Former RH exec joins luxury staging and design company. Thomas Lester// Retail Editor//October 5, 2026 LOS ANGELES - Michael Brown, a former senior vice president for Top 100 retailer RH, has joined Vesta Home as chief creative officer. Brown joined the luxury home staging, interior design and furnishing company after more than 15 years with RH, where he helped found RH Interior Design in New York in 2011. As chief creative officer, Brown will develop Vesta Home furniture collections, drawing inspiration from the spaces we design, the clients we serve and the way people live. He also will lead the continued expansion of Vesta Home's luxury interior design division, defining its creative vision and shaping projects across markets. Working alongside CEO Julian Buckner and Vesta Home's leadership and design teams, Brown will bring his experience creating highly considered interiors and building interior design capabilities at scale. "In addition to Michael's celebrated success leading a significant division for RH, he is also a published and tenured interior designer, and that was incredibly important to us," said Buckner. "He understands that great interior design starts with how someone wants to live, and that the furniture, materials, art and objects all have to be in harmony to tell that story. He also has a rare combination of creative instinct, operational savvy and an ability to turn ambitious ideas into scalable, profitable businesses. As we deepen Vesta Home's interior design offering and continue to develop our own collections, Michael brings his proven creative leadership and perspective to help define where we go next." While at RH, Brown helped launch and lead several of the company's interior design innovations, including its embedded design offices and ateliers, its first standalone RH Interior Design studio in Palm Desert, Calif., and Bespoke RH Interior Design, a full-service residential interior architecture and design offering operating independently from RH galleries. Before joining RH, Brown co-founded Los Angeles-based design-build firm Custom Lime, where he designed and renovated residences and created custom furniture for high-net-worth and celebrity clientele. Together, those experiences have shaped a design philosophy rooted in the relationship between architecture, interiors and furniture, and in creating homes around how people live. "Vesta Home is at a dynamic and pivotal point in its evolution," said Brown. "High-end interior design is where I have spent so much of my career and where I see an enormous opportunity. What excites me about Vesta Home is that it already has this extraordinary window and early access into how people want to live, often before the home is even purchased. We're inside thousands of homes, seeing firsthand what people respond to and what makes a space feel personal. We can take that insight and build an even more elevated furniture collection and interior design service around it. I'm thrilled to work with Julian and the team to create furniture collections and considered interiors that will further establish Vesta Home as a luxury design authority."

Vesta Home announces appointment of Michael Brown as Chief Creative Officer. Vesta Home, the nation's leading luxury home staging, interior design and furnishing company, announced the appointment of Michael Brown as Chief Creative Officer, marking a significant step in the continued growth of the company's luxury home furnishings and interior design business. Brown joins Vesta Home following more than 15 years at RH, where he most recently served as Senior Vice President leading RH Interior Design globally. He was an early architect of the business, co-founding RH Interior Design in New York City in 2011 and helping grow it into a dominant global residential interior design firm while RH evolved into one of the most influential brands in luxury home furnishings. As Chief Creative Officer, Brown will develop Vesta Home furniture collections, drawing inspiration from the spaces Home Furnishings Business design, the clients Home Furnishings Business serve and the way people live. He will also lead the continued expansion of Vesta Home's luxury interior design division, defining its creative vision and shaping projects across markets. Working alongside CEO Julian Buckner and Vesta Home's leadership and design teams, Brown will bring his vast experience creating highly considered interiors and building interior design capabilities at scale. "In addition to Michael's celebrated success leading a significant division for RH, he is also a published and tenured interior designer, and that was incredibly important to us," said Buckner. "He understands that great interior design starts with how someone wants to live, and that the furniture, materials, art and objects all have to be in harmony to tell that story. He also has a rare combination of creative instinct, operational savvy and an ability to turn ambitious ideas into scalable, profitable businesses. As we deepen Vesta Home's interior design offering and continue to develop our own collections, Michael brings his proven creative leadership and perspective to help define where we go next." At RH, Brown also helped launch and lead several of the company's interior design innovations, including its embedded design offices and ateliers, its first standalone RH Interior Design studio in Palm Desert and Bespoke RH Interior Design, a full-service residential interior architecture and design offering operating independently from RH galleries. Before joining RH, Brown co-founded Los Angeles-based design-build firm Custom Lime, where he designed and renovated residences and created custom furniture for high-net-worth and celebrity clientele. Together, those experiences have shaped a design philosophy rooted in the relationship between architecture, interiors and furniture, and in creating homes around how people actually live. "Vesta Home is at a dynamic and pivotal point in its evolution," said Brown. "High-end interior design is where I have spent so much of my career and where I see an enormous opportunity. What excites me about Vesta Home is that it already has this extraordinary window and early access into how people want to live, often before the home is even purchased. We're inside thousands of homes, seeing firsthand what people respond to and what makes a space feel personal. We can take that insight and build an even more elevated furniture collection and interior design service around it. I'm thrilled to work with Julian and the team to create furniture collections and considered interiors that will further establish Vesta Home as a luxury design authority." Brown's appointment comes as Vesta Home continues to expand beyond its staging roots into a broader luxury design and furnishing platform. The company completes approximately 2,500 projects annually across New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Palm Beach, San Francisco, the Hamptons and other major luxury markets. In 2025 alone, Vesta Home staged more than 5.2 million square feet of real estate, representing approximately $13.7 billion in transactions. Its work spans luxury residential, commercial and hospitality spaces, with a portfolio that includes multimillion-dollar estates, celebrity homes and some of the country's most significant properties, including the $149 million penthouse at Central Park Tower. Today, Vesta Home's platform encompasses staging, full-service interior design, custom furniture manufacturing, furniture sales and turnkey furnishing.

