am a cutting edge technologist, but I watch content from that server that is and not available anywhere else. Right. And I love it because it's about what you get from it. It's not about the device itself, right? It's the content. It's the experience, the emotion. These are just tools and vehicles for delivering that and if you want the highest quality. Then you're concerned with what resolution etc, but all comes down to the content. So Glenn, what's the future look like with all you've done and with the goals that you've achieved and the great success that you've had. What's next?
Glenn Gissler 35:08
Well, that's a good question. We're always seeking new exciting projects, sort of doesn't matter where they are. We're about to start a project in Boulder, Colorado. For some clients, we've done some other projects that will be a ground-up house. We did a project for them in Maine a couple of years ago, which is a kind of summer house for them. So I'm always looking for interesting complex challenges and interesting people to try and create gracious homes. Conceptually, what we do is to create what I call the context for their future to take place. And so their life goals, whether it's a greater sense of peace of mind, entertaining, more entertaining, less spending more time with friends and family, having the autonomy and all these things. And a conversation that starts today, it actually may take a couple of years for that to get built out and manifest. And in terms of it being woven into their lifestyle, it might be three or four or five years. And so conceptually, that's part of isolating the problem of interior design is finding out trying to cause the future to happen the way they want it to.
David Frangioni 36:21
Now, that's awesome. And that's insightful. And would it be fair to say in pursuit of design alchemy?
Glenn Gissler 36:26
Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, because it doesn't. The point of for me about alchemy is that going back to the medieval period. They're always trying to make precious metals out of nothing. But what we do is beyond great. It's a mix of the good, the not so good and, the extraordinary. And it's the way you put all those things together to create something special and memorable. It's not just a room full of Restoration Hardware, which looks like a Restoration Hardware showroom. It's something that's distinctive, personal and has a story. And that's I think what people find satisfying about the profile based
David Frangioni 37:06
On the success, you've had and the great publications that you've appeared in the awards that you've won. You've accomplished that in pursuit of design alchemy. Glen Gissler, what a pleasure to have you on the show today. Thank you for sharing your story and your talents. For everybody out there, check out Glenn Gissler's work and tell everybody where they can find you, Glenn.
Glenn Gissler 37:28
My website is www.gissler.com. I'm active on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. I've got about 22,000 posts on Pinterest.
David Frangioni 37:45
So there's some clear understanding of what you do actually, now that they understand the mind behind it. What's your handle on all these?
Glenn Gissler 37:54
I'll get you to most of them at Glen Gissler, Gissler Design. You can run but you can't hide. I'm going to find you.
David Frangioni 38:01
I love it! G I S S L E R is how you spell Gissler. Everyone, again, Glen Gissler thank you very much! David Frangioni, Justin Leigh of LIFE luxury in full effect. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.
