Interview 2: Keith Smythe Meacham

Keith Meacham and I are new-ish friends. We had both known of each other, but our paths didn’t officially cross until about three years ago, when I went as a guest-of-a-guest to a party at her phenomenal home. The chemistry was instant. Since then, Keith has become one of my favorite people, someone I adore and respect for many reasons, chief among them her warmth, intelligence, humor, kindness, and an incredible sense of style that permeates every-freaking-thing she does. Plus, she’s always down for a dance party.

Keith is a world-class businesswoman, designer, entertainer, intellect, and friend. And, as of last month, she’s also a world-class proprietor. Her gorgeous new brick-and-mortar store near Nashville’s Sylvan Park neighborhood brings to life her up-to-now digital passion project: Reed Smythe & Company, the artisan-driven interiors brand she co-founded with a legendary icon of Southern style, the late Julia Reed. 

The Reed Smythe & Company store is located at 4304 Charlotte Avenue. I can personally recommend it as a stellar place to do your Christmas shopping. Store hours leading up to the holiday are Monday through Saturday from 10 AM - 5 PM up to Christmas Eve, when the store is closed. Happy shopping!

— Libby

What’s your name? Keith Smythe Meacham

Where were you born? I was born in Virginia, but by the time I was two, my family had moved back to Mississippi where my parents were both born and raised, so I think of myself as a Mississippian.

Did you have any nicknames growing up? My sister called me KayKay for a few years, and Daddy still calls me KiKi, though I wouldn’t know how to spell either of those since they’ve never been written down.

How long have you lived in Nashville? Nine years

Which neighborhood do you live in? In the heart of Belle Meade

 When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to work in a flower shop

What do you do now? I work in a shop that sells pretty things, so not far off the mark, but it took me a long time to admit that being a shopgirl would give me so much pleasure. 

Tell us some things that are rocking your world at the moment: 

 To wear: My Swedish Hasbeens clogs. (1)

To eat: The sublime Boeuf Bourgignon recipe from The New Basics cookbook (2) by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins of Silver Palate fame. This recipe never fails. I’ve been cooking it every winter since I got my first apartment in 1992 (the cookbook came out in 1989) and I still make it at least once every couple of weeks for my kids, for dinner parties, for my husband Jon and me. Serve it with cheese grits or spoonbread, crusty french bread and a bibb lettuce salad with lemony garlicky dressing. Perfection!

Decor: I’m really really excited to be working with Matthias Vriens-McGrath of Atelier MVM in LA bringing his beautiful handmade ceramic mientje vases to Reed Smythe & Company. Matthias’ work is both gorgeous and whimsical and a little crazy too, and I love it for that reason. It also allows me to go wild arranging tall flowers and branches that look so chic and perfect sprouting from the mientje heads (3), which are available in our Nashville store.

To read: I am loving the visual feast that is Dragons and Pagodas: A Celebration of Chinoiserie (4) available at Reed Smythe - it looks like a coffee table decorating book but it’s really a history of chinoiserie, Western art and design inspired by a mostly made-up version of China, from the 18th century to now. I’m halfway through Amor Towles’ The Lincoln Highway

To watch: Just finished the grand finale of Succession (brutal). (5)

What are some stores in Nashville that you love?

In addition to Reed Smythe & Co (shameless plug for my own cozy-happy shop), I adore Betsy Taylor’s Alice (6) for the most fabulous chic clothes (many from her recent trip to France) and her sister Elena Graves’ equally fab shop Pierre (7), just down the way, for vintage furniture and art. I also discovered the powerhouses at Patina & Co a few months ago and LOVE them and what they are doing!

What word or phrase best describes your personal style?

Classic. I can’t claim to be too much into clothes or very good at fashion, but my personal style, such as it is, is very much in line with what I like in the decoration of houses: clean classic lines, good bones, a unexpected pop of color that doesn’t take over, high-quality fabric and good workmanship. I’m way more comfortable with putting together houses and rooms, flowers and tables than I am putting jewelry and scarves and shoes and handbags together with the right dress. I’d be thrilled if someone gave me a pair of pants and a shirt and told me I had to wear it as a uniform every day except when there was a party. Then I’d pick out a really great dress and Manolo Blahniks and dress to the nines.

Whose sense of style inspires you? 

Anyone who knows me well and knows the story of Reed Smythe & Company knows that I am very inspired by the style and design eye of my late best friend Julia Reed (8). In addition to being a great raconteur, writer, reporter and cook, she was also an incredible maven of interior design and style, and she knew how to put together rooms with the perfect insouciant mix of high and low that make them feel warm and comfortable and welcoming and interesting. So much of her design style reflects the houses we both grew up in and around in the Mississippi Delta where hardwood floors were layered with sisal then covered with beat up oriental rugs and furniture was arranged for conversation, not for looks. 

I also love taking inspiration from houses of the 18th and 19th century and the decorative arts from those periods and mixing it up with modern art and objects. The wallpaper in the front hall of our Georgian revival house is a reproduction of a paper from a Philadelphia house printed in the 1800s and reproduced by the brilliant Adelphi Paper Hangings, but we added some bright orange to the original colorway and hung one of our friend photographer Jack Spencer’s large-scale contemporary photographs on it to give it another dimension. (9)

What’s a piece of fashion advice you live by? You can never have too many black dresses.

What’s your favorite piece in your closet? For every day, my Nili Lotan black cotton pants and for special occasions my icy mint green satin Erdem dress with pearl beading that I recently wore to a dinner at Monticello and to the Nashville Public Library Foundation dinner (10 - with Joyce Searcy of Fisk University).

Favorite space in your home? My kitchen, because it’s the heartbeat of our house.

You are always traveling somewhere new and cool. What’s the best road trip you’ve ever taken? My sister and I hit the road in August of lockdown and drove from Nashville to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on the principle that we could remain socially distant while kayaking the Pictured Rocks (11), hiking and discovering the beauty of the Great Lakes. We had no idea how hard we’d fall for the UP and Yoopers (or how hard we would laugh making our way up there). My sister May is my ride or die road trip pal, and in the past year we’ve driven from Nashville to Michigan, Denver to Taos to Santa Fe and home to Nashville, San Antonio to Round Top in high bluebonnet season, Nashville to Charleston and back, and a handful of trips to the Mississippi Delta. Before lockdown, we road tripped from Paris through Burgundy, the Alps, Italy and the Riviera for a very high-end Thelma and Louise adventure. We’re always down to road trip!

What’s a road trip you want to take? Sorry to be so predictable, but I am dying to do some road tripping out in Arizona and Utah to see the Grand Canyon & Monument Valley. 

What’s the best gift you’ve ever given? During Covid my son and I faithfully watched a cardinal family build a nest, lay eggs, hatch them and help their fledglings on their way. It happened to be the spring before my son left our nest for college, so that winter, I collected the empty nest, took it to my friend, the artist Aretha McKinney, and asked her to make a large-scale pastel and pencil drawing of it that I gave my son as a Christmas gift.

What’s the best gift you’ve ever received? A piece of land in Sewanee, Tennessee, on the Cumberland Plateau overlooking Lost Cove. It was a gift Jon and I gave to each other and it will be one we give to our kids and they to theirs and so on. 

Wild card! There’s a blank wall in front of you. What color do you paint it? The same dark blue with green undertones that I painted my shop (12). It doesn’t exist on a color wheel. It was matched from a dark blue Rogers and Goffington wool fabric that is in the study in our house in Nashville and it is the best color ever and works in everyone’s house in every kind of space.