When Maryline Damour first purchased a weekend house upstate, she didn’t realize that it would lead to a career change. But after relinquishing her rented studio apartment in New York City for a house in Kingston, she began to realize the charms of having her very own canvas to work with.

“It was the first time I had a whole house that I could paint the walls, because you can never do that in a rental,” she says. “And I had a bunch of bedrooms, but I didn’t really know anything about buying furniture or color.”

Having carved out a career in corporate marketing and PR, Damour – who had lived in New York City since she moved there from Haiti when she was nine – had no design experience. But little by little, she found that she had a knack, and a passion, for it. So, she sold that first house and used the money to fund her studies at Parsons School of Design.

When she moved back up to Kingston in 2016 after completing her degree, she kept her corporate job while also doing small interior design projects on the side in Manhattan. But it soon became clear that the city wasn’t where she needed to be if she wanted to transition into design full-time.

“Just like when I lived in Manhattan, and at a certain point all the creative entrepreneurs moved to Brooklyn, I started noticing that a lot of folks from Brooklyn were moving up to the Hudson Valley,” she says. “And it occurred to me that if I wanted to have my own business, which was always the goal, financially I would just have much more of a shot of doing it if I weren’t trying to do it in the city.”

Knowing that she would need a builder to work with, Damour reached out to Hudson Valley local Fred Drake, whom she had worked with on a previous project in the city, to see if he would like to join forces. In a charming twist of fate, they not only became partners in business — forming their design-construction firm Damour Drake in 2016 — but also in life.

As Damour began working on projects throughout the Hudson Valley, she realized that, even though there were a lot of designers moving to the area, very few of them worked together. “I saw that there was a huge body of creative people — designers, makers, contractors, and also local shops that support the design-build space — but they didn’t know each other,” she says. “I spent a year looking for all these people. There are all these creatives up here, but nobody can find them, and we can’t find each other.”

After speaking to 50–60 different people, she heard them all say a version of the same thing. “I drove out to people’s studios and I went to all these design events, and everybody kept telling me, ‘We’d love to be able to connect with the designers and collaborate on projects. We work by ourselves.’”

Tapping into her corporate strategy background, Damour came up with an idea: a program to connect the design-build industry in the regions to each other. The Kingston Design Connection, as it became known, has been the common thread bringing together designers and clients across the Hudson Valley for the past three years. In 2018, the program hosted its inaugural design showhouse, featuring 10 interior designers and more than 100 Hudson Valley makers and local design/ build companies. The follow- ing year’s showhouse spotlighted 17 interior designers and over 180 makers, artists, and tradespeople.

As with most events in 2020, this year’s October showcase is up in the air, but Damour hopes that, at the very least, they’ll be able to do a virtual version of it for the public. The designers will still create their individual rooms, but if restrictions still prevent people from visiting in person, Damour is hoping they will be able to view the showcase via social media and media sponsored online tours.

Regardless, the increasing showhouse attendance each year proves that the Hudson Valley’s design scene is thriving. And what Damour loves most is that its designers and makers are carving out their own distinct aesthetic. “A lot of people up here have moved up here because they want to have the freedom to create in different ways,” she says. “I’m always super impressed when I see how much respect for the making process that people have. But then the outcome is very modern, very new — it’s not recreating the past.”

For more information and to apply to participate in the third annual Kingston Design Showhouse, visit kingstondesignconnection.com @kingston.design.connection

http://www.damourdrake.com/ | @maryline_damour

By Mikki Brammer

Photography by Peter Crosby

Interior images courtesy of Damour Drake / Matt Petricone