Designer Genes: The McGowen Brothers

As young boys, and then young men, the McGowen brothers spent many hours hoisting antiques for Chapman House Classic Home, the business their mom started more than 20 years ago. They should have known that it was actually prep school for their careers - and for their passions - that are now carrying them through life.

Looking back Jonathan and David McGowen say it should have been obvious earlier that they hailed from designer genes. The brothers are the fourth generation of a family that has worked in fashion and design from antiques to haberdashery in Michigan, Ohio and Los Angeles.  The family fashion history dates back pre-Depression so it was pre-destined that they too would be making things beautiful for others.

Work in the interior design and decorator industry took the brothers all the way to California, where David learned the ropes of high fashion with Gucci and Bally of Switzerland. He was named the director of the first Tom Ford prototype store on Rodeo Drive. Jonathan headed up merchandising and advertising for a major Southern California retailer. The two returned home to Rochester last year, deciding to meld their experience and family history by opening up their own design businesses, ironically enough, just down the street from where their mother, Nancy McGowen, carved out a retail and design niche at Chapman House Classic Home, one of downtown Rochester's best known businesses, and the place where they hauled so much furniture and so many flower arrangements.

From their two stores, Refined Home, and David & Davis Home, the McGowen brothers bringing together the ancestral ties of interior design, antique dealing and specialty furniture sales and also displaying their brotherly love by planting their branch of the design business in shops right across the street from one another.

"She would have a ball now going back and forth," Jonathan McGowen says of his mom, who, like him, also decorated homes for the holidays and excelled at creating floral arrangements. Nancy McGowen opened Chapman House Classic Home in 1989, and passed in 2007.

Jonathan's Refined Home is at 116 E. 4th Street in downtown Rochester and sells consigned furniture, estate pieces, mid-century furniture and anything that's decorative and can accessorize a home in a standout way. In the next few weeks he will expand into shop and workshop three doors down, which will house a showroom and allow his furniture repainting business to take in pieces for make overs.

David, meanwhile, has partnered with Austin Davis to open David & Davis Home at 115 E. 4th Street. It is primarily a full-service interior design firm and accessorizing service for people who need help putting on the finishing touches. It is also a retail store selling luxury and unusual furnishings and accessories.

David & Davis count clients across metro Detroit, into Chicago and down into Florida and Texas. The McGowen Brothers and Davis will all be in Dallas this week working with a client.

The brothers' decision to work across the street from one another was happenstance.

"It was just a coincidence that my brother had this opportunity," David McGowen says. "He came back to help us open and he had the opportunity open up across the street."

David moved to Los Angeles in 1997 and after five years in the corporate world of fashion, he was ready for something new. Jonathan moved to Southern California in 2002 and returned last year to help with the family business when their father, Thomas, became ill.

During that time, Chapman House fell into disrepair then fell into new hands after Thomas died last July, just a few months after his sons opened their own businesses. The Chapman House, a massive historic home is currently undergoing major renovations, probably to become a French restaurant.

While their father was ill David decided: "Let's do this. Let's go back home. I'm so happy with the decision. It's been better than I ever expected."

Austin Davis has come to see the family and community ties to Chapman House Classic Home through the customers now frequenting Refined Home and David & Davis. The latter formerly housed an outdoor store where David McGowen bought his first pair of skis.

"It's crazy for me to see, probably more than you guys, how true they are to us. It's mind-blowing," he says sitting at a gorgeous wood table covered with fabric swatches, paper and tile samples. Around the room with exposed brick walls and are an array of busts, portraits, mirrors, unusual furniture pieces and variety of designer tools and scattered accessories that come help them put their looks together for clients.

Leaving Chapman House behind, even if it was like a fifth member of the McGowen family, actually wasn't hard for the brothers. "Our mother taught us to never be attached to things. Only people," Jonathan explains. "Things are made up by the different people who possess them. That's how they get their stories. It's okay to say goodbye to them."

That attachment to people is evident in evident in the sentiments expressed by locals welcoming the McGowens back home.

"I have to say, in general, we have more than 20 years of history here, and there is no customer base like it. People have been very supportive of us and we have such dedicated customers. They know that, like our mother, our business is about the people,not necessarily what you're selling," Jonathan says. "It's such a committed customer base, and it's been so helpful to us starting these businesses."

After initially operating David & Davis in Birmingham, Austin Davis can see the personal connection since settling in Rochester.

"My mom was really a student of success. She was always looking at what's coming up, what can I do to make my business better," says Jonathan. "She was always pushing herself to see how can to be ahead of the curve. We're the same way. We certainly provide excellent customer service, and retail today has to be an experience. We want these places to be a cool place to hang out, a place you want to stay and talk and spend time. ...Chapman House was that way. We're trying to re-create that in both stores."  

Kim North Shine is Metromode's Development News editor and a Grosse Pointe-based freelance writer.

All Photos by David Lewinski Photography