Meet Olena Shabanova | Interior Designer & Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Olena Shabanova and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Olena, what habits do you feel helped you succeed?
My habit of falling in love with each of my projects helps me achieve success in business. I create interior design from the position that each of my projects is the most beloved. The client feels this atmosphere. What is done with love and with soul is doomed to success. Therefore, my slogan: design with soul. Design is about perception and about feelings, it must be with soul.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I started my career in interior design by creating a design for my own home. Despite the fact that I am a designer by education and have been creating all my life since I learned to hold a pencil in my hands. But it was graphics, painting, collages, ceramics, photography and retouching and even body art. My first project took me six months of work. It was a dream house. The house of my own dreams, built by myself from buying land and the foundation to the weather vane on the roof and finishing. After that, orders for real estate design projects fell on me like rain, I did not advertise or ask for recommendations, but there were so many orders that I could no longer cope on my own. Therefore, without thinking twice, I decided to hire assistants to my team. So I had visualizers, architects, several construction teams, procurement managers, and even draftsmen, although I try to draw myself, it helps me with spatial thinking when creating a design. My start was easy and fast, but it was even harder to fall. My downfall began with the start of a full-scale war in Ukraine. I am Ukrainian and lived in Kyiv. All my projects at that time were in Kyiv and the suburbs. With the start of the war, many customers were unable to continue designing, refused to implement their projects. Someone postponed construction until better times, some of my clients sold real estate and left the country. I also faced the problem of migration, I