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I walked into Ryan Saghian’s showroom – a vast space in West Hollywood with furniture on furniture on furniture to feast your eyes upon; boucle chairs, side tables, stunning lamps  –  thinking we were going to have a conversation about interior design: about backsplashes, about sconces and wood beams, about marble, about the creative process, about flipping homes, about clients and projects and accolades, about inspiration, about aesthetics. 

Instead we talked about ambition, impatience within dreams, and work ethic. 

As we sat in his office, a glass encased space at the back of his showroom, I discovered a man  who found his true calling at the age of eight within the pages of Architectural Digest. I discovered a creative individual who is unapologetic about who he is: a gay Iranian Jewish man. I discovered a man whose great ambitions built the space we were currently sitting in together along with a slew of elevated, chic, and bold spaces that his clients now call home. 

I ask him: “Where do you think this part of you comes from? Do you think that you’re born with your calling or do you think you got lucky and found your passion in interior design early?”

He proclaims that he has thought about this so many times; That he does believe he was born with it – an intuitive eye for design; About his mother fostering his creativity by putting him into art classes. 

But it is one thing to know what your true calling is and it is another to actually build a world around it. Because while Ryan’s mother was fostering his creativity, his father was not. 

“My mom noticed that I loved setting up the house,” he recalls. “She let me do the table for Shabbat every week and I loved doing it..but then I got yelled at from the other side. My dad would say, ‘Why are you doing that? The girls should do it.’ I still don’t know what it was that made me just ignore him.”

Despite a fear of doing anything “girlish,” as he describes it, and growing up and struggling in high school as a gay man, Ryan’s inner compass came down to one thing: 

“A lot of things didn’t feel good,” he explains. “This [interior design] felt really good. And I didn’t want to let go of something that made me feel really good.” 

Fast forward to today, Ryan is the founder of Ryan Saghian Interior Design, an internationally acclaimed, award-winning, architectural interior design firm specializing in high-end residential and hospitality projects, the author of Unapologetically Chic, and the Instagram sensation with over 400k followers. 

Despite being in his early thirties, Ryan’s accomplishments run a very long list: Interning at Woodson & Rummerfield’s House of Design at the age of fifteen; opening up his first showroom in West Hollywood at the age of twenty-one; being the youngest designer to be awarded Interior Designer of the Year by the city of Los Angeles; having his work featured in Architectural Digest, Vogue, and Modern Luxury; serving celebrity and high-end clientele across Los Angeles; launching furniture collections; and opening up Eichholtz’s West Coast flagship – to name a few. 

It is also poignant to note that after graduating from college, Ryan’s father accepted him and supported his creative endeavors. He even converted their garage into Ryan’s first design studio. 

I ask him if it feels like his business has grown brick by brick, slowly over time, or if there was a moment that caused a flurry of success.

“There were moments where I thought it was my moment,” he starts. “And then I realized it was just steady, brick by brick.” 

But how has he grown this flourishing business in a little over a decade? That comes down to one thing.

“I have no patience,” he admits. “I am a millennial, so I am that instant gratification kind of person.” 

We get into ambition: where it comes from, how he has it, what his relationship with it is. He answers one of the most honest answers that anyone who is born with deep, burning ambition can relate to: the shadow side of what being ambitious can really mean within. 

Ryan answers slowly, choosing his words but also finding the right ones: “A combination of feeling like I have to…impress,” he admits. “I know that’s my ego. And wanting to overcompensate for what I feel I might lack. It’s a combination of that and…I always knew what I didn’t want my life to be like. So I feel like my ambitions are fueled by the fear of ending up like what I don’t want. But I don’t know if that’s a dark thing to say…”

I smile as he answers. A smile that isn’t celebrating that combination but rather a smile of familiarity. A smile of solidarity. A smile that says: I know what you mean, I understand that part of this equation, I live and breathe and dance with the ambition monster as well.

There are beautiful things in this world. Things that inspire us. Things that bring beauty. Things that make us feel alive. And then there is ambition; a drive to bring those beautiful things to life that perhaps, at times, can be driven by our ego. But a life fully lived, a life fully directed, a life fully planned out, a life fully grasped is a beautiful thing to me. 

Ryan Saghian has this type of life.

I tell him that living this bold of a life takes a lot of courage. 

“You know, that’s what everyone says,” he introspectively ponders. “They say there’s a lot of things that take courage –  like coming out takes a lot of courage. I do not feel like I’m that courageous.”

A pause in the conversation settles. I let him go within, not interrupting a flow of thoughts that is indicative of his soul. 

He lands on: “I must be courageous because you’re right. These are courageous things.” 

We talk about fame. With over 400k Instagram followers and living within a celebrity clientele, he talks about the difference between being famous and having your work be famous. 

“I never wanted to be famous,” he admits. “I wanted my work to be famous. I wanted people to say, ‘I love what you do.’”

It is a distinction worthy of differentiation in our times. Having the work known instead of yourself is the makings of an artist. 

If there is one thing present within Ryan’s work, it is that he welcomes evolution while always maintaining a level of chicness and timelessness. 

“When I look back on my old work and I look at my current work, they don’t look the same,” he observes. “I noticed a high contrast. I noticed that I always mixed. I noticed that I always took risks and it was always very current, but it was never one specific look.” 

Today, when perusing through the magnitude of his coffee table book, Unapologetically Chic, there are some distinct throughlines between all of his designs – his use of black, his mix of bold and soft, his use of scale. Just like his unapologetic personality, his designs take on the same quality. 

Bold, elevated, daring. 

Yet…

Timeless, chic, classic. 

All qualities that describe Ryan Saghian. 

“I’m a firm believer that if you are going after something and you’re making an active effort to get it, it’s kind of impossible for you not to get it,” he declares. “I don’t feel like the universe is against you. I really feel like it’s for you.”

And then he adds the statement that sums up the storyline of Ryan’s success…

“But you need to be following your soul.”