By the Breeze
Ask Breeze Giannasio the secret to great interior design and she’ll say that it’s about soul and story. For her, everything has to do with the connection between person, place, and spirit.
To work with Giannasio is to go on an adventure that begins from within. Ask yourself: What aesthetics make you feel good? How do you thrive in a space? What are the rituals of your day? Even, what’s your favorite coffee shop or music video or magazine?
“I call it the mind-melding phase,” says Giannasio, referring to the telepathic connection that Vulcans make in Star Trek. “Someone might not know much about design or exactly what they’re looking for. As long as you start with what you love, you’ll become oriented to where you need to be and the space is going to feel like home in the end.”
Giannasio’s approach to design is inventive, timeless, eclectic, and, when she can get away with it, unconventional. Whether she’s working on a tropical island home or a chic urban retreat, her goal is to properly set the stage for someone’s life and for the lives of those around them.
“At the end of the day, people end up with a beautiful space that works for them and is tailored to them. But more than that, good design is storytelling of the soul,” she says. “Design truly has the power to change your life.”
Giannasio understands the transformative power of design better than most. A decade ago, she was an attorney working in private equity law in Washington D.C. Giannasio had always loved interior design but assumed it would remain a hobby, maybe a post-retirement gig. When she was suddenly up for partner at her law firm, Giannasio realized she had to make a change. “This was my career, but was it really what I wanted to do with my life?”
While still working as a lawyer, Giannasio began taking night classes at George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design. After three years, Giannasio had earned a master’s degree in interior design and accepted a job at an architecture firm in D.C. “My new life had officially begun. So far, it’s been quite the journey.”
That journey begins nearly 5,000 miles away in Lanikai, where Giannasio, at just 3 years old, can remember pushing around and rearranging the furniture in her family’s living room. Growing up, she would build makeshift forts out of palm fronds from trees in the backyard and fill them with small chairs and couch cushions, imagining she was building villages where the fuzzy Ewoks from Star Wars lived.
“I was in a lifelong battle with my mom over control of the aesthetics of our house,” Giannasio laughs. “It was a natural way for me to express myself in the world. Luckily, my parents always encouraged me to express myself, which is such an invaluable gift to give a child.”
When it came time to repaint the family car, a Volkswagen station wagon, Giannasio’s parents let her pick the color. She decided on a fluorescent Kelly green. (“We had that car for something like another 15 years. My parents called it the Green Machine,” recalls Giannasio.) As a teenager, she took measurements of her bedroom and biked to Home Depot one afternoon for wood and paint. “I wanted to replicate a room I saw in Architectural Digest with beautiful Tiffany blue paneling and gilt molding,” Giannasio says. “I can’t believe I pulled it off at that age. That paneling is still up in my childhood room.”
After high school, Giannasio applied to the Rhode Island School of Design but instead attended Wellesley College, then Harvard. She majored in philosophy as an undergrad; Giannasio saw law as practical application of her degree as it related to ethics and critical analysis. “With law, I felt as though I could be a changemaker. It honed my ability to advocate, which has served me well as a designer,” Giannasio says. “Things don’t get made or built unless you can successfully champion your ideas.”
It was Giannasio’s 10-year stint as a lawyer that inadvertently helped bring her home to Hawai‘i during the pandemic. She was working in Los Angeles, previously under the mentorship of HBA’s Michael Bedner, when her interior design agency took on a client couple that was moving to Maui. The wife, an attorney, connected with Giannasio “sort of lawyer-to-lawyer at first,” then over a less-is-more, indoor/outdoor approach to a home the couple wanted to build in Kīhei.
The original residence, a dark and compartmentalized house with an awkward accessory dwelling unit, was gutted to the studs. Confining walls were replaced with sliding glass doors that connected wraparound porches to the home’s main living spaces. The direction of the staircase was reversed to face the living room (better feng shui) and to open up the island kitchen.
Taking inspiration from the homeowners’ recent travels to Japan and Bali, Giannasio incorporated subtle textured materials—low fabric couches, woven rugs, fiber pendant lights, a traditional Hawaiian quilt—and enlisted local woodworkers to create custom fixtures, such as monkeypod vanities and walnut cabinets. Charming bamboo wallpaper for the girl’s room and waves for the boy’s room “specially treated to defy gecko poop, which always seems inevitable,” says Giannasio.
“One of the joys of being back in Hawai‘i is being able to activate outdoor spaces because that’s where the magic is,” she says. “I think most people feel connected to their most relaxed selves when they can have access to nature.”
When nature isn’t as readily available—as was the case with one Craftsman-style house Giannasio recently worked on in Los Angeles’ Larchmont neighborhood—it can be imbued. For instance, with a hand-painted mural by decorative painter James Mobley, who created a pastoral scene to transform the primary bedroom into a storybook garden.
It’s a complete 180 from the crimson red the bedroom was previously wallpapered with. Which might seem fitting for the homeowner, one of the producers of Disney’s Cruella and Batgirl, but “she said, ‘I’m having trouble sleeping,’ and wanted her bedroom to feel more like a refuge.” (Giannasio nixed the deep red.)
Giannasio is no stranger to Hollywood; she helped actress Mila Kunis renovate her parents’ Los Angeles condo in 2017 and herself was a regular on several design shows, including TLC’s Nate & Jeremiah By Design and HGTV’s Property Brothers at Home. She’s also not afraid of bold color choices, converting stark white walls in Larchmont with vibrant yellows, metallic purples, and lush green wallpapers with exotic flowers and whimsical walking canes.
Giannasio put images of butterflies overhead and imaginative Spanish-inspired tile underfoot. Reupholstered Frank Lloyd Wright chairs lend grandeur to simple spaces, such as the home office, while brass mirrors and a copper tub in the bathrooms add flair. A rounded marble island and reflective ceiling visually expands the cozy kitchen and adjoining breakfast nook. “Sometimes, in addition to the client, a house tells you what it needs to be,” says Giannasio.
“I’m happy to just design pretty rooms, but I derive a lot of meaning from this creative undertaking and what it might represent for someone. My mission as a designer is to help people live well and live fully, however that means to them,” Giannasio says. “I’ve always found that the universe rewards bravery and jumping towards your joy.”
