0:00:00 - (Linda Habak): I'm Linda Habak and this is Build Beautiful. This isn't just a podcast about design. It's about the people behind the work and the truth behind the journey. The quiet pivots, the bold decisions, the failures no one sees, and the moments that change everything. Each episode, I sit down with architects, designers, developers, artists and creative entrepreneurs not to talk about success, but about what it takes to get there.

0:00:33 - (Linda Habak): The process, the doubt, the grit, the heart. If you believe in creating with meaning and living a life with intention, then you'll feel right at home here. Welcome to Build Beautiful, where design meets depth. Few names in Australian design carry the weight and recognition of Merrell hair. For over 30 years, she has set the benchmark of timeless, intelligent interiors, leading one of the country's most celebrated design practices.

0:01:07 - (Linda Habak): Heron Klein. Her journey began in South Africa, evolved through bold choices, and led to a career defined by integrity, craftsmanship and vision. She's authored two books, writing another shaped homes of remarkable elegance, mentored many designers, and has been honoured with the industry's highest accolades, including recognition from the Design Institute of Australia and more recently, an Order of Australia Medal for her contribution to the design industry.

0:01:37 - (Linda Habak): In this conversation, we trace the evolution of a creative legacy. We talk about grit, the early pivots, the pressure and the perseverance. And we speak of grace, the confidence that comes with experience, the art of restraint, and the unwavering belief that beauty, when done right, lasts. This is not just a story of a designer, it's the story of an icon and the life she's built. One room, one decision, one decade at a time.

0:02:08 - (Linda Habak): Welcome to my conversation with Meryl. Meryl, I am so honored to have you here today. I've thought a lot about how I would start our conversation today, and I shared this with you last week when we met leading up to today, but you were really pivotal in my learning as a designer. I came into the design industry as a second career. I was an adult student with young children at home. But your work was how I learned all the theory that I learned in college. I would come back and look at your work and deconstruct, and that's where I learned everything about the elements and principles of design.

0:02:51 - (Linda Habak): And so this is a full circle moment because to have you here, you're a legend in our industry. You have done so much, you have taught so many. You're so open and generous. And so to have you as the first guest ever on this brand new podcast is truly an honor. So welcome and thank you, thank you.

0:03:12 - (Meryl Hare): Thank you for inviting me. And I'm a little overwhelmed by that introduction because I feel as if you're talking about somebody else.

0:03:21 - (Linda Habak): Well, it's not. It's you. I think we might start right at the beginning and maybe you can take us back to South Africa, where you were born, where you're from, and perhaps take us through what life was like there, your early stages of your creative career, and then how you came to be in Australia.

0:03:42 - (Meryl Hare): Sure, I was born in South Africa, but I was five years old when we left. My parents and my brother and I went to what is now Zambia and we'd lived up near the Congo border in a mining town. That's where I spent my formative years until I was. I think I was about 12 or 13 when we left Zambia and we went and ended up living in Swaziland, which was a little country next to South Africa. At that stage it was a British protectorate and it's now called Eswatini, just changed its name and that was where I went to boarding school.

0:04:24 - (Meryl Hare): My parents lived in a little town called Schlabaniati. I always think it's funny, and my office here is in Woolloomooloo. I always think I end up in strange named places. So I'm a Schlabanyati and I went to school in the capital of Eswatini, which was in Baban. So the school was a small boarding school, no art classes. And I would say that the standard of teaching wasn't great. I was good at some subjects, but I think I was essentially very bored.

0:05:04 - (Meryl Hare): Made some great friendships, was very pleased to be at boarding school because home life wasn't that great. But in terms of academia, I would say I found the whole thing very boring. And then when I finished, I decided that I wanted to study design. But at that stage there was no interior design courses in South Africa, which was where I went. I went to Durban, which is in Natal. So I did graphic design.

0:05:32 - (Meryl Hare): Right. And it's quite interesting because I was recently in Melbourne talking about design and there were four designers there that also had that same graphic design background. So for me it was also a second career.

0:05:48 - (Linda Habak): And how long did you practise graphic design and then transition to interiors?

0:05:54 - (Meryl Hare): I worked in graphic design for a few years. My story then was that I got married in Durban to. My first husband, was born in France but lived in South Africa. And we decided that we couldn't take the political situation, so we emigrated. But sadly, he. He died about a year later. So I was then in England. And then I decided you know, when something like. When I was 24, when something like that happens, you take stock.

0:06:28 - (Meryl Hare): So then I decided I wanted to be a doctor. You know, to save people, which, thank heavens, never really, because to this day, I cannot remember the name of body parts or medication or anything. I would have. I hate blood. And I would have been the worst doctor in the world. But that's the path I went on. And I ended up working in marketing. And then I married again. And it was during the beginning of that marriage that people were asking me to help with their homes. That's how it started.

