Take 10 With COUPAR’S Kendra Boutell

At the FOG Fair Gala, January 2025, Photo: Eric Petsinger, Epoca

There are seven days in the week, seven colors in the rainbow, seven deadly sins, and COUPAR'S Content Director Kendra Boutell has been with the company for seven years. The Marin County native began her design career working for San Francisco's To the Trade showrooms and investment-grade antique dealers. With the Great Recession, she switched to writing and editing for California Homes Magazine. As a part of the Marketing team, Kendra develops clients' newsletters, journal posts, web copy, profile pitches, and project pitches. She liaisons with COUPAR Studio and Design on photoshoots and project placement.

CC: Congratulations on seven years at COUPAR! What brought you to the company?

KB: I first met Krista Coupar in 2013 when I asked her to moderate a motorized shade panel, The Designer, The Integrator, The Installer, & Lutron. The topic was technical, except for Gary Hutton's anecdote about the Russian Hill condo he designed for impresario Steve Silver, where the motorized shades became possessed during Fleet Week. I was very impressed by Krista's knowledge, professionalism, and poise, especially since she had recently given birth to her daughter Stella. We kept in touch, and in January 2018, I happily joined her Marketing team.

CC: How did you become involved in the interior design industry?

KB: After graduating with an art history degree from UCSC, an obscure major from what was at the time an esoteric university, I needed a job. I knew about the hidden world of "To the Trade" showrooms from ads in Architectural Digest. The design community had moved to the South of Market's warehouse district. While urban decay surrounded the Galleria, the four-story brick structure was packed with sparkling high-end design showrooms. I eventually met Jack Shears and Adam Window, who owned Shears & Window. I worked there for four years; I followed that with four years at Kneedler Fauchère. 

CC: When did you start your writing career? 

KB: I switched from showrooms to investment-grade antique galleries in the nineties and naughties, selling for the antiquarians Therien & Co., Ed Hardy, and Urban Chateau. It was an incredible experience; the clientele was national and international. With the Great Recession, the antique landscape changed. While still employed, I wrote for the SFDC's 3D Magazine. In 2009, I became Editor at Large for California Homes Magazine. I feel like an accidental writer, but my father was an HR professional who penned short stories for mid-century men's magazines, and my grandmother was a journalist at The Bakersfield Californian.

CC: Who is your interior design idol?

KB: I have had the privilege of knowing many great designers, but my idol is the Los Angeles designer Kalef Alaton, who I only met once. Alaton, born in Turkey, studied art in Paris and fearlessly mixed antiques with contemporary pieces. "I might combine an old piece with something very modern, but I won't know how it will look until the pieces are placed together. The concept of combining styles is similar to acquiring friends. It's nice to have young friends and old friends, each unique," he said. He passed away in 1989 at the age of 49 from AIDS.

Interior Design: Kalef Alaton, Photo: John Vaughn, Published: Architectural Digest, May, 1988

CC: How have you seen design evolve throughout your career? 

KB: The AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and early 1990s greatly affected the San Francisco design community. We lost mentors and young talent. I look back on my life then and think of it as Four Funerals and a Wedding; because of this, interior design has become more business-oriented and trend-based. When I started my career, there was a cast of brilliant characters who could behave outrageously but created exquisite, timeless designs.

CC: What book or author most influenced you growing up, either fiction or nonfiction? 

KB: A copy of The Golden Book of Fairy Tales, which had a selection of classic French, German, Danish, Russian, and Japanese stories with the most beautiful illustrations by the French artist Adrienne Segur. 

CC: What’s your current TV obsession?

KB: I am obsessed with British and Irish crime dramas, Tartan Noir, and cozy mysteries.

CC: What song always has an emotional impact on you? 

KB: Who Knows Where the Time Goes, written by the English singer-songwriter Sandy Denny (1947-1978). She penned it when she was nineteen, and I probably first heard it at that age on a Fairport Convention record. It is wonderfully evocative with its refrain, "Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving. But how can they know it's time for them to go?"

CC: How do you maintain a work/life balance?

KB: I have practiced Pilates for over twenty years and enjoy how it challenges my mind and body. In honor of The Year of the Snake, I am accomplishing the exercise Snake on the Reformer.

CC Which artist, past or present, inspires you? 

KB The American painter James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903): I love the tonality of his nocturnes. My favorite of his works is the Anglo-Japanese decorative arts masterpiece The Peacock Room, which features his portrait The Princess from the Land of Porcelain.

The Peacock Room, Artist: James McNeil Whistler, Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian