We all have a friend who at Halloween each year creates costumes that are brilliant, funny and detailed. Carey Karlan is cut from that cloth, though her mind spins out designs year-round.
Karlan, whose work is being featured at The Designer Showhouse of Westchester in Purchase, was originally from Oklahoma, and though she grew up in Darien, her Midwestern flair is very much alive.
“My Oklahoma roots are strong; women really love to decorate out there. My mother always had flowers on the table, it was very important to present your home even if you didn”™t necessarily have a lot of money.”
Karlan attended Trinty College in Hartford where she was an English major.
“I went to the city and became for ten years this hardcore, shoulder-padded career woman as a vice president for Katz Communications,” she said. “I was all business, all the time.”
Karlan was responsible for $18 million in sales at Katz and had little time for much else.
“I was really hard charging back then.”
Karlan began a family and was able to hold on to her career through her first two children, but had to give up her job after adding triplets.
“Suddenly I had five kids and had to retire. Only shortly after that my husband left me.”
After having her children, Karlan began to using her extra time and energy helping to plan benefits and events at the Wee Burn Country Club in Darien.
“I began to do work for events and experiment inside my own house with interior design. I did elaborate things. I really went to town because I had all this professional energy and nowhere to place it.”
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Karlan found that she was a single woman with five children and she began to apply herself professionally to her found love of interior design, a then still growing field.
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“I went with what I loved.”
After attending courses at New York School of Interior Design, Karlan began to work as a decorator for a residential design house, Persnickety in New Canaan.
She worked with a lot of people that she still works with today.
Five years ago, Karlan began her own interior design company called Last Detail in Darien. Last Detail is part of the trade design group and showroom called The Wakefield Design Group. Karlan”™s work ranges from Westchester and Fairfield counties down into Manhattan and Long Island.
Though Karlan was working in a field that she loved, her creativity was overflowing.
So she began creating elaborate theme parties for friends and along the way developed a green thumb, creating floral arrangements for holidays and weddings.
When her husband left, Karlan threw a costume party and went as, what else, a damsel in distress.
“You have to embrace what”™s going on,” she said. “You have to reach out.”
Karlan said that her Oklahoma roots show when she”™s working on and planning events.
“I don”™t do it professionally, but it helps my interior design mindset. Some people like to put their extra efforts into tennis or sailing; I love to make events. I love the couple hours before hand and knowing the kick that people will get out of each little thing.”
Karlan has applied her talents to all sorts of themes, from casino nights to topiary and empty nest parties and even wedding floral arrangements. Many of her friends in need of floral arrangements now use her exclusively for their flower-needs.
“They become way over the top. Somebody should stop me. I still have friends so I guess that”™s a good sign.”