0:07:00 - (Meryl Hare): And then I was approached by a person who became my business partner, who worked in an interior decorating practice. And she approached me. I had premises. I was running an art gallery at that stage. Small children, doing that whole early childhood, childhood career thing. And we started our business together. She had much more knowledge of how it worked than I did. I went to college and I did a few perspective drawing and drafting, et cetera, to get my skills up.

0:07:35 - (Meryl Hare): And we were unbelievably lucky because she actually had the contacts. But we started by working. I think our second project was. Was one of the most prominent families in South Africa working on one of the most famous houses in Johannesburg. So that's how it started. Bluffed a lot of bluff.

0:08:01 - (Linda Habak): Fake it till you make it.

0:08:02 - (Meryl Hare): Fake it till you make it. Absolutely. And I must say, those early years were fun, working together.

0:08:09 - (Linda Habak): That's amazing. So after you were in England, you went back to South Africa, went to Cape Town.

0:08:15 - (Meryl Hare): Yeah, I left England, went to Cape Town to take up medicine. But by the time the term started, I changed my mind. Fortunately, I lived in Cape Town, became manager of a marketing division, was transferred to Johannesburg, which is where I met my second husband.

0:08:34 - (Linda Habak): I see you've built one of the most respected design practices in the country. When you look back, what do you think anchored you through the decades? And how did you transition over to Australia? What brought you here?

0:08:50 - (Meryl Hare): I think my children were quite young when we decided to move. The whole South African situation was always. I always felt uneasy. I found it very difficult living under the whole restraints of apartheid. And it was difficult. A lot of my friends were politically active. It was difficult to become politically active because you were quite likely to be locked up and, you know, with no questions asked as you could be.

0:09:22 - (Meryl Hare): So I never got involved deeply into. Into working against apartheid. But I did have my citizenship revoked at one stage, which I always thought was a badge of honor.

0:09:36 - (Linda Habak): And why. Why was that?

0:09:39 - (Meryl Hare): You know, who knows? Yeah, it was A terrible regime it was. So we decided to leave and to build a future. I came here with an architect that I'd worked with quite a lot, a very good architect. I'd worked with a lot in Johannesburg. And we came to have a look to see how we felt that, you know, he as an architect, me as an interior designer, would be able to set up here within two days. Sydney Harbour, you know, special.

0:10:09 - (Meryl Hare): It was very special. So I made up my mind very quickly on behalf of our family, and I secured a sponsorship with also an expat South African who was working as an interior decorator. She sponsored me and therefore my family. And we came over in 1988. So that's what, 37 years ago?

0:10:35 - (Linda Habak): 37 years ago. Incredible. And so when you look back at those 37 years, what's that thread that runs through your life in terms of the decisions that you've made, the decision to come to Australia on behalf of your family and then all of those business decisions and life decisions. What is. What is it that anchors you across the years?

0:10:59 - (Meryl Hare): I think enthusiasm and I think I'm an optimist. I don't ever think there was a grand plan. I don't think that I was ever really that ambitious. I didn't set out with a business plan. And I remember, you know, my brother who sadly died a few years ago, he had an MBA and, you know, three degrees. And I remember somewhere along the line, I said to him, oh, I found out about the J curve. Oh, he said, for heaven's sake, we did that year one.

0:11:32 - (Meryl Hare): I said, well, I just found out about it, but it obviously works. Anyway, I think I've just thought, oh, that looks like a good idea, and. And went for it. There was no grand plan.

0:11:43 - (Linda Habak): So would you say that maybe intuition was leading those decisions, or did you just.

0:11:48 - (Meryl Hare): Yeah, I think there's certain amount. I think when you. When you make decisions, I suppose it's intuition, but it's also. I think I'm always optimistic and always think the best of people, and I don't ever want to not think that. I think that's important. And I think also I'm quite curious.

0:12:04 - (Linda Habak): Yeah, that's certainly been my experience with you in the conversations we've had. Let's go back to the early days of Heron Klein. So you came out in 1988. When did you set up Heron Klein?

0:12:15 - (Meryl Hare): 1989. I did, yes. And then it was like, because we'd been successful in Johannesburg, we'd won awards and so on, and I'd run a Small practice there with about four people. Four or five people in the practice came out here and it was starting absolutely from scratch. The name Heron Klein, I brought with me. And with me, I also brought a printed portfolio, which was actually quite a clever idea because when I come out the first time with the architect, I brought a portfolio in a leather, special leather case, which was sort of heavy and weighty and everything was mounted and it didn't work. So I printed this and it had a cover and then it had my commercial projects, residential projects, various different things, all printed so I could take things out, put things in, depending on who I was talking to and what work was, what the work was about.

