1 2

(Enlarge) Branching out from Nouveau Contemporary Goods, business partners (and friends since middle school) Steve Appel, left, and Lee Whitehead have been making a splash with their decor business, Whitehead & Appel. (Staff photo by Nicole Martyn)

Steve Appel and Lee Whitehead are surviving the recession in style.

And style is what their clients want, from the new lime, green and pink wallpaper at Denise Whiting's HonBar in Hampden to the chairs with big bottoms, small backs and polka dots in the dressing room of Marin Alsop, ground-breaking conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

Appel's name has long been synonymous with the home furnishings store Nouveau Contemporary Goods, a bastion of funky furniture and art in Belvedere Square since 2003, and downtown for 13 years before that.

But in the midst of an economic downturn nationally, Appel and Whitehead, business partners and friends since middle school, are quietly making a new mark with their 3-year-old interior design business, Whitehead & Appel.

Like many merchants, they are battling the economy by reducing prices as much as 35 percent and selling lower-end product lines at Nouveau.

"We're trying to replace cool stuff with less expensive cool stuff," Appel said.

But they're also commanding $125 an hour to make over houses, shops, offices and bars for an A-list of clients as far away as New York.

And it's more than moonlighting. The interior design business dates to 2006, but in a stroke of fortuitous timing has come into its own as the economy has worsened. Now, Appel and Whitehead say they are approaching $2 million a year in design business and furniture sales.

"We've added a service to the retail that has really taken off," said Appel, 46, of the city's Canton neighborhood. He handles the interior designing, while Whitehead, 42, of Mount Vernon, handles more of the business side.

Orchestrating a makeover

Alsop made history as the first woman to conduct a major American orchestra when she came to Baltimore in September 2007. The only bad news was her dressing room.

"It was generic and generic," she said, "kind of beige, not only the color, but kind of the feeling."

Not anymore. Her publicist called the magazine Style and pitched the idea of a free makeover as a welcoming gift for Alsop and, of course, a story. Style called Nouveau.

Enter Appel.

"He came with his little pod of people," Alsop said. "They brought different samples."

Appel turned the room and a half into an eye-popping pastiche of wallpaper and paint -- greens and blues and browns -- polka-dot chairs and a leather-and-chrome sofa.

"It's a little bit like 'The Wizard of Oz,' where it goes to Technicolor," Alsop said. "This is what I wanted -- a real wow factor" for visitors.

Appel later redecorated Alsop's condominium, a converted church in Mount Vernon.

"I love antiques and old things, but I love modern, contemporary design too," Alsop said. "The challenge for Steve was to blend both worlds."

Now, the condo boasts a semi-circular couch from Nouveau in the living room ("very unusual," Alsop said) and an old tricycle hangs in a stairway.

"I feel like I'm living in a work of art," Alsop said.

On her recommendation, Appel is redoing the New York apartment of her friend, Leslie Stifelman, music director of the Broadway production of "Chicago."

Interior design's Everymen

But, Whitehead said, "We might go work on a cop or a meter maid or a teacher's house. It's not just the wealthy."

In hard times, "people aren't taking vacations or as long vacations, so they're working on their houses and they want to make it more comfortable than before," he said.

It doesn't always translate into more sales for Nouveau, because "a lot of these jobs are working with clients who want to keep their furniture," Whitehead said.

A lot of their clients are men.

"We seem to be the place to go for bachelors," Whitehead noted -- "maybe because they feel more comfortable talking to guys."

Appel is the point man.

"Steve tells me what I can buy. He's a typical guy," said a recent Nouveau customer, a former city councilman who asked that his name not be used.

Jayne Gerson and her husband, Elliott Haut, who have one daughter and a baby due in August, used Appel to decorate their new house in Greenspring Valley.

"I'm a white wall, white miniblinds kind of person," said Gerson, 39. "I never imagined myself working with a decorator."

But she said the decor of the house when they bought it was formal to a fault -- "a lot of dark navy wallpaper with paisley print."

What would be her daughter's room was bright pink with flowers.

"I'm sure it was tasteful 20 years ago," Gerson said.

The bottom line was that without Appel, "I couldn't move into the house. I wouldn't have known where to start."

Even businesses with normally neutral decors are using Whitehead & Appel to add a little zip to their ambiance.

One is the McDonald's restaurant on Reisterstown Road in Pikesville. Franchisees Bob and Barbara Houck razed the 40-year-old building and not only rebuilt it but reimagined it.

Now, it's a cozy eatery with lots of flowers, oil paintings, pendant lights over booths, and high stools for teenagers, who actually like high stools, Barbara Houck said.

Oh, and there are two big, flat-screen TVs, tuned mostly to the news.

Another is the Burkshire Marriott Conference Hotel, in Towson, where David Hinshaw, the general manager, is refurbishing and modernizing the lobby, the lounge and some of the rooms.

"I was looking for innovative design folks. I just couldn't find the type of style I was looking for and I couldn't find anybody I liked on the service end," he said.

"Steve fit like a glove."

High praise from a hon

Yet another admirer of Appel and Whitehead is Whiting, founder of Hampden's annual HonFest and owner of Cafe Hon and its offshoot, HonBar.

"I love them," she said of Appel and Whitehead. "They're easy to work with and they listen to me."

She wandered into Nouveau before Christmas last year, looking for furniture for the bar, and came out with "a cool little table to set drinks on."

She put it in the bar that afternoon, and that night someone sat on it and broke it.

After the holiday, she went to Nouveau looking for bar stools.

"We actually have a design consultation service," Appel told her.

First Whitehead and Appel completely redid her house, "which looks phenomenal," she said. "They were able to take my contemporary design and freshen it up totally.

"My living room had decent furniture in it, but I could never live in it because of the way I had it set up."

The redesign "just changed the whole feng shui of my living space," she said. "I felt like I had just gone to acupuncture and they had released a blockage."

But the best -- or at least the most outrageous -- was yet to come.

Trying to make room for more seating in HonBar and to give it more cache, Whiting turned once again to Appel and Whitehead. Like Alsop, Whiting wanted a "wow factor."

Whitehead & Appel made the bar a conversation piece, with bamboo flooring, a lime-green-and-pink decor and additional lighting -- and they removed decorative columns that were hogging floor space.

The project is almost done and Whiting said she has gotten what she wanted.

"Let me tell you, that lime-green wallpaper with pink creates a wow factor."

user comments (0)