‘I Have More Opinions, But Am Less Judgemental About Taste Than I Used to Be’ – Inside the Thoughtful World of Billy Cotton, Where Maximalist Pop Icons Get the Same Treatment as Meditative Minimalists
Designer Billy Cotton grew up honing his eye by dumpster diving, and now makes furniture with some of the best craftspeople in the world
Billy Cotton is a New York–based designer whose work slips (seemingly) effortlessly between interiors, furniture, and objects, always guided by an unusually human understanding of how spaces make us feel. Schooled initially as a historian before discovering design at Pratt Institute, Billy brings a deep cultural literacy to everything he does – from rooms layered with memory and warmth to rigorously pared-back, meditative spaces.
His career has taken him from early freelance projects for pop cultural heavyweights to deeply personal collaborations with artists and craftspeople, and his work resists easy categorization, moving fluently between maximalism and restraint.
In this conversation, part of our Layered Lives series, Billy traces the origins of his aesthetic back to childhood encounters with art, architecture, and collecting, reflects on the emotional responsibility of design, and explains why chairs, color, and craft remain central to his thinking. It’s a portrait of a designer driven not by style for style’s sake, but by curiosity, empathy, and a lifelong fascination with how we live.
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Homes & Gardens: Can you describe the first space that shaped your sense of design?
Billy Cotton: Growing up, we lived in a really beautiful old house in Brookline, Massachusetts, that had been the offices of the designers of Central Park, so there was a real heritage to it. As a child, I’d go to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum often – she was an incredible patron of the arts, and she had created the facade by taking the front of a palazzo from the Grand Canal and rebuilding it. And that was my thing, I just could not go there enough. I loved the outside of the museum – there was an austerity to it, and it felt like a discovery moment for me. I loved the storytelling of it all, that she had traveled the globe and gathered all these possessions and fragments of her favorite things together in one place.
Homes & Gardens: Did it inspire you to start collecting your own things?
Billy Cotton: My first collection was salt and pepper shakers, then penguins. This was before the internet, when it was harder to find things. I also loved airline timetables – they were just so exciting! You called an airline and could just find out about all these far-off places they were going to.
Homes & Gardens: It sounds like you were really drawn to escapism!
Billy Cotton: Yes, I suppose I was!
Homes & Gardens: When you were able to start decorating your own space, what did that look like?
Billy Cotton: By the time I was in my teenage bedroom, we had moved to Vermont, and I got very into the idea of dumpster diving and going to junk stores. One of my favorite things was a long, multicolored bowling bench from a bowling alley that was being demolished, which my friends and I dragged home from a dumpster.
Homes & Gardens: And what about your first apartment? What did that look like?
Billy Cotton: My first apartment was charcoal gray, filled with a mix of things I’d dragged from Vermont country stores.
Pictured above is this Collins Dining Table, The Edgar Five Arm Hanging Uplight, and The Rattan Aquinnah Dining Chair, all part of Billy Cotton's collection with Soane.
Homes & Gardens: Were there any people who were helping to shape your sense of style?
Billy Cotton: My first love was a British artist called Paul Lee, whom I met in Provincetown when I was 17. Getting to see into his world was just life-altering. I mean, sure, my mom had some chic European friends who I looked up to, but it was when I saw into this world of artists that everything began to take shape for me. Paul and I became partners, and I learned what it meant to make things. At that time, I didn’t think of myself as a creative – I went to school first for history, with no idea I would become an artist.
Homes & Gardens: How did you move away from history into the design world?
Billy Cotton: I came to realize that history wasn’t going to work for me and ended up at the Pratt Institute, which is an art school. I was going to do art history and ended up discovering design. I saw people making chairs and realized there was nothing I cared more about than chairs.
Homes & Gardens: What was it about chairs that resonated so deeply?
Billy Cotton: It’s the fact that you need them. Everyone needs them. And beyond that, it’s a little piece of sculpture. Plus, a comfortable chair brings a lot of joy.
The Rattan Aquinnah Chair is a finely woven rattan seat, framed by a leather wrapped “scaffolding” as Billy describes it.
Homes & Gardens: After college, did any of your early projects start to feel like a turning point in your career?
Billy Cotton: I had started freelancing. The moment I went into industrial design, I knew I had found my calling, but I just had to figure out how I was going to get paid. As a freelancer, my first job was for Gwen Stefani – she had a fashion brand called L.A.M.B., and I did the showroom. It felt so glamorous! I mean, I only actually met her about once, and the job itself came and went, but I knew I had the bug and that if I kept doing this, I could have the life I wanted.