0:13:16 - (Meryl Hare): So that was. The portfolio that I brought was before websites, it was before social media.

0:13:21 - (Linda Habak): It sounds like the beginnings of your books, actually. You're always destined to write books because.

0:13:28 - (Meryl Hare): I'll get to that. But it was. Yes, I suppose, yeah. I've always photographed my. And that is the. The one thing that I would recommend to designers. Spend the money, get a good photographer, or in my case, pay for the education of the photographer who's my daughter, and photograph your best work, because that is. That's your work.

0:13:53 - (Linda Habak): Absolutely. I think that's also the mindset of someone who's worked in marketing, because I, coming into this business, being a second career. My first career was in marketing, but I always knew that the only way to grow a business in this industry was to photograph the best possible work. And so it's an expensive exercise here, but a necessary one.

0:14:17 - (Meryl Hare): It's always been expensive. Yeah. And I've also wanted to photograph my own work, even though work has been photographed by magazines, et cetera, simply because you then have control of it.

0:14:29 - (Linda Habak): Going back to those early years, what did they teach you about resilience and leadership and creative courage? Give me some stories.

0:14:38 - (Meryl Hare): Well, I. Okay, so we moved into a house shortly after we arrived. We bought a house on the day the house prices peaked, and approximately two months before, the interest rates went up to 17%.

0:14:55 - (Linda Habak): So is that 1987?

0:14:57 - (Meryl Hare): It was 89.

0:14:58 - (Linda Habak): 89.

0:14:59 - (Meryl Hare): Sorry, yes, 89.

0:15:00 - (Linda Habak): 89, that's right, 89. You came in 88.

0:15:02 - (Meryl Hare): Yeah, yeah. So that was. That was a huge learning curve. When we'd left South Africa, our funds were frozen. We weren't allowed to bring any of our assets apart from a car, so we brought a Mercedes and we weren't allowed to sell it for two years, so we came virtually without anything. We managed to get a loan from the bank because my sponsor told the bank manager to Give us a loan. Which was before they got really fussy.

0:15:34 - (Meryl Hare): So we were lucky to get a home and was in Castle Crag and I decided I was not going to work from home. I got premises and I started my business on my own. And then I would phone and ask reps to come. And this became a bit of a joke because nobody had ever heard of me. And mostly reps wouldn't arrive. And then I thought, okay, well, I'll organise two at the same time and see if either come or if one comes.

0:16:04 - (Meryl Hare): And then it became three, then it became four. So those early days was you're nobody from nowhere. Even though all I'd brought with me was experience, I'd done it, I knew how to go about projects, but that was all.

0:16:21 - (Linda Habak): How did you find the work in the early days?

0:16:23 - (Meryl Hare): Well, the architect that I'd, you know, we'd come out, we'd emigrated, he'd arrived before with his family. We arrived a couple of years later. Some work came through him. My husband worked in construction and one of the first jobs I did in Sydney was the Rolls Royce showroom in William Street. I must tell you, Rolls Royces have scratches on their roofs depending on the lighting that you use. That was a huge learning curve. Doing a car showroom.

0:16:55 - (Meryl Hare): I did some office work. I just took whatever work I could because we had to pay the mortgage and we had to pay school fees. So my eldest daughter went into a school where they had composite classes and she was just not doing well. So that became my motivation really was to take on whatever work I could get so that I could get into a private school. Not because I was in any way snobbish about private school. Just at the school that both my kids were at was not satisfactory.

0:17:27 - (Meryl Hare): So the South African community started to hear about me because a lot of expat South Africans had used to get magazines from South Africa. They to get them sent over. And I'd been in quite a few magazines. I think that's where it started. And certainly one of the first jobs that I did was in Vaucluse and was for a South African, young South African couple. And it was. It was a lovely job, was with an Australian architect.

0:17:59 - (Meryl Hare): At the end, I think the tile suppliers had got hold of Vogue Living and said, there's this house and you should have a look at it. And Vogue Living came and had a look and decided that they wanted to run with it. It was photographed and the whole article was written. There were 10 pages in vogue Living, which would have been huge for Me having just arrived and it was pulled at the last minute and because of their political situation in South Africa. So it was South African American client and a South African interior designer and.

0:18:35 - (Linda Habak): They pulled it because of the political situation.

0:18:38 - (Meryl Hare): So I'm not bitter about that because that's discrimination. And I'd left a country because of discrimination. But it was interesting to experience it in a small way. I mean, I didn't.

