Chuck Chewning

After two decades of designing hotels and other commercial projects around the world, Chuck Chewning is used to globe trotting. And since being named creative director of Donghia 16 months ago, he hasn't slowed down, overseeing the debut of new showrooms for the luxury textile and home furnishings company in Paris, Moscow and South Florida, as well as the expansion of others in Chicago and Los Angeles.

Chewning, who spends much of his time in New York, has also been supervising a newly created in-house design studio. In fact, he devoted much of last summer to archiving Donghia's furniture and textile collections, primarily those of the company's namesake founder, Angelo Donghia, well known for his celebrity clientele of the 1970s and '80s, including the likes of Barbara Walters, Mary Tyler Moore, Ralph and Ricky Lauren, and Donald and Ivanka Trump. It's Chewning's nod to the past that's charting Donghia's course into the future.

“We're taking the company back to the legacy of Angelo, infusing it with his aesthetic and philosophy but updating it for today,” he says. In addition to the recent revival and reissue of furnishings that Angelo Donghia designed for the company and for specific clients—called the Archival Collection—the creation of Donghia Associates was announced last month at the Salone di Mobile in Milan. This new division will focus on interior design projects for clients who want the total “Donghia lifestyle.”

Because Donghia started as an interiors firm, that move brings the company back to its origins. “It's about stripping away the trendiness, that something's disposable—‘in' this year and ‘out' the next,” says Chewning. “We're emphasizing the craft and luxury of textiles and furnishings. There's a return to a sense of classic design; it has longevity. It makes sense to go back and embrace our own heritage.”

One of Chewning's recent projects was a revamping of Donghia's Chicago showroom. STYLE (secrets) Growing up in Atlanta... I was always fascinated by all kinds of design. [As a child] I loved to sit and draw floor plans; my father saved everything I ever drew. As a teenager, we'd get in the car and go look at new houses being built. What people might not know about me is... I have a double major in historic preservation and interior design from SCAD. My biggest admiration... I respect people who design with a personal sense. It's not about being good design or exact design. It should reflect their own personalities. I hate... Cookie-cutter design. I love... 20th-century modern design, but I've married that with things like my great-grandmother's English Regency dining table. I'm not afraid to put it together. It takes on its own personality and it comes to life.

Donghia, Atlanta Decorative Arts Center, 351 Peachtree Hills Avenue NE, Atlanta 30305. (404) 842-0760; donghia.com