Virginie Martocq is photographed in her living room on Aug. 21, 2018.Jennifer Roberts/The Globe and Mail
Virginie Martocq calls herself an “accidental designer.” With a background in art history and a short stint spent in sports marketing (“There’s nothing like hating what you do to make you decide to do something completely different,” she says), Martocq went on to study and briefly work as an interior designer before transitioning into editorial roles at House & Home and then Chatelaine magazines. Later still, she inherited her mother’s online cookbook publishing business, on which she spends half her time, with the other half now devoted to her interior design projects. “You can’t pin me down,” she says.
Her varied career path has influenced her tastes. “My training at Chatelaine, which was a budget-conscious publication as far as the decor part of it, really influenced my take on design,” she says. “I’m very democratic in my approach and not label-driven.” Her childhood, likewise, played an instrumental role. Growing up in the South of France, as well as Vermont and the Bahamas, where her grandparents had homes, “all sort of sunny and bright places,” she says, ingrained in her a deep love for light and open spaces.
“I have a hard time with Toronto, both in the Victorian urban planning [that results in] tight and skinny spaces, and the climate being very grey,” Martocq says. “It’s hard to get the light fix that I enjoy.” In designing her home, shared with her husband, Mark McLean, and their two tween children, Martocq carefully choreographed the spaces to take advantage of southern exposure. Most of their daytime hours are spent in the kitchen and family room, on the sunnier side of the homestead.
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The living room, which is oriented north, receives less direct sunlight, despite floor-to-ceiling windows. Martocq considered mounting mirrored louvres to the exterior garage to bounce light into the space but abandoned the idea at the absurdist thought of “spending my life adjusting the louvres,” she laughs. Instead, the dilemma was resolved through furnishings. “White walls and pieces that are simple in shape and not fussy,” she says. “All those things give me a feeling of airiness, which if you can’t get from light, you can get from space.”
The family spends time here early evenings, gathered on a distinctly non-precious rug from Lowe’s (“it wears beautifully, was totally cheap and if it falls apart in 10 years it owes me nothing – it’s seagrass, a natural material,” she says), roasting marshmallows by the wood-burning fireplace. A sofa from the sixties, recovered in a David Hicks-style trippy pattern, is accompanied by an Ultrasuede-recovered antique bench from her mother and a “safe choice," goes-with-everything loveseat that her kids can do cartwheels on. “My space is a complete mishmash of things I respond to emotionally and smart decisions for my family and the way we live,” she says.
What connects them all, including a wall piece made of black and white zip-ties woven in starburst formation, by her husband McLean, a marble-topped Elte Mkt coffee table and loopy sculpture by French-Swiss artist Antoine Poncet, is a love of geometric shapes and eyeball-exercising patterns. “I laugh that I try to be a modernist, but I just love patterns,” she says. “For me, a room can’t be neutral and safe. I think that’s boring.”
Martocq’s living room is resolutely unboring, but neither is it bedecked, all bells and whistles. This could be a shorthand for her design mandate. “Sometimes, architecture is quite cerebral and misses a little bit of the sensual, experiential quality and sometimes design is all wow factor, missing the mark on how people live – and that’s too much decorating,” she says. “I think interior designers think a bit differently. They think more about the actual human experience.”
Get the look
Starburst round wall mirror, $289 at Crate and Barrel.
Myrna coffee table, $915 at Elte Mkt.
Early David Hicks area rug for Stark Carpet, $3,782.84 at 1stdibs.
RANARP floor/reading lamp, $59.99 at IKEA.
IMAX Worldwide Dorran woven basket (set of 3), $200 at Lowe’s.
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