SUZANNE HALL

Suzanne Hall is an accomplished designer, draftsman and artist, if you must. She might prefer storyteller. While others see a sofa, a few chairs and maybe a table, she sits back quietly and listens to the conversation. She believes different pieces of furniture talk to each other. She believes emotion has a physical impact. She wants to know how you feel and what kind of food you like before ever pulling out a color wheel to choose the shade of your wall. Suzanne takes your words, your hopes, your dreams and turns them into the functional space you want to call home.

She comes with qualifications. At the age of 21 out of Utah State University, she helped revive an old stone castle in Edinburgh, Scotland and hung around long enough to juxtapose turquoise doors with earthen walls because that’s what was expected from men in ties stripped in fuschia, chartreuse and eggplant to keep the rain-soaked highlands from being completely washed out. After winning a National Design Competition through Southern Accents Magazine, she moved to Birmingham, Alabama and learned that a monogrammed silver spoon placed perfectly in a cupboard was as much interior design as tradition and inheritance.

Eventually, she returned home to Utah to apply white lacquered automotive paint to ornate deer antlers carved of wood, wrap a tribal ottoman in ostrich leather and put a fresh look on the state’s traditional rustic forms. She believes Utah has a spirit all its own, a modern mountain feel that begins with her clients and runs right through the fibers of their homes. She renders these living rooms with their accompanying children’s voices with a passion beyond measuring tapes and razor point pens. After all, it is your home. Suzanne would say it’s your story.

HOLLY OKUBO

Holly Okubo is your designer with a twist of graphic artist. You can thank us later. She’s the one that actually liked doing math homework in between piano lessons so she’ll be the one who helps us meet the deadlines, organize the assets and find that last signature piece that you absolutely could not live without. You know, that custom-upholstered headboard. Or the 10-foot articulated boom lamp. It’s right there, behind your busy schedule and pile of decisions that had to be made yesterday. Aren’t you glad she came? And she does it all with an easy smile and gentle confidence that makes it all fun.

She studied interior design in college and was selected immediately after graduation by a celebrated Salt Lake design firm. She’s worked hand in hand with architects and builders to form and accent entire structures right down to the last serif on the hand-carved logo on the entrance placard. Then she got down to business, put her ipod on shuffle and began detailing individual presentation pieces that converted often complex, three-dimensional concepts into convenient, two-dimensional portraits that her clients could touch and turn and dance around in their imaginations.

Holly fell in love with interior design all over again the second she stepped into the 4,000 intimate square feet of the Alice Lane showroom. She remembers playing with Barbies as a little girl and unabashedly blueprinting dollhouses with pencil and paper. Now, she lives out those dreams roaming in and out of each design sequence on the floor, eager to introduce just the right customer to just the right piece. In fact, there is a bowl of tiny, golden pineapples, each one about the size of your fingernail, at the front counter. Holly will tell you that at one time, this tropical fruit was the sacred symbol of a warm welcome. We’d be surprised if she hasn’t already picked one out for you.

CHRISTY COOK

Christy Cook is rearranging your furniture. She is always rearranging your furniture. She is an interior designer sitting on a Belgium linen slip-covered sofa in the Alice Lane showroom imagining what your living room is going to look like when it’s all grown up. Then, she is telling you how she turned little red and pink hearts she hand-cut from construction paper into a multi-tired mobile that hung over her college dining table at 2 in the morning before Valentine’s Day. She is prim, she is proper, she is sinking her fingers into the moist soil of her garden, layering the orchids to the sunlit rays of her recent memory. Welcome to Christy’s world. Consider yourself formally invited.

Obviously, this didn’t all come about by accident. There’s the degree in interior design, the internship to Canada, the billowing fabric panels fashioned into the ceiling fans of a hypothetical restaurant whose patrons would have sworn they dined on a gentle breeze if they only had the chance. She wont the Theresa Bradley Design Award for that one. Then, there were the two light pillars at the front desk surrounded by the combinations of two Corinthian columns in front of the two lap pools for her creation of the Hotel 11. And, yet, another prestigious award for that one because how else would you expect a lady to leave the room…

Sure, Christy could have stayed on her own as a successful interior design of one. She was brilliant, busy and… weighed down with business decisions when all she really wanted to do was cajole the glimmer from that silver-leafed chest of drawers to match the twinkle in your eye before heading home for the finishing touches on one of her famous themed parties. So she joined Alice Lane because there are too many businesses to define, too many houses to make homes, too many rooms to fill with colors and laughter to do anything else. She even has a pocketful of dime-sized horseshoes for sentimental reasons but we both know taht with Christy it has nothing to do with luck.

NATALIE ELLIS

There may be a perfectly tufted purple sofa buried deep within your soul and, if so, interior designer extraordinaire Natalie Ellis is already sitting on it. Pardon her spontaneity, but she would also like you to hand over your all-time favorite shirt as she draws inspiration from it to build your dream room. At the same time you’ll feel like you’ve known each other for years as you exchange old family recipes and new pictures of your kids.

In pursuit of all that is grand in the design world Natalie has run her hand over elaborate stonework found only in the South Kensington section of London. She has seen her reflection in the polished halls of Paris’ finest museums and walked the ancient sands of Irabu-Jima Japan. Officially, she is a graduate of Utah State University school of interior design and furthered her craft under the renowned New York designer Jamie Drake, “The King of Color”, while working with clients such as Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Unofficially, she is bold beyond brilliance and no one stretches tones, shades, and hues on budget better than she does.

Natalie now calls Utah home and Alice Lane is her playground where she never lets her past achievements get in the way of crisp new ideas. With the perfect balance of technical savvy, uncanny creativity, and the sheer wizardry of architectural software there is nothing she would rather do than surprise you with a design perfectly suited just for you.