Creative Designer Elizabeth Moore

Your Froote designs — particularly your chairs — seem personal and mix something new and something old.
The chairs are really fun — my grandma chairs and the others. They reflect a sensibility of who I am. With the grandma chair it was taking what I do best and what do I like to do. Plays to the artist in me and the designer in me, and I don't care if it's hip or not. You look around and there are all these period chairs being reupholstered in hip new fabrics and I'm at the forefront of that.

You mix old and new in interior design as well?
I worked on an historic Victorian home and we added 3,000 square feet. I wanted to do something that kept to the integral aspect of the Victorian language, while the owners wanted full-on modern. So, after a conversation and budget consideration, they created a very modern home with very clean lines on the inside, but kept some of the anomalies of the Victorian era on the outside. It really looks like you can see how the dialogue between the old and the new relate. I was thankful that this particular client had a lot of trust in me.

What design trends are on the horizon?
The biggest new things will make the world easier, more intelligent and eco-friendly. I'm really into the green ergonomic choices that we're all being forced to make now. That's a big trend. I always have to consider where that plays in now; it's not just about the form, it's about the function.

European efficiency is another important thing to look at. In Europe, they make it work. Take Holland, which is a very populated country with a lot of tall people and big dogs — they function really well in these really tiny spaces because they have systems. The average person lives in only so much square footage so everything has its place. We're going to see much more of that efficient design here. Lots of innovative organization systems.

People also want to be taken away a bit. Bring a sense of adventure home or create a sense that you're somewhere else.