We asked Venus Williams, founder of V Starr—the West Palm Beach inte­ri­or design firm that cre­at­ed The Muse Col­lec­tion for Wolf-Gor­don — about some of the essen­tial ele­ments in her life and design practice.

I have so many favorite cities, but the one that always comes to mind is Paris. It was the first inter­na­tion­al city I trav­eled to as a 16-year-old. It’s mag­i­cal, beau­ti­ful and inspir­ing. I nev­er want to leave when I visit.

I’ve heard amaz­ing things about Sar­dinia, Italy. Being a pro­fes­sion­al ten­nis play­er, I’ve always had to focus on health and well­ness and tak­ing care of my body. Sar­dinia is one of five blue zones in the world, mean­ing peo­ple there live the health­i­est and longest lives out of every­one in the world. I’d love to spend some time there to observe Sar­din­ian life, and bring back some insights to Florida.

My entire house is con­nect­ed and feels like one room. Each room slips into the next because of a shared mut­ed col­or palette of nat­ur­al wood and whites. It’s peace­ful, qui­et and ener­giz­ing. It feels like there is a hush over the world, and it’s an escape from chaos when I come home. My favorite time to recharge is in the evening, with music play­ing through the house. I might watch a movie, work on var­i­ous projects, or sketch.

1. Any food deliv­ery appli­ca­tion: I love to have my favorite restau­rants deliv­er to me around the world.

2. My fil­ter app: It’s the eas­i­est way to look good with­out any makeup.

3. My e‑reading apps: I love hav­ing my books with me, wher­ev­er I go, when­ev­er I want.

Blood Orange, Mac Miller, Frank Ocean or Tyler the Cre­ator. They are some of my favorites when I’m in my cre­ative space.

I love high school films like Pret­ty in Pink or Nev­er Been Kissed. I didn’t go to a tra­di­tion­al high school or to prom and I like to fan­ta­size that high school is just like those films!

I’m cur­rent­ly read­ing Amer­i­can Dirt by Jea­nine Cum­mins which has real­ly touched my soul. It’s a sto­ry of a Mex­i­can woman and her son who have to leave their life behind, and escape as undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants to the US.

I am a rule break­er. Break all the rules! Restric­tions cre­ate lim­its. If I hadn’t bro­ken all the rules, I would not have got­ten to where I am today and I would nev­er have entered the design field, which gives me great happiness.

We were so excit­ed after our first meet­ing with Wolf-Gor­don. I have a deep love of tex­tiles at a gran­u­lar lev­el, right down to the actu­al thread. It was impor­tant for this col­lec­tion to reflect my per­son­al aes­thet­ic and a rev­er­ence for the mate­ri­als by show­cas­ing the threads through the design and colors.

As a women owned and oper­at­ed firm, we want­ed to focus on women, and it took a lot of back and forth to iden­ti­fy the motifs of the col­lec­tion and to trans­late them into a woven uphol­stery. We do a lot of work with tex­tiles with my team at EleVen, my ath­let­ic wear brand, and the process was com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, so it was fun to explore tex­tiles with a new perspective.