Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Gordon Watson has been dealing in antiques for decades, first from a store on London’s Pimlico Road, and now from his Aladdin’s Cave-like home in the centre of Tangier. Watson learnt his trade the old-fashioned way, creating a network of wealthy, acquisitive clients whose tastes he understood and whose collections — of furniture, design, objets — he knew intimately. After receiving a prime trinket — some vintage Cartier doodad, perhaps — he immediately knew five potential buyers and might call the most motivated. “I knew the wife loved Cartier , and I know it’s her birthday coming up, so I’d ask, ‘Shall I put it to one side?’” In recent years, though, Watson’s business has radically upended. His default customer is no longer that individual but rather someone to whom they have deeded complete control over their aesthetic lives. “For the past 10 years, we’ve only had interior decorators coming in. Out of nowhere, there was a stampede, a tsunami of these people, that I’d heard of but who weren’t in my orbit,” he says. Watson estimates that 20 years ago, nine in 10 buyers were individuals. They were collectors with passions, people with true connoisseurship who wanted to indulge it at home. Today, just 10 per cent of his business remains so hands-on. The vast majority now derives from those designers, who act as both arbiters and middlemen. “It was very neutralising, but it was great for business. Still, the personal point of contact stopped,” he says. “You couldn’t call a collector to say ‘I’ve got a better version’ because you had no direct contact with them, or you didn’t even know who they were buying for.” Those interior designers saw their roles expanded beyond the conventional remit, too, he notes. “They became the curators, too, so people bought their contemporary art with them.” Put simply, the classic collecting class has receded and, as a result, name brand interior designers have grown more powerful. The collector is dead, long live the designer. “We often produce items now and we don’t know who the client is,” says Christopher Spitzmiller, who creates high-end, handmade lamps and other ceramics at his New York studio. “Honestly, I think that’s one of the things that keeps me fresh. I don’t have to do any hand holding, just get the best product out there I can.” Patrick Perrin, founder of design fair PAD, which holds events in both London and Paris, says he’s seen a similar shift in attendees since he started working four decades ago. “When Michel David-Weill would come to the gallery, he knew better than me what the objects were — his choice was mostly the things you would have kept for yourself if you had the money,” he recalls, of the late Lazard Frères investment banker. “The Aga Khan was one of three generations of collectors. These people knew better than the dealers, and they were really passionate.”This is the kind of collector to whom he refers: refined and wealthy, inclined and able to dabble in countless disciplines. And collecting as a reflection of personal taste; a way of expressing, without talking, eclectic erudition — a template since the days of Lorenzo de’ Medici. Think of Sir John Soane’s magpie-like acquisitiveness, with its restless curiosity and startling originality, or Peggy Guggenheim’s era-defining, rule-breaking approach to art, anchored entirely by her own taste. A self-made man like the Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie finessed his profile by deploying his fortune to acquire treasures of natural history, such as dinosaur bones; his collection bolstered his reputation for taste and judgment. Nothing put as bright a sparkle in Elizabeth Taylor’s violet eyes as a hulking gemstone, which she gorged on, voraciously. They were all collectors in a classic sense, assembling their treasures through a combination of yearning, wealth and insider knowledge.What then caused this power shift, punting taste and spend from hobbyists to the professionals? In the process, of course, it has turned antique-dealing and design into a largely B2B business. And the biggest upshot is the rising clout of those designers. For people before it wasn’t about investment, it was pleasure. Everything today is money, and return on investment“Don’t think that just because you have money you get the decorator to work for you,” warns dealer Watson, who likens persuading them to engage to scoring a primetime reservation at the buzziest restaurant. Their importance is self-evident in any interiors magazine, where a spread will now tout the designer’s name with as much fanfare as their supposedly famous client. Annual lists such as the AD100 or Elle Décor’s A-list have become bibles of the business, with those included able to leverage that cachet into more cash. Elle Décor was established in the US 35 years ago, but only began tallying influential names 13 years ago, says Ingrid Abramovitch, its executive editor. There are 101 designers and 33 titans, or legends, on 2024’s roster. Abramovitch says that many of the biggest names won’t consider a project without a spending commitment of at least $500,000 per room. Suppliers such as the home division of Hermès or the lighting firm Urban Electric now splurge on treats and trips for designers. “I sometimes attend events and dinners that used to be all press, but now you’re lucky to be invited,” she says. “It’s really all about the chicest, buzziest designers, whose business they want.” PAD’s Patrick Perrin says the VIP list for his fairs has undergone a similar shift since the first one in 1998 — 10 per cent are editors, the rest are interior designers. “They are the prescripteurs, the tastemakers, now.” But he adds: “For people before it wasn’t about investment, it was pleasure. Everything today is money, and return