0:18:51 - (Linda Habak): No, it's indirect, but indirect discrimination. And so clearly you would have had to build a level of resilience and thick skin around that. What was your resolve at that point? How did you pick yourself up and move on? Because I think most designers will resonate with this in some way. We've all had projects pulled and what is the mindset at that point and how do you go, right, I've just got to keep going, keep going forward.

0:19:19 - (Meryl Hare): I think I just kept going. Yeah. And also because even though that happened wasn't, you know, I mean, it's not tragic. No, but I was already working on other jobs and through that I started, you know, it was word of mouth ending up doing four houses in the same street. And each one of those, the clients would say, I don't want it to look like so and so's house. I said, no, well, I would never do that. And then they said, but I did like their chairs.

0:19:47 - (Meryl Hare): So that was interesting. You know, I think that in any profession you start somewhere and then you build confidence. You get knockbacks. And I think as you get confidence and you realize that what you're doing is resonating with people and that you, you obviously doing something right, that's where the confidence grows. At some point I was running 37 jobs and I had three staff and I thought I was going to have a complete breakdown.

0:20:21 - (Meryl Hare): And we, my family, we went off to India on a three week holiday with my kids. They were then teenagers and loved it. Came back from India, changed person, really. I came back and I decided that I wasn't going to. I didn't want to work on 37 jobs. I wanted to work on those jobs that I felt I could do something good. I was being passed around and I was doing a bit of this and a bit of that and out of necessity and look, those are the things that started me off and I'm not knocking it, but that in fact what I really wanted to do was do a whole project and not a, not a part project, not somebody's curtains and you know, somebody else's sofa.

0:21:09 - (Meryl Hare): If I took on a project, I wanted it to then be from beginning to end, preferably the design all the way through to the furnishings and the finishing. That isn't always and still isn't always the case. Sometimes, you know, people aren't building a house or doing a big renovation. Sometimes we're working in an existing premises, so we're doing the furnishings. I spoke to everybody, apologized and gave back deposits and ended up, out of those, 37, I ended up with seven clients.

0:21:42 - (Linda Habak): That's extraordinary.

0:21:43 - (Meryl Hare): Now, what I didn't realize was the power of no and that I learned to say no. At that point. I thought that my business would go. I would probably. That I would be a part timer. What happened was that it just gained momentum. It was extraordinary. It was almost that if I agreed to do a job, people felt very. Not everyone, but within, you know, people that knew each other, they'd think, oh, she's doing one. You know, And I'm not being arrogant about that, because I didn't expect that at all.

0:22:24 - (Meryl Hare): But that's when my practice really got going, and that was about 10 years after I'd arrived. 10 years of hard yacka.

0:22:33 - (Linda Habak): Yeah, that's amazing.

0:22:34 - (Meryl Hare): And then started to really be more selective.

0:22:38 - (Linda Habak): What does that look like for you, being selective? What criteria are you thinking about? Because.

0:22:45 - (Meryl Hare): Good question.

0:22:46 - (Linda Habak): Yeah. I know for myself, when you're in the early days, you're starting out and you would have had this yourself, you're kind of taking on the work to build the experience, to build the confidence. But at some point, you do need to stop and go, what am I creating and what am I putting out in the world? And who do I want to work with?

0:23:06 - (Meryl Hare): So I don't think I wrote down any criteria, but it's almost a gut feeling. So the jobs that have given me and our practice the most satisfaction have not necessarily been the biggest. They've been the ones where we've collaborated with clients who've got similar values, if you like, who see their home as important in terms of how they want to live. And those journeys that you take, and I know it's a cliche to say that, but the journey that you take with a client from the beginning of a project to the end is it's personal and it's sometimes hard and things can go wrong.

0:23:52 - (Meryl Hare): But if you're in sync, I think that that's when everybody gets the most out of the work that we do. And for all the consultants, not just the interior designers we're working with, architects, et cetera, I think that those are the jobs that I Try to find, look for. And we get repeat. So, you know, often those projects that we've done, we then go on to work with those CL time and again as they move, as they perhaps have a farm or beach house or whatever.

0:24:28 - (Meryl Hare): So when I'm assessing, I'm also obviously a business person. So I don't turn away an opportunity. If I can see that that is something that is going to keep us, you know, I'd rather take on a job where I feel that I'm communicating with the client and they're communicating with me and that we have a clear vision of where we want to go. Their vision may not be clear, but that we can develop trust.

0:24:58 - (Linda Habak): Absolutely.

0:24:59 - (Meryl Hare): And that is when a job takes off, when the trust gets eroded or the clients. And look, things have changed. People. Everybody looks at Instagram and Pinterest and it's clickbait.

0:25:14 - (Linda Habak): We're in a clickbait time and start.

