Community Highlights: Meet Steven Cordrey of Cordrey Collection

Today we’d like to introduce you to Steven Cordrey.

Hi Steven, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I’m a Southerner by upbringing and an Angeleno by choice. I started my design firm in Los Angeles in 1990 – almost four decades ago! For more than twenty years, my home base has been Cordrey Collection, our to-the-trade showroom at the LA Mart on South Broadway. The showroom and the design practice feed each other. We hold client meetings here, so clients can experience materials and objects firsthand. Showroom clients come in for years to shop, then decide they are ready to work with a designer.

In that time, my work has ranged from single rooms to multi-building estates, and from private homes to restaurants, offices, and medical spaces, with projects reaching as far as Shanghai. What ties it together is a belief that a room should be a natural backdrop for the people living in it. I want architecture and interiors to feel like one thought, and I like to bring the outdoors in whenever a site gives me the chance.

For example, this past spring, I designed the Magnolia Room at the Pasadena Showcase House of Design, a second-floor bedroom at the Baldwin Oaks Estate in Arcadia, its magnolia wallpaper a nod to my Southern roots.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Would I say it has always been an easy road? Not always, and I don’t think it should be. When you’ve been in business for the better part of four decades, you have lived through every kind of market. There were recessions when projects stopped overnight, and years when the whole trade moved online and people wondered whether anyone still needed a showroom. Cordrey Collection is one of the few showrooms still standing in LA Mart, which now has a thriving art scene, but is remembered as a building with floors and floors of showrooms. I continue to reinvent how the business works, while keeping faith with its purpose.

The other challenge is quieter. Design can feel like a closed world, especially if you didn’t grow up around money or connections. I came to it through my mother, who worked as a caregiver for the elderly, rather than through a pedigree, and I’ve never forgotten what it takes to get a foot in the door. That’s a big part of why I invest in younger designers now. The road got smoother for me because people opened doors, and I think it’s my job to keep doing the same.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Cordrey Collection is a to-the-trade showroom and a full-service design practice under one roof. On the showroom side, we carry lines like Caracole, Eichholtz, John Richard, Made Goods, Global Views, and Bungalow 5, and we work with designers as partners rather than just customers. I count many dear friends among the designers who utilize Cordrey Collection for their clients. On the design side, we handle everything from the first floor plan through procurement and installation, for residential, hospitality, and commercial clients.

Heritage is where so much of my heart is these days. About ten years ago, I bought the Watson House in Strawn, Texas, a 1920 Georgian Colonial Revival mansion overlooking Palo Pinto Creek. By the time I found it, the house had spent fifty years as a funeral home and then sat abandoned for another five years. There was no electricity, no running water, no plumbing, nothing but the bones of a beautiful building waiting for someone to take it seriously again. Today, restored, it welcomes guests as a historic inn and wedding venue. It brought me back to Texas, where my career started, and I think of myself as its steward more than its owner. Old houses teach you humility. They were here before us and, if we do our jobs, they’ll be here long after. That sense of legacy shapes how I design for clients: I want the rooms we make to last, and to be worth handing down.

Mentorship is the other half of it. For example, Rock Zehler came to me as my Showroom and Project Manager and continued on an independent designer. Rock designed the Dressing Room & Secret Closet inside my Magnolia Room at this year’s Showcase House, a jewel box tucked behind a pocket door, a space inspired by Art Deco and 1970s glam. Opening a door like that for someone you’ve worked beside, and then watching them walk through it, is one of the best parts of this job.

I also believe in lifting up peers. I was glad to support Kira Halter of Halter Home, the outgoing President of ASID Pasadena, in her work this past year. The Pasadena design community is stronger when we show up for each other. I’m grateful to be part of Pasadena’s long tradition of heritage work and its deep commitment to design.

Those two threads, heritage and mentorship, are why I said yes to following Kira as the incoming President of ASID Pasadena. The world of design has changed so much since I started, from how clients find us to how we source to what a showroom is even for. I’m grateful that after all these years, I still feel I have a great deal to contribute. I want to use the role to honor where our profession comes from and to make room for the people who’ll carry it forward.

It feels right that the new board will be installed on October 15 at the Fenyes Mansion, one of Pasadena’s great historic houses. The evening includes a tour of the mansion, the installation ceremony, and time with fellow members, and anyone who wants to join us can find tickets through the ASID Pasadena events page.

What was your favorite childhood memory?
My mother, Ruby. As an elder caregiver, she spent her days in other people’s homes, and some of those homes were incredibly beautiful. She noticed everything: how a room was put together, which pieces were loved, what made a house feel good to walk into. Then she’d come home and bring a little of that into our place with whatever we had.

She knew houses from the inside, the way only the person who cares for them does. She taught me that beauty isn’t reserved for people with big budgets. It’s a way of paying attention and taking care of the place you live. When I was 18, she and I started a decorating business in Houston with $100 and a booth at a home show, and it grew to about 150 clients. She has since passed, but every room I’ve designed since still carries a little of her.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cordreycollection.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cordreycollection
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100066819849747
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-cordrey-77971372/
• Other: https://www.stevencordrey.org/