on investment.”Today’s buyers have short attention spans, deep pockets and a pragmatic approach to acquiring antiques, which they treat as much as an asset class as an aesthetic commitment (witness how the Hermès Birkin has become more than just a bag). That emphasis on VIP ROI has been driven, in part, by rising prices, explains Thomas Woodham-Smith, art dealer and director of London’s Treasure House Fair. Twenty years ago, decorating a room with top-tier antique furniture could have readily been achieved by spending £500,000 or so; now, the same contents would probably cost £10mn. “Once, you could build a collection of perhaps needlework or glass on what you might call human wages, but it’s now become very expensive to get the best in any recognised art medium,” he says. “When people are asked to explain why they buy, they’ll often say [making] money isn’t it — they’ll give other reasons, like trying to make sure the art is preserved,” says Andrew Dillon, a professor at the University of Texas, Austin with a particular interest in the psychology of collecting, “But people tend to overstate their intention to save culture and underplay the financial motivation.”Speed and money, then, make it more vital than ever to lean on an intermediary — as does the fact they are better placed to protect you from mistakes and counterfeits, an increasingly problematic issue. After all, it’s much easier to fake a Lalanne sheep sculpture than an exquisitely wrought 18th-century objet; and the explosion of online selling has removed most gatekeeping from the market, too. (“You’re much more confident in someone else’s confidence,” shrugs Dillon.) Australia-based interior designer and antique dealer Tamsin Johnson says that the rise of consulting interior designers has paralleled the rise of personal stylists, hired to handle all aspects of your wardrobe. “All the top dealers have such mixed stock, Pierre Jeanneret with 18th century or Art Nouveau; you need more of a middleman to help navigate, to help show how to mix all the cultures together.”“People fall in love but they’re not interested in doing the background research,” says Woodham-Smith. And interior designers are the ones who have indirectly benefited, says California-based interior designer David Netto. “Knowing about the elevated decorative arts was once normal if you put on a tie and went to work every day. You didn’t need to pay someone to tell you what to buy,” he says, noting that CBS television magnate Bill Paley, husband of socialite Babe, was an avid collector of antique furniture. He believes that education around design is no longer prioritised, even among the wealthiest. “Decorating wasn’t bought and paid for to the extent it is now, because people had that education. A woman with a certain level of affluence knew about furniture periods and what was vulgar.” Rich people used to be indolent denizens of leisure — today they have no time to learn about this baloney. They’re figuring out what their stock shorts areShe also had the time, as well as the inclination, Netto continues. “Rich people used to be indolent denizens of leisure — they had time to shop and walk with you and take a shopping trip to Europe. A lot of the decorator’s job was lunch, and coddling.” Compare that with a wealthy client now: if a couple, he says, it’s likely that both will hold down high-powered, time-intensive jobs. “They have no time to learn about this baloney. They’re figuring out what their stock shorts are, and they’ve got more important things to think about than furniture.” Connoisseurship is also refined over time, with decades of engagement vital to finesse taste. If you arrive at wealth far younger, especially having had little to no spare time to broaden your knowhow beyond, say, your tech start-up, it’s not surprising that a hand-holding decorator will step into that breach. Nicole Hollis has run her namesake firm since 2002 in the Bay Area, where that category of client is particularly commonplace. “They’re suddenly living a lifestyle they have no experience living. We’re guiding them, and you have to go all the way to zero to start from the foundations to show them why.” It’s a delicate balance to strike, of course, given that these titans are used to being the smartest in the room; their egos are fragile when they feel anything less. Hollis is now asked by around a quarter of her clients to act far beyond picking furniture. “We’ve had clients request that we help them with gifting, or plan unique travel, like a total lifestyle concierge,” she says, though adds that her team mostly acts as the co-ordinator for all home-related design choices, whether working with the pool designer or helping determine the best placement for an HVAC system. She also helps wrangle art for the walls, recommending and guiding on how to build a collection, one which reflects their taste, but relies mostly on her connections and cachet — the art world, after all, is notoriously picky about welcoming newcomers.Perhaps, then, this shift doesn’t represent the death knell of the connoisseur, but a change in how they’re advised — not by an antique dealer standing in an atmospheric shop, surrounded by treasures, but by their interior designer, over a glass of wine, in their own living rooms. Andrew Dillon certainly believes so. “The reports of the death of the collector might be greatly exaggerated. Humans have a native instinct to collect, and though there’s a continuum between being a collector and a hoarder, a collector can refine and let go. They always want to refine their collection, not just increase it. I’m convinced that collecting will never die.” The collector is dead, long live the collector.Find out about our latest stories first — follow @FTProperty on X or @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