0:25:16 - (Meryl Hare): Saying, well, I want that or go into showrooms. There's some beautiful showrooms, Sydney. And some of our clients will go into a showroom and say, well, I want that and I want that and I want that and I want that. And I'll say, well, then just go and do it with the showroom because that's not what we do. And it is getting more, you know, I think it's getting, it's always been tricky, but it's almost getting trickier.

0:25:40 - (Meryl Hare): So I think that choice of who you work with is pretty critical to the end result being good. And I think that goes for, as I say, all the consultants, architects as well. You know, I've seen architects being told what to do by clients and having to, and you know, sometimes you so. And the same has happened to us. Sometimes you end so deep that you can't, you can't withdraw. And a lot of the people we work for are high net worth individuals.

0:26:08 - (Linda Habak): So how do you navigate friction then? How do you navigate maybe a difficult personality or someone who's a client that might be demanding or even a challenging relationship with a consultant?

0:26:22 - (Meryl Hare): I think, well, first of all, I've got some amazing team. They're much more patient than I am, they're much nicer than I am. You've earned the right and I mean that so often. I. But you know, in the end the buck stops with me. So if things do get difficult, then it is necessary. I think what I've learned is to just be open, honest, not have an agenda, but just, you know, speak my mind in a, you know, in a respectful way.

0:26:55 - (Meryl Hare): Because we're all trying to get to a good result.

0:26:57 - (Linda Habak): That's right. And I think that comes back to sharing the same values and having the trust there that you're able to then have those sometimes difficult conversations that we all, we all have had. I want to talk about the work now. And you know, your work for me is such an exercise in restraint and a perfect balance.

0:27:20 - (Meryl Hare): Well, that's very kind of you.

0:27:22 - (Linda Habak): What does, what does that mean to you? And how do you know when a space is just right, when it's enough? What are you looking for when you're creating that space? And I know you wrote a whole book on it, but I would love for you to share that in your own words.

0:27:37 - (Meryl Hare): Two books, actually, and I'm writing to third. Well, first of all, I'm never, ever satisfied. I think it's a little bit, you know, when you start off what we do, a little bit like an artist. We start off with a blank canvas. We do have more restraints than a blank canvas in that we've got the architecture to work with, we've got the client brief and we've got the client's likes, dislikes, et cetera.

0:28:01 - (Meryl Hare): So it's not entirely blank. But what we then do with it, you paint this picture and sometimes it takes. And we've done jobs that go on for five, six years. It goes over a period of time and then at the end of it, you give it to do, you give it away. Well, you sell it, but you get, you know, you pass it on. Am I ever sure that I've done an absolutely perfect job? No, no, I don't think, you know, I think there's always a bit of self criticism or self doubt there. And I think that that's. I'm okay with that.

0:28:35 - (Meryl Hare): I think if you think that you've done everything perfectly, then you probably won't. Won't get better.

0:28:41 - (Linda Habak): Yeah, yeah. You can't grow really, if you think you've achieved perfection.

0:28:46 - (Meryl Hare): No perfection. There's no such thing.

0:28:48 - (Linda Habak): No such thing, Exactly. We're in a really design trend driven period. Tell me how you feel about that, because I look at your work and I think it has a stamp of timelessness on it. And actually that's how I sense, check a lot of my decisions as a designer. I'm constantly going, how is this going to function? And look in five years time? But how do you feel about where we're at at the moment with the inundation of visuals that we're getting?

0:29:20 - (Linda Habak): But then how do you stay timeless in how you Approach your work.

0:29:25 - (Meryl Hare): Interesting thing. You know, I was thinking about this. I think that you would. You can't be a Luddite. You can't pretend trends aren't emerging, because they do, they do emerge. But being selective about what you want to work with in, you know, in our work, what we want to embrace has always got it past the. Your own aesthetic, for instance. And I'm going to make a big claim now to probably make me very unpopular.

0:29:58 - (Meryl Hare): But that. That whole thing of these enormously round furniture that's, you know, it's just bulbous curves. Bulbous curves, Yeah. I think will take on some of that. Some of that will permeate through to what is now contemporary furniture. But I really have a problem with embracing it completely. I just see some of those forms and to me, they aren't beautiful. I don't know how to explain it.

0:30:29 - (Linda Habak): I think you've explained it perfectly, because. I agree. I agree completely.

0:30:35 - (Meryl Hare): All these trends will eventually distill and they'll come through and we will embrace them. Because the fern. I mean, I go to Milan. I haven't gone for a few years, but I used to go regularly every two years. And you would see a trend emerging and you'd say, ah, okay, everybody's doing huggy chairs this year. Remember those hug chairs came up and they're still, you know, they're still part of it, but they've refined and they've emerged and the outrageous ones have fallen by the wayside. But there is.