Homes & Gardens: When she was running L.A.M.B., Gwen Stefani was at the epicenter of pop culture, with her Harajuku Girls and appearing on TRL all the time when that was massive. Did you feel like you were in the middle of everything?
Billy Cotton: I’ve always loved pop culture, so the dovetailing of my skills with someone else’s aesthetic – especially an aesthetic that was defining the moment – was quite special to me. Then I was basically doing odd jobs, and it kept going from there. The next big thing was when Cindy Sherman contacted me about doing her house. By that point, I had a line of plates at Neiman Marcus, Harrods, and Heal’s, and I thought I’d just be a product designer. But Cindy asked me to do her farmhouse, and I thought it was safe and a nice paycheck – and of course I loved her – and she let me run with it.
Homes & Gardens: Looking back at your early career to now, are you seeing a shift in your outlook? What is resonating with you at the moment?
Billy Cotton: My outlook has evolved in that I have more opinions, but am less judgmental about taste. I am willing to appreciate beauty in all forms of design. Everything is an idea; most things were made by a human who presumably had good intentions.
Soane's The Panther Chair has been covered with Billy Cotton's Quadrille design.
Homes & Gardens: Certainly, your work is chameleonic, sometimes patterned and sometimes minimalist – is this lack of judgment how you move effortlessly between styles?
Billy Cotton: I’m glad it looks effortless! The dream for me was to be able to inhabit my clients’ wishes. I am an omnivore of beauty and culture, and I have such deep appreciation for so many things, from the maximalist to the minimalist. How I express that vast appreciation is by trying to approach each one with the same rigor, and just hope that people connect to both my aesthetic and the ideas behind it – the respect I have for architecture, place, and function.
Homes & Gardens: You said your first apartment was charcoal gray – how are you feeling about color now?
Billy Cotton: In the right context, yes, I do think I am very interested in color and color theory, and how pattern comes together. That has become something I’m very focused on. How people are going to feel in my spaces is core – that is the thing I’m most concerned with. In my training in industrial design, that was what it was all about – the person we were designing for and their needs. Most people’s needs are emotional.
Homes & Gardens: What emotional needs is your own home designed to fulfill?
Billy Cotton: My own home is usually a canvas – a blank space for meditation – and I want the space to feel as open and free of things as possible so that I can dream. In the primary home that I live in with my partner, it’s about warmth, history, and a collection of well-loved things.
Homes & Gardens: What does ‘meditative’ actually mean to you in an interior?
Billy Cotton: I do like a relative sense of order of some kind – a cohesion, even if that means full chaos! I like complete ideas, and a space that houses only what is necessary for that person. It could be that the person needs a vast collection of Etruscan pots or something, and that’s fine. As long as everything has some level of meaning or value, and is not just there for the sake of filling space, then it can feel calm.
Billy describes his collaboration with British brand Soane a 'dream'. The collection spans over fabrics, wallpapers, furniture and lighting.
Homes & Gardens: Speaking of collections, how was the design process of your recent collab with the British furniture brand Soane?
Billy Cotton: Soane was a dream! I have a very deep love for London and feel close to it in my heart. My first love, Paul Lee, was British, and I’ve spent a lot of time in London. I’m there three or four times a year for extended periods and have been for the past 25 years. So to work with Lulu Lytle [Soane’s founder], who is so passionate about English craft… it was wonderful! It was an opportunity to create a dialogue with a country that has taught me so much, and to work with the highest level of craftsmanship that exists in the world. No other manufacturer is working at that level without making just limited editions, and Lulu has such an enormous amount of creativity.
Homes & Gardens: Lastly, outside of interiors, what fuels your creativity?
Billy Cotton: I would say technology – though I know that might be controversial! I feel like we’re in a version of the Industrial Revolution right now, and if we do it right, it’s going to allow creative people to make the world a more beautiful place.
What emerges most clearly from Billy Cotton’s reflections is a designer motivated less by aesthetics than by feeling – by how spaces support imagination, calm, and connection. Whether talking about scavenged furniture, sculptural chairs, or finely crafted collaborations, his outlook is rooted in respect: for history, for makers, and for the emotional lives of the people who inhabit his work.
Billy’s refusal to judge taste, and his openness to beauty in all its forms, feels particularly resonant now. In a world of fast design trends and rigid categories, his approach is a reminder that the most meaningful interiors are those shaped slowly, thoughtfully, and always with humanity at their center.
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