By Siobhan Stewart, Howard University News Service

Six times a year HOME&DESIGN, the leading design publication in the Washington area, hosts their Inside Look Party to celebrate the top designers in their magazine issue. The Ferguson Showroom in Friendship Heights was filled with people as the magazine presented its Winter Edition and chosen designers last week.

Crystal chandeliers, golden drawer knobs, and porcelain bathtubs served as a beautiful backdrop while designers, architects, landscapers and more networked with each other at the convivial event.

Dunbar Stewart, the brand ambassador for Gramaco (a distributor of granite, marble, quartz and more), was excited to be at another HOME&DESIGN event. “It’s an opportunity for the community to come together to network… We’ve become friends, we know one another, we network, we work together,” he said.

Amongst the crowd, those whose had an editorial feature in the January/February issue stuck out with red ribbons clipped to their shirts reading “Guest of Honor.” Martha Campion, Director of Sales & Marketing, said designs editorially featured are unique, upscale and out of the ordinary.

Towards the middle of the event, guests were urged to enter the main standing area for the awards ceremony. The recognized designers were given a plaque as their peers applauded them. Among this group was Vincent Sagart, whose design made the cover of the magazine.

Sagart owns Sagartstudio, an experimental furniture showroom that occupies a Georgetown rowhouse. The showroom, hosting European brands (Poliform), has closet systems, kitchen and bath products, and lighting.

“The showroom is a metaphor on a living space, with everything functional and that’s a starting point. Then we try to figure what is it that our client really wants, what is the issue that they’re trying to resolve.”

Sagart, who has been in the design industry since he was 16, says design is an applied art that creates something purposeful.

“This wonderful magazine, HOME&DESIGN, they really work very hard locally to find interesting projects,” Sagart said.