0:31:08 - (Meryl Hare): There's something nice about a chair that hugs you.

0:31:11 - (Linda Habak): Yes, absolutely. But it almost has to start with the outrageous, doesn't it? And then distill down after a couple of years to kind of get a more refined form that you can then sort of bring into the work. It's an interesting time. Definitely.

0:31:27 - (Meryl Hare): If I could also say, when you've been in this business long enough and you see a trend coming, coming, and you think, oh, God, not that again. Oh, we just got rid of all the brass tabs and are we putting brass taps in again or, you know, Chenille's come when small patterns coming back. And it's very interesting to see my team because they go, oh, that's lovely.

0:31:57 - (Linda Habak): That's amazing, isn't it? I mean, it's amazing to have that lens ends of three dec, you know, over three decades, really.

0:32:04 - (Meryl Hare): Yes.

0:32:04 - (Linda Habak): Of seeing trends come and go and materials and styles and aesthetics.

0:32:09 - (Meryl Hare): But you also got to be careful you don't become prejudiced.

0:32:12 - (Linda Habak): Yeah.

0:32:13 - (Meryl Hare): You know, I see their enthusiasm, and then I. I thought, oh, God, brass again. And then it's lovely, but it's, you know, it's unpolished and it's gonna. And then I think, stop it. You know, don't have a closed mind. You've got to open your mind to trends, but not slavishly follow them.

0:32:32 - (Linda Habak): Love that. I think that's a slogan. We need to put that up as a slogan somewhere. I want to take you and I want to reflect now on your awards and industry accolades. So in 2024, you were awarded the Order of Australia Medal, which is a huge recognition. Congratulations. Incredible.

0:32:54 - (Meryl Hare): Thank you.

0:32:54 - (Linda Habak): I want to know, how do you feel about that and what does it mean to you?

0:33:01 - (Meryl Hare): I feel. I don't know. There's so many people that. You know, I went to the ceremony in Government House and there are so many people who. Or the people there that were awarded on that day. I mean, I just felt, you know, people do amazing things. They save lives and they work for the community, and I think they're much more worthy people out there. But it was a lovely recognition for the profession.

0:33:31 - (Meryl Hare): In the end. I feel a bit embarrassed about it and a little bit of imposter syndrome coming in. However, if it helps in the work that I'm trying to do through the DIA and recognition of registering interior designers so they can become accredited and not left off the list of designers, the New South Wales Government. If it helps in that way, if it helps for the profession, then I'm delighted. I'm also amazed, to be honest.

0:34:05 - (Meryl Hare): I was in the Himalayas when I first got the notification, and I just previously missed an email that said, you know, will you accept it? I was in Darjeeling and I didn't have proper Internet and I just happened to look in the morning and they said, you know, you've got 24 hours. Will you accept it? Oh, my God, absolutely. And I thought it was a scam.

0:34:29 - (Linda Habak): Meryl, I love your humility. I mean, I think when I first met you was at that lunch, I think it was with the indie group. And you were so generous in sharing how you do your fees and how you run a business. And I think that's what strikes me with you, is your just your generosity and your humility. And if anyone could have an ego or should have an ego, it's you, but you don't. And it's incredible. You have so much wisdom.

0:35:00 - (Meryl Hare): Don't forget, I haven't done the degrees that you've done. You know, I've come up in a different route.

0:35:07 - (Linda Habak): I think my route's Your route too. It's the second. So I have a lot of imposter syndrome around things too. But I think what I have learned is you have to walk towards the fear. It's scary doing something that you're not confident at doing like this even, but you just have to trust your instinct and you have to walk towards the fear anyway.

0:35:28 - (Meryl Hare): Yeah, I think you just got to be authentic.

0:35:31 - (Linda Habak): Yeah, absolutely.

0:35:32 - (Meryl Hare): More than happy to share.

0:35:34 - (Linda Habak): So, speaking of sharing, you are also going to be one of the judges for the 2025 IDEA Awards, a platform that celebrates the very best of Australian design. I want to understand what's going through your mind when you're going to be judging these awards and what do you think makes an outstanding project and do you put your lens of timelessness on that or.

0:35:58 - (Meryl Hare): It's a really interesting question. I have done the Idea Award judging once before. It was in the middle of COVID so there were no face to face meetings. It was all done by Zoom. It's a very intense process. I have judged other awards as well. This one is very intense. So putting your own lens in it. Yes, everybody will do that inevitably. But you have to look at every entry and you have to judge it on the various different criteria that was set by the organizers. So you can't just look at it and say, oh, I really hate that color green, or, you know, whatever.