RH: A real estate of affairs. September 30th, 2026 Amid a turbulent economic climate, COVER Editor Lucy Upward takes a look at how RH is continuing to forge ahead with its capital-intensive business plan RH's post-pandemic financial story has been something of a rollercoaster. The company's revenue climbed to $3.43 billion in 2025, up from $3.18 billion the year before, but that recovery came only after years of retreat from pandemic-era highs. Thanks to tariff pressure and a stalled housing market, stock fell nearly 60% in 2025, despite RH delivering 8.4% revenue growth in the second quarter. Against this unpredictable backdrop, CEO Gary Friedman has continued to push his flagship 'galleries' rather than pulling back. For years he has stated that RH is moving from curating and selling product to conceptualising and selling entire spaces, building what he calls an ecosystem of 'Products, Places, Services and Spaces'. For Friedman, great architecture makes the product and brand more valuable, so RH either restores historic buildings or builds new ones from scratch. With this capital-intensive approach, Friedman is betting that immersive, unrepeatable spaces do something a website never could achieve. In COVER 81 (Winter 2025), I reported on how Friedman was dealing with tariffs and about two new RH 'galleries': RH Paris and RH England. Once again Friedman's philosophy is on full display at RH's newest and most ambitious European project: RH London, The Gallery in Mayfair. Designed with architecture firm Foster + Partners, the five-storey space occupies an 18th- century Palladian mansion once known as Queensberry House, then Uxbridge House, and later a Bank of England building. It is RH's first standalone London space, following its 2023 UK debut at Aynho Park and subsequent openings in Paris, Milan, Brussels, Madrid, Munich and Düsseldorf. The RH London opening party at the end of June matched the scale of the investment, with numerous celebrity guests who were able to munch on Petrossian caviar. The timing lines up with RH's biggest product launch in years: RH Estates. Unveiled with 165 collections, RH Estates draws on the archives of four well-known brands that RH has recently acquired: California design legend Michael Taylor, LA-based studio Formations, classical furniture atelier Dennis & Leen, and the couture upholstery house Dmitriy & Co, who will be leading RH Couture Upholstery. Friedman has called it his most significant bet yet, saying the launch represents an answer to an opportunity and could be the biggest thing RH has ever done. 'With the launch of RH Estates, we are removing the barriers that have segregated taste from scale, eliminating the creative limitations that have historically forced designers to choose between our scale and the uncompromising specificity of trade-only showrooms,' he comments. Rugs are a meaningful part of this development. RH Estates launched with twenty-three distinct rug collections, spanning hand-knotted wool and silk pieces produced in traditional weaving centres. One standout example is the Mia rug, hand knotted from wool and silk in India, which retails for $11,425-a price point signalling RH's push towards premium craftsmanship rather than mass-market reproduction. Alongside furniture and lighting, the rug offering is central to positioning Estates as heirloom-quality design made newly accessible. Looking ahead, RH shows no sign of slowing its gallery expansion. The company has confirmed forthcoming standalone Estates galleries in Greenwich, Connecticut and West Hollywood, California, extending the concept beyond its integrated US and European flagships. Internationally, RH is ready for its first Australian location, planned for Sydney. Whether or not the broader retail environment cooperates, Friedman's motivation is clear: 'We believe the ability to scale taste creates higher quality and greater value for both customer and the designer. RH Estates is proof that extraordinary design, craftsmanship and scale can exist harmoniously together.' Words by Lucy Upward