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 design assistant 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.