0:36:37 - (Meryl Hare): You have to look at it and you have to assess it from sustainability, from flow, you know, whatever those criteria are. At the end, obviously your own lens will come in. So at the end, everybody's will. And we're doing it on a 1 to 10. So you're marking every aspect of every entry. It's very time consuming.

0:37:00 - (Linda Habak): Do you do it as a group or individually?

0:37:02 - (Meryl Hare): No, you do it individually. But talking about awards, one of the things that I do feel quite strongly about, and you've raised that whole thing about timelessness. I would love to see in one or all of the current awards that are in our profession in Australia. I would love to see a category of 10 years or 20 years. Re looking at projects after a period of time, whatever it is. 10 years. Maybe. Maybe it's 10 years.

0:37:35 - (Meryl Hare): I think 10 years is probably the right amount of time to look back and see which projects still stand up and are judged as being relevant and timeless.

0:37:46 - (Linda Habak): And what do you think, other than timelessness, what do you think the criteria selection would be for a category like that?

0:37:55 - (Meryl Hare): I haven't thought it through, but I think that I love that, by the way.

0:38:00 - (Linda Habak): I think it's a great idea because.

0:38:02 - (Meryl Hare): Actually, I'm going to say that the idea wasn't entirely my original idea. Lucy Carroll, who works for me, sort of mentioned it one day and said, it's a pity we don't have that category. And I said, you know what? It's absolutely right. You know, I work with young designers. They are clever and they. I mean, that's part of why I love doing what I do. I work with an absolutely lovely team of very talented.

0:38:30 - (Linda Habak): You've mentored many successful designers that have gone on to own their own practices. So I think that's incredible. He might have just a couple. We're coming to the end of our conversation, but by the way, I could be here for two more hours with you. I want to talk about legacy. How do you hope that your work and your story will be thought of today but also remembered in the future? What do you feel about what you've created, reflecting back over the. The last 37 years of your.

0:39:03 - (Linda Habak): Your body of work?

0:39:07 - (Meryl Hare): I don't know that I think of it in terms of, you know, what will people think? I think in time, my name will, you know, disappear. You know, for instance, I was very great friends with a designer, a decorator, Leslie Walford. I don't know if you remember Leslie Walford. Leslie Walford also got the Order of Australia, and he was one of. And he was one of the people who first gave me a leg up. He was an extraordinary fellow. And yet when I say that name, apart from people of a certain age, nobody remembers him.

0:39:41 - (Meryl Hare): So I'm not that arrogant that I think that people will remember me. What I do hope, having worked for so long, is that it'll continue. And I have got a succession plan. I've got no plan to retire completely.

0:39:58 - (Linda Habak): Good.

0:39:59 - (Meryl Hare): They'll wheel me in. I still enjoy, I find this most wonderful profession. I love it. In terms of legacy, what do I want my legacy to be? I hope that my practice will continue to the same standard that we've built up over time. But more importantly, I hope that I will be able to influence the role of interior designers and interior decorators. Very importantly in the future, through advocacy, through working with the Design Institute, and through groups like, you know, the group that we part of indigroup. When I first came here, I remember the first architect I worked with said, oh, you're an inferior desecrator.

0:40:51 - (Linda Habak): And he did not say.

0:40:54 - (Meryl Hare): He laughed. It was funny. But I thought, you know, and that's why I was president of that I was involved with the dia et CETERA because I feel very strongly that what we do is important and I would like to see it recognised. So advocacy, I think, is one of the legacy that I leave. And the reason that I do write books is because I think that everything we do comes and goes and we do beautiful work, we photograph it and then it comes and goes on websites and disappears and houses get sold and people move on and all sorts of things happen.

0:41:33 - (Meryl Hare): And that for me, I love books, always loved books. And that is a little bit of a legacy for the people that have worked on those projects. All the people that have worked on those projects. And I don't, you know, some clients get it, some clients don't get it at how much everybody puts in. The builders, the architects, the landscapers, the designers, the electrician, everybody puts an enormous amount of work.

0:42:00 - (Linda Habak): It's a real team effort to create beautiful spaces. I love what you said about why you publish books. It's a timestamp as well of that moment and it's a recognition of that project and all the effort and all the people that come together to create something meaningful for a family. It's important work and I think we're so caught up in the aesthetic of it. But actually it's life changing. People that come into a beautiful space, that's for them, it's life changing and enriches their lives.

0:42:34 - (Meryl Hare): Yeah, I think that's very, it really does. The first book that I did, I had never intentioned of writing a book, but Thomas Hamill is a friend of mine. His first book that he published, I went to the opening to the book launch and he came up and he tapped me on the shoulder and he said, you're next. And I said, what? He said, you're next. He said, you won't make any money out of it.

