Google “interior designers near me” and it’s likely that Jamie Schachtel Design Group is your top result. How did Jamie go from designing clothes on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile to interior designing Northshore area homes like yours? Jamie found joy in her creative outlets early on, and followed that joy throughout her life. Read on below to learn how Jamie’s early life, retail beginnings, and love for aesthetics organically grew into a top interior design firm: Jamie Schachtel Design Group. 

Never Not Creating

When Jamie was little, her mother gave her full creative control of designing her own bedroom during her childhood home remodel. Jamie remembers pulling together purple furs, red striped wallpaper, silver bean bags, and diamond shaped mirrors (quite mod, huh?) to create the room of her dreams. That’s the first time Jamie recalls uncovering her joy (and knack) for crystallizing a vision and bringing it to life. She let that love steer her toward jewelry design classes in high school and creating her own clothes for fun.

From: Children’s Furniture and Fabrication

Jamie’s early career days were spent on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue at Giovanni Couture, a high-end retail clothing store. From there, Jamie’s life continued on a creative path, always surrounded by fabulous fabrics, color, and style. 

Inspired by her time on Michigan Avenue, she started her own clothing company called Louviere, styling Chicago’s elite. Her Louviere line was manufactured locally but quickly became a cross-country venture with successful showrooms spanning from New York to Dallas— successful as in Oprah, Tina Turner, and other household names donned Jamie’s styling and designs during Louviere’s time.

Designing high-end couture clothing again led to new opportunities to create in other categories. She was offered a position designing high-end bedding at a boutique children’s home furniture store in Chicago’s Lincoln Park, at the bustling corner of Halsted and Armitage, and thrived. Eventually, she bought and operated that venture herself. While running the successful store, clients— like the Obama family— would rely on Jamie’s talent for child and teen room interior design, and soon they’d inquire about the rest of their home furniture or home remodel.

She then launched JS Interiors with her oldest daughter Danielle, right out of her home’s lower level office. It grew steadily until it was time to expand to today’s current location: Roger Williams Avenue showroom, right in the heart of Ravinia. Realizing she could not source functional, domestically-produced high-end home furniture for her JS Interiors clients, she went on to produce such pieces herself. She was then designing her own line of high-end furniture in 2011 while still fully operating JS Interiors. The custom furniture line was called COUEF, which represented her specialization in chair, ottoman, upholstery, end table, and furniture design and production. The pieces adhered to Jamie’s focus on high-end design with high-function: iconically curved elements, signature pull out shelves, and more useful mechanisms rarely seen in boutique furniture.

A local workroom crafted each COUEF piece exclusively for Jamie’s clients. As more and more Chicago interior designers and future clients sought out her custom home furniture, eye for timeless style, and expertise, her business and team grew stronger and more experienced.

To: A Full-Service Interior Design Firm

All the while, Jamie was a mother, wife, designer, and entrepreneur. She found inspiration and motivation in all her roles— with design an ever-present outlet to create and make her own rules. Eventually, Jamie and Danielle decided that together, their skill sets and the demand for their services was inevitably becoming the JSDG we know today. In 2013, they formally founded Jamie Schachtel Design Group, steadily growing and becoming a sought-after high-end interior design firm in Chicago and the surrounding suburbs. Today, JSDG interior design services are hired by clients from the Highland Park area, downtown Chicago, and the greater Northshore to clients like Florida and Arizona snowbirds and penthouse bachelors in Baltimore, Boston, and beyond. Jamie is grateful that every day she gets to live out her dream job, helping people bring their interior design visions to life while exercising her own creativity. 

Want to hire Jamie and the JSDG team’s 25+ years of experience for your next interior design, home remodeling, or new construction project? Get in touch with us here.