‘The Chief of the Holiday Cool’

Craymon Garner owns Craymon Garner Design, and he specializes in making spaces pretty, like him. Through much of the year, he works events and celebrations and assembles floral arrangements for businesses and families. But when the weather turns cooler, Garner begins to prepare for the time of year that brings the juice. His email signature is one clue. From January through August, he’s “Chief of the Creative Cool.” Come September, he’s “The Chief of the Holiday Cool.” Check his Instagram feed for resplendent examples of what the man can do with, to, and for a Christmas tree.

When the holidays approach, Craymon Garner gets down to the pretty nitty-gritty.

“When I go into a home, I always think of going into the mall and seeing the big Christmas trees and how nicely they’re decorated,” he tells me on a September morning in his University City home. His approach? “Clean, classic, a little bit of modern … sleek, very nice, no rough edges. And … for someone to look at a magazine and say, ‘That’s pretty. I love this. This is what I want.’”

Tastes differ, of course. But Garner, 44, born and raised in Winston-Salem, had a maternal grandmother and what he calls his “three mothers”—his actual mother and two aunts—who schooled him in the art of the pretty. His grandmother, Katherine Oakes, expressed her love for her expansive family through food and decoration. For Halloween, she’d have life-sized coffins and a candy box the size of a shipping crate on the front porch. For Christmas, she’d go full Griswold.

Garner at 5, during Christmas with his mother in Winston-Salem.

“We had a huge Christmas tree in the living room, full of ornaments, full of decorations, we had decorations outside, the house was always lit up, you know, from the roof to the ground,” Garner says. “That’s how I learned how to decorate. When I was 8 or 9, I would go over to her house and decorate trees with her—like, ‘I’m getting ready to decorate my tree. You coming?’ ‘Yeah.’”

He moved to attend UNC Charlotte in 1998 and earned bachelor’s degrees in biology and psychology and master’s degrees in business and health administration. He managed a lab at Carolinas Medical Center for more than a decade, then worked in sales for the California-based biomedical manufacturer Beckman Coulter. Throughout, Garner decorated as a side hustle until a friend suggested he do it full time. He incorporated his LLC in March 2021 and now has 22 clients, a mix of individuals, families, and businesses.

Those clients, Garner says, are growing ever more passionate about their holiday decorations. His per-job price range is $1,500 to $13,000, and he’s quick to explain the high end as the product of one client who wants fully decorated Christmas trees in each of four rooms. A project that extensive usually takes him a week or more, which is why he tries to get an early start on his designs. He says his and others’ services are in demand lately for another reason.

“With COVID, people wanted to look at something pretty because they weren’t able to leave the house, and it was like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to take it down,’” he says. “Now, even after COVID, they’re like, ‘It’s a part of my home, and when I take it down, it’s like, oh, my house is so naked.’” He gives that last word a distinctly Southern pronunciation: “nekkid.”

Garner stands out just by being who and what he is. Women make up 79% of professional interior designers, and 82% of designers are white, according to the online recruiter Zippia, which also analyzes employment data. He treats his minority status as just another selling point in a field that rewards panache.

“Truth be known, people are like, ‘Oh, my gosh, he’s a cool chill pill, he’s a laid-back guy, but he’s the shit.’” He laughs at his own hubris, and he apologizes, although he doesn’t look guilty. “I’m sorry. But that’s how people look at me. I carry myself in a unique fashion.”

GREG LACOUR is the editor.