Alexis Traina’s Fulk-Fashioned World

When your bestie is AD100 designer Ken Fulk, you live a chic life. We sat down with Alexis Traina, the Founder of the HiNOTE app, and Ken Fulk to discuss their personal styles and their various collaborations. We also take a peek inside the vacation home Ken designed for Alexis on Mexico’s Baja peninsula, and Alexis generously shares an edit of her Chairish favorites.

SHOP ALEXIS TRAINA’S CHARISH FAVORITES >>>

Alexis, how would you describe your personal aesthetic and your approach to design? 

AT: Across my life, I love to push the boundaries of high and low, while rooted in correctness. There is a correct high and there is a correct low. I love the combination of the two, because that is where true individuality, style and humor lives—it delivers all the layers of authenticity, richness, texture and storytelling necessary to create magic.

Ken, how would you describe your aesthetic and your approach to design? 

KF: Fear is the enemy of great design. I encourage my clients to embrace their opinions and not worry too much about striving for perfection or keeping things pristine. The beauty is often in the effortless elegance of an environment.

Ken, tell us about working with Alexis. Can you talk a little bit about your relationship, and how you’ve collaborated together for many years?

KF: The Trainas and I share the belief that a happy life is made up of profound experiences rather than precious things. They believe in creating traditions, celebrating milestones, making memories and unabashedly appreciating their loved ones. As friends, we’ve gathered memories around the globe that will last us a lifetime. Our shared obsession with great places has led to collaborations both fictional and real, the latter  including an 1890s Victorian farmstead among the vines in Napa, a fantastical fishing camp on the Northern California coast, and the stoic Bauhaus-era Ambassador’s residence in Vienna transformed into a joyful family home.

Alexis, how did you bring that approach and aesthetic to your holiday home in Mexico? What are the constants that you incorporated, and how did the design for this home differ from your home in the U.S.?

AT: With every house that my husband Trevor and I work on, we use the house as a blank canvas to create a new story, chapter, journey for our family’s history—rooted in a fantasy. Mexico was the same for us. Around us, we saw so much “modern coastal” architecture that felt oddly out of place with the country, coastline and local culture– that we wanted to create something completely opposite. Our first call was to Ken. Our next was to an architect named Michael Imber, out of San Antonio, Texas—he’s a master at Spanish Colonial architecture. Together, we set out to build a glamorous and romantic Mexican hacienda perched up above the beach—inspired by the chic lore of Cabo and Puerto Vallarta of the 1950s—complete with a jungly, interior courtyard and bell tower, with a real bell. It felt super-important to us to feel like we were immersed in an experience—in another time and culture that was far away from our everyday life. 

And, Alexis, what has it been like working with Ken on this project and others?

AT: Ken is a bestie. The type of friend we would call in the middle of the night. We share a love for high/low everything:  life, people, travel, architecture, food, movies, storytelling. Over time, we’ve worked on several projects together: our house in San Francisco, a charming Victorian compound in Napa, the Embassy Residence in Vienna, Austria, and as of late—the Mexico house. 

We’re friends and collaborators—and sometimes clients. I say that, because everything we do together is usually on the same page—inspired by a story and fantasy we created late at night over a glass of wine or three… With Mexico, we were inspired by the story of Carlotta and Joseph—in exile, banished to the shores of Mexico with their good taste, and some great European antiques. We start with these crazy-imaginative stories and design our worlds around them.

Ken, anything to add about your design process with Alexis?

KF: I approach every project like I’m directing an experience. The area where this vacation house sits is filled with modern homes with walls of glass facing the sea views, but that’s not Alexis. She and Trevor enjoy a life filled with sentiment, celebrations, whimsy and charm. For a home befitting this family, we created a house more akin to a hand-carved sandcastle or a beautiful wedding cake than conventional architecture. In the talented hands of local plaster artisans, ornate arches graciously mingle with vaults and delicate ornamental openings. The end result is an utter reverie. An intoxicating mix of styles and references that combine to make a singular home full of wit and whimsy.

Alexis, you’ve also worked with Ken and other designers on your HiNOTE App. Could you talk a little bit about the app, why you founded it, and how it brings good design to text messaging?

