I Statements

At her new Chicago office, designer Summer Thornton answers to her own whims

- DAVID FOXLEY

The Chicago-based interior designer Summer Thornton has built her name as a virtuosic mixer of color and pattern. But at times she must reserve her most daring concepts for herself. “I’m taking the ideas my clients won’t do,” she says, reflecting on the recent renovation of her own Chicago office, an 1877 Victorian house in Lincoln Park. After renting the top floor for several years, she decided to buy and restore the entire building—taking over the ground-floor bridal shop, digging a fortified foundation, and making updates in two phases amid client commissions. “It was my last priority,” she concedes, calling the two-year process “a cobbler-with-no-shoes situation.”