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Los Angeles interior and furniture designer Sally Sirkin Lewis remembers taking offense over being called a good businesswoman.

“A friend of mine heard someone say that I was the best merchandiser in the nation, and I was devastated,” said Lewis, president, CEO and designer for J. Robert Scott, an L.A.-based furniture and textile maker. “But that was a while back, and now I cover both sides of the business merchandising and design.”

While Lewis might have once disdained her role as a businesswoman, her administrative skills have helped turn J. Robert Scott into a $25 million-plus a year operation.

But it’s her design career that is being honored starting this week at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising.

The exhibit features some of the 400 furniture and 1,200 textile designs she created for J. Robert Scott, which she and then-husband Bernard Lewis founded in 1972. (She took full ownership and control of the company upon their divorce in 1995.) The institute will also establish a permanent wall of photos and images of her work.

“This is the first time we’ve honored an interior designer,” said Maggie Murray, the institute’s visual director. “She’s a big wheeler-dealer, a Bill Blass or Calvin Klein for the interior design industry.”

Architectural Digest calls Lewis’ the “California Style” of interior design. Its hallmarks include heavy use of whites and beiges, luxurious linens, supple leather and straw, all used in “clean, simple lines.”

Chairs and couches from J. Robert Scott can fetch thousands of dollars apiece, and her interior design services, along with furnishings, can run into the millions.

The company’s first showroom opened on Melrose Avenue in 1972. J. Robert Scott now owns three others and is in 13 representative showrooms in U.S., Canadian and European cities.

While some say her designs speak of California, Lewis’ career germinated on the East Coast.

“People talk about this California style, but I have said that that’s not possible, I’m not even from here,” Lewis said.

Growing up in New York, she never had design training, though her mother was an artist, her grandfather a suit maker and a cousin made dresses.

Lewis wanted to be a fashion designer and sketched constantly. One day while living in Miami, Lewis was at the beach with her young daughter making some sketches. A woman approached her, complimented Lewis’ sense of style and asked if she would help her shop for home furnishings.

Lewis agreed, decorated the woman’s house and decided that interior design was for her. Lewis moved to L.A. in 1968 because of her husband’s business, which focused on mobile home park development.

The evolution of her style, she said, came about as a result of many coincidences. For example, she was looking for a way to cover the black, pockmarked walls at J. Robert Scott’s first showroom, and happened across some 30-year-old bales of Chinese straw matting at a local wicker warehouse. She bought them and covered the walls. Customers then started ordering the matting for their homes, and straw eventually became a staple of her design scheme.

Lewis said she spends about 70 percent of her time designing for J. Robert Scott or doing interior design for clients.

“I do stick my nose into every bit of the business, and every order that comes in from across the country passes my desk,” she said.

J. Robert Scott Chief Financial Officer Joan Barmat says the company has taken a dramatic turn for the better since Lewis assumed full ownership.

Barmat would not divulge company sales figures, but said they were in excess of $25 million in 1996. That year, furniture sales rose by 51 percent over 1995 levels and textile sales were up by 12 percent. This year, she said, textiles are up 41 percent so far and furniture sales are up by 10 percent.

Before Lewis took over, J. Robert Scott was actually two entities, one a textile company and the other a furniture company. Lewis fused them into one and devised a path of expansion and promotion.

“Prior to the divorce, the company had been in a non-investment mode,” said Barmat. “It also complicated things when there were two companies, and making them into one has helped.”

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