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"View Slideshow\n\nScott snyder is as close as an individual can come to being an unalloyed self-made, self-taught, selfreliant person. In the top ranks of interior design, with offices in Palm Beach and New York City, he got there by making use of the scant opportunities available in Trexlertown, Pennsylvania, where he grew up in a valley of abandoned anthracite coal mines.\n\nThe yen to control the aesthetics of his environment manifested itself early. \"My interest in the decorative arts began when I was 12,\" he says. \"It's the old story: You look at your family home, and you realize that a room really should be repainted or that the cushions are out of order. It's that obsessive-compulsive behavior that started my interest, not only in interiors but also in gardening.\"\n\n\"I understand how people at a certain level live, but it trickles down to a 1,500-squarefoot apartment.\"\n\nSnyder's preparation for his career began in earnest when he was still in junior high, when a New York City couple came to town to open \"a beautiful shop that sold decorative accessories and plants and objets d'art for the home.\" Under the spell of the delightful things he saw on the other side of the plate-glass windows, he adds, \"I very aggressively went in and asked for a job.\" He was just 13. Soon he was opening boxes and pricing objects. \"Then I decided that I was going to display them.\" Thus it was that Snyder's route to interior design would be via learning the retail home furnishings business.\n\nBy the time he was 15 or 16, Snyder was going to New York with the proprietors on buying trips. He did the picking and choosing so well that the company grew into three stores. \"Eventually,\" he says, \"I oversaw and managed and bought for all three.\"\n\nThe objects in the shops caused cases of sticker shock, but Snyder had a cure for that. \"I'd volunteer to take everything to them.\" Off Snyder and the merchandise would go to the customer's home, where he would explain, \"This vase goes here, this collection will go there, and you need a pair of trees flanking the bay window.\"\n\nSnyder had perfected his M.O. so well that at 20 he decided to go into business for himself. \"In 1980 I opened my own shop, called Habitat. The first week, I watched people come into my environment and treat it too much as a museum. If they took any interest in anything, I'd say, Oh, you love those pillows and that lamp? Where do you live? Let me bring them to you.' \" The customers who responded got further advice when Snyder arrived: \"The table's not really right for the lamp. Let's look for another table.\" Or, \"The soft furnishings could use a reupholstering.\" As he puts it, \"I became a designer, a decorator.\"\n\nSnyder's store was a good idea born in an evil hour. Lehigh Valley's two largest employers were going through hard times. Mack Truck was on its way to being sold, and once-mighty Bethlehem Steel, formerly abrim with overcompensated managerial personnel, was on its way to destitution and bankruptcy. Snyder's customer base was being eradicated even as he was opening his new venture.\n\nIn the midst of what the designer remembers as a \"very depressed period,\" a client told him, \"You need a break. My father has an empty house in Palm Beach that's never used. You should go there.\"\n\nFrom his first glimpse of Palm Beach, the city was \"heaven\" for Snyder. So he closed his business and moved to Florida.\n\nAlone in Palm Beach, without connections but always resourceful, he pondered his next step. \"I needed to go into the retail business, which I knew. I didn't yet consider myself a designer. I wasn't one.\" He might have tried to catch on as an apprentice in a design firm, but it did not appeal. Instead he made another bold move.\n\nThere was a high-end accessories shop on Worth Avenue that he felt needed a management upgrade. He dispatched a letter to the store containing a critique of what could stand improvement, along with a batch of snaps from his old store to show what he was capable of. \"I went in for an interview and was hired. I took over their retail division, remerchandised the store and went to New York to do their buying.S ales increased 25 percent in my division immediately.\"\n\nSnyder was on his way. His first client came to him while he was employed at the store and asked him to do her house in Beaver Creek, Colorado. \"I said, You mean everything?' And she said, Yes.'\"\n\nSoon his interior design business, to use Snyder's word, \"dominoed.\" Clients were coming in, and his retail background, with its emphasis on service, must have helped. \"We make it work for gracious living,\" he explains. \"I understand how people at a certain level entertain and how they live, but it trickles down to a 1,500-square-foot apartment.\"\n\nAs his client base expanded, the designer began to think that his life was \"a bit limited. I needed more of a foundation. That's when I started traveling to London, Paris and Rome and to Venice, Florence, Prague, St. Petersburg.\"\n\nSnyder, who uses words like symmetry, balance and proportion in describing his work, says, \"I have a very hard time with some of the interior d\u00E9cor of the 21st century. I can appreciate certain things, but I don't understand a lot of it.\"\n\nThe designer often goes home to Lehigh Valley, where the arc of his career began. His hope is that before it ends he will take on bigger things. \"I would like to redo the White House. I would like to make a contribution.\""^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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