Venus Williams serves up interior design

JUPITER, Fla. - This is what you get when you hire Venus Williams as your interior decorator: an enthusiastic designer who has traveled the world, drawing inspiration from Moscow to Beijing, but never quite had time to complete formal training; a team of professionals working with her; and a place on a client list that includes celebrities and professional athletes.

And, of course, you get Venus Williams.

She's one of the great tennis players of all time: seven Grand Slam singles titles, an Olympic gold medal, a woman who changed the face of modern tennis. Her father gave her a racket when she was just 4 years old and told her she was going to become the best player in the world.

"Most people decide what they want to do later in life, and some people know really early," she says. "For me, what I was doing was already decided. Thankfully, I liked it." But that was her father's dream, not hers. "This was like when you get to make your own choice about what you love."

And Williams loves, loves, loves designing. She talks about space planning, construction, lighting and fabric swatches like nobody's business. In fact, it is a business: For more than a decade, she has quietly run an interior design firm in her adopted home of Florida, both capitalizing on and overcoming her famous name.

On a recent Friday night, she was in the District of Columbia for the unveiling of her latest work: The renovated Southeast Tennis and Learning Center, an after-school tennis, arts and academic program created for children.

Fashion design

Williams had been playing tennis for 14 years when a letter arrived on her doorstep when she was 17 or 18. It invited her to study art and design at a technical school in Tampa, Florida.

"Oh, I want to go to design school!" she remembers telling her mom. She loved being creative: She grew up sewing and still has the homemade skirts she made for her first professional tournament at age 14.

Tampa was too far from their southern Florida home, so her mother vetoed that plan. But she allowed Williams and younger sister Serena to enroll in a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, arts school, where they both studied fashion design.

It was not, as one might guess, a calming counterpoint to their grueling day job. "School was not relaxing. It was intense," says Williams. "I had breakdowns just like any other student. The other students weren't fazed by their famous classmate because "everyone was so stressed out that they didn't really care." Williams graduated in 2007 with a degree in fashion design and launched a small sportswear line called EleVen to a mixed reception.

But it was interior design that really captured her imagination. While traveling, she would slip away to explore art and museums - in Moscow, for example, she loved the intricate ceilings of St. Basil's Cathedral. She began reading books on interior design and consulted with professional decorators.

In 2002, after finding a partner who could handle the business while she was on the road, Williams founded V Starr Interiors, a small boutique firm in Jupiter, not far from where her family lived after moving from California when she was 10 years old. The real estate market was booming; she thought it was the perfect time to try to break into the field.

Everyone knew who she was, of course, but some people assumed she was just a titular owner with no talent. (Early on, the state of Florida reportedly reprimanded V Starr for overstating Williams' professional credentials.) Others were happy to hire V Starr solely for the publicity of having Williams attached to their projects: Two years ago, Williams and her team decorated a $6.5 million luxury model condo for a Boca Raton development. Her name and photo were splashed all over promotional material and Florida real estate magazines.

Today, the firm has four full-time professional designers, all women. The operation is housed in a small townhouse with a discreet sign out front, but there is no hint of the famous owner until you step into the foyer, where there are small photos and two tennis prints. The second floor is filled with fabric samples; the third with a workroom where all the designers sit together. Williams doesn't have an office; when she's in town, she perches at the main worktable with her laptop.

Williams is the only one on the team without a degree in interior design. She studied it for two years - "I would sit there and draw a line, then erase it, and draw it and erase it. I drove myself nuts" - before finally deciding she could be more effective to the company if she got a business degree. (She's working on it.)

It was, all things considered, the practical choice: Williams, now 34 years old, heads an estimated $60 million empire.

But she's deeply involved in all of the design projects, emailing ideas back and forth while on the road. V Starr began with residential work including houses for a couple of NBA stars. "Oh, they're the easiest," she says. "They just want it done. They're very busy. They tell you what they want, you do it, and then they're very happy."

But she quickly got bored with home design and switched the firm's focus to commercial work - hotels, condos, clubs and other projects - because "I wanted to be creative on a wider scale and think outside the box."

Tennis center project

The Southeast Tennis and Learning Center opened in 2001 with guests of honor Venus and Serena Williams. Getting the tennis superstars was a huge coup by founder Cora Masters Barry, wife of former Mayor Marion Barry and a longtime personal friend of the Williams family.

The center has just completed an $18 million expansion and renovation, which transformed the District of Columbia facility into a modern arena. Barry, an avid tennis player herself, had long planned to name the new arena in honor of the Williams sisters, but it didn't occur to her to involve Williams in the design process until Williams' older sister, Isha Price, said she thought Venus would be interested in the project.

Williams and Barry sat down with blueprints, her team toured the facility, and they began playing around with color, themes, and photos that would hang on the center's walls. Barry got excited when Williams said she wanted to do something bright with a lot of color - "something that the kids would really enjoy and learn from."

Williams' work includes bold, graphic panels explaining the rules of tennis, but the main design focus is the inspirational quotes sprinkled throughout the educational and athletic wings.

V Starr came up with the concept; Barry took weeks selecting the people (mostly notable African-Americans) and the best advice from each, including students from the center who went to college on tennis scholarships. Barry's favorite quote hangs in the conditioning room, next to a huge photo of Muhammad Ali: "I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.' "

Inspiration

On a trip to Beijing earlier this year, Williams sought out an outdoor antique market she had visited years before. She remembered they had "amazing" stones and minerals, and wanted to bring back something special for a custom door design the firm was creating. No one spoke English, and no one really understood her Chinese.

"I know how to say 'too expensive,' " says Williams, who brought back three geodes - one for the door, two for herself.

For the moment, tennis is still her top priority. She'll play as long as she's healthy and having fun. After that?

She says she'll be designing full-time because the thing she likes most is working with creative people.

"I enjoy getting that rush, doing something else cool, something new," she says. "I definitely will travel the world taking meetings."