AT: HiNOTE was a function of necessity—inspired during the pandemic, when we were all in lock down, clinging to our phones 24/7—for connection, amusement, comfort, salvation…. And all we had available to express ourselves was generic, blue and gray text bubbles, emojis and bitmojis…. I knew we deserved better. Today, HiNOTE is creating the gold standard of digital communication—bringing individuality, style and purpose to the center of our messaging. Ken was one of the very first collaborators we partnered with—because his whole world is all about a deep rooted aesthetic, sense of humor and POV. Together, we agree, communication should be as chic as you are.

Ken, how do you use the HiNOTE app?

KF: I use HiNote all the time! It’s the perfect way to send a Thank You or an Invitation or just a note that feels more thoughtful than a simple text. I love sending it as a photo follow up among friends after a night out or a vacation together.

Alexis, you’ve put together an edit of your Chairish favorites for us (thank you)! What do you find most compelling about Chairish?  

AT: I love the world of Chairish—the endless options of possibilities and fantasies to be had.  We have outfitted all of these new chapters of our lives, on Chairish, to find the perfect hand-chosen piece to become the anchor of a room—things like a dreamy pair of Adrian Pearsall mid century club chairs; an 18th century Louis Rococo walnut canape for our kitchen nook, a quirky collection of Arturo Pani tables, a pair of vintage Bielecky rattan arm chairs, or a super-chic Jacques Adnet dry bar in our well-loved Hirst Bar.

Ken, does sustainability factor into your design choices and love of vintage? 

KT: The sustainable benefit of buying antiques is part of the beauty of shopping antiques markets and dealers but honestly, I am a history buff and as such, I love any element that serves as an artifact of the past. The storytelling imbued in a piece feels like an added gift to a beautiful example of design or art.

A FEW DESIGN FAVORITES

Favorite way to create a statement-making moment in a room? 

AT: With a crazy-good piece of photography—doesn’t have to be well known, just good. It sets the tone, without saying a lot. I love that.

KF: A mural or hand-painted finish. That touch of the hand-crafted in a large does is the fastest way to insert your opinion in a space.

Favorite paint color?

AT: At this moment—a deep indigo blue. 

KF: I have many—but at the moment I’m having a love affair with the color of our new retail concept shop in LA—Sherwin Williams Unrelenting Olive. 

Favorite piece of decor in your home?

AT: In our bedroom in SF, I have an antique, lacquer-red, Chinoiserie secretary—that I dreamt about for years. It is crammed with all my treasured relics, ephemera, and personal mementos. I open up drawers and visit different parts of myself. 

KF: A portrait painting of three of my dogs that hangs in our Napa home. It makes me smile and tugs at my heart each time I look at it, since all three of these beloved companions are gone. 

Favorite style icon?

AT: The women in my own family: my mother, sisters, mother-in-laws, sister-in-laws.

Design destination every creative should visit at least once?

KF: Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan by Piero Portaluppi—and while you’re there, head over to Lake Garda to stay at the unrivaled hotel, Villa Feltrinelli.

AT: This is more inspiration than destination, but I once spent an hour reading Bob Dylan’s songwriting notebook—used specifically to write every song from Blood on the Tracks. It was the thrill of a lifetime to decipher how Bob wrote his incredible masterpieces. The writing and rewriting of each line of a lyric, until perfect, was jaw dropping. The worlds he created by the changing of just one word.

A FEW LIFESTYLE FAVORITES

Favorite historic place to visit? 

KF: Monticello remains one of my favorite historic sites, since I was a boy in Virginia but I am on a personal campaign to spread word of the importance of the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown—the true site of the Pilgrim’s first landing in America.  

AT: Any place with my husband.

Favorite host (or thank you) gift?

KF: A bottle of champagne and two vintage coupes or a big exuberant arrangement in one of our beautiful vessels from kenfulk.com.

AT: A box of heirloom tomatoes, in the peak of season.

Favorite vacation destination?

KF: Besides Villa Feltrinelli and Reschio Villas in Italy, Ett Hem in Stockholm, and of course Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod—my home that doubles as my vacation destination. 

AT: Mexico, of course!

Favorite flower?

KF: For cut flowers, I love a coral sunset peony; for potted blooms, you can’t beat a perfect red geranium and for in-ground landscaping, I love a fluffy white hydrangea. 

AT: Garden rose or gardenia.

Favorite entertaining essential?  

KF: A dimmer switch and/or candlelight; a great playlist and volume control, big wild floral arrangements.

AT: An interesting and unexpected guest list.

Lead Image: Interior Design by Ken Fulk, Photography by Douglas Friedman/Trunk Archive.