0:43:00 - (Linda Habak): You've also. That brings me to collaborations. You've done quite a few collaborations. You've obviously got your rug collection with designer rugs. And tell me how that came about and why you enjoy doing that work.

0:43:14 - (Meryl Hare): Okay, so that was interesting. The owner of designer rugs, Yossi, tells me to go for coffee one day and we went, I remember where we went for coffee. And he said, why don't you use, use more? You know, he's very direct. Yes, why don't you use more of our rugs? So I said, well, we do use your rugs, but I'm really looking for more texture. And you know, I, I, I think I'm, I, I look for, for things that bring texture into.

0:43:42 - (Meryl Hare): And he said, well, we can do that. We've, you know, we can get drugs made in Nepal, and, you know, we need to talk, and I. I can show you what they can do. So I said, okay, I'm happy to. He then showed me some examples of what this rug company in Kathmandu could produce. And it was. And I was absolutely. That was me. I was all in. It was hemp, silk, and Tibetan wool. So beautiful. We did our first collaboration, and it was funny because the first drug that I ever designed, I was doing two installations in Palm beach. One in the high side of the road, one in the low side of the road. The same day, two different members of the team, and I was running between the two, and I was coming down to the bottom one, and there was a tree that had left a shadow onto the driveway, and I took a picture of it, and I thought that would make an amazing rug.

0:44:39 - (Meryl Hare): And that was out of the first collection, as was the rug that you have.

0:44:43 - (Linda Habak): Yes.

0:44:44 - (Meryl Hare): And they have been the ones that have continued and continue to quite well. So then I complained to Yossi and I said, why did they take 20 weeks for heaven? It's a long time. He said, go and have a look. Do you want to know why it takes 20 weeks? Go. So I went to Kathmandu, and I went with Christine, who is their designer. And I absolutely know why it takes 20 weeks. I'm surprised it doesn't take longer.

0:45:15 - (Meryl Hare): Everything is so handmade.

0:45:19 - (Linda Habak): It's amazing. They're heirloom pieces, really.

0:45:21 - (Meryl Hare): They are, yeah.

0:45:22 - (Linda Habak): Oh, that's incredible. Our final question, Meryl, is what does build beautiful mean to you?

0:45:31 - (Meryl Hare): Oh, my goodness. That's like painting a beautiful picture. That's when you might not be absolutely sure that you've done it as perfectly as you can. You know, we start. We all do this. We start off with a brief. We start off with a concept. To me, the concept is one of the most. That's the creative. That's really the creative start of a project is, what is this? What is the design language? And, you know, you're talking about starting from absolute scratch.

0:46:02 - (Meryl Hare): The joinery, the staircase, the lighting, everything right to the end. So that is the most creative thing. If that then carries through over the years, over the time that it takes, through the construction, through the ordering, all of that. And then the day that you install it, I'm doing one next week, actually, the day you install it, and it comes together and it's as you imagined it would be. And the client walks in and cries with happiness.

0:46:35 - (Meryl Hare): That, to me, that's the joy that's the joy. That's the joy.

0:46:40 - (Linda Habak): Building beautiful.

0:46:41 - (Meryl Hare): Building beautiful. That's amazing. And making people cry. Somebody cried twice. You only cried once. We need more crying here.

0:46:51 - (Linda Habak): I think I'm gonna cry. I can't think.

0:46:54 - (Meryl Hare): That's why we do it, isn't it?

0:46:56 - (Linda Habak): Why we do it? Absolutely. Because there's a lot of money. We definitely don't do it for the money. And it's certainly challenging and there's lots of bumps along the road, but when you get that text message from the client and they've had an event at their house and they send you a photo and they say, look what you created for us to. To enjoy. That's why you do it. And it. It's a reminder and we need that because projects are long.

0:47:23 - (Linda Habak): They can be very long, years long. So, Meryl, I am so honoured you are our first guest.

0:47:31 - (Meryl Hare): Well, I feel very honoured, Linda, and thank you for asking me. And can I just say, I think you're a very good interviewer.

0:47:39 - (Linda Habak): Oh, thank you. I thought a lot about. I've wanted to do a podcast for a long time and I never knew what I wanted it to be, but I knew when I started thinking about what Build Beautiful could be, when it crystallized, I knew I wanted it to have purpose and have gravitas. And I think for me, there was no one else to launch this but you, because you. You have gravitas and you have experience and wisdom, and I think this is a space reflecting on creative journeys.

0:48:15 - (Linda Habak):. Thank you for listening to Build Beautiful. If this conversation resonated with you, I'd love it if you'd follow the show, leave a review, or share it with someone who's building something meaningful. It matters more than you know. Follow us on Instagram. Build Beautiful podcast. Until next time. Keep creating with intention and together we Build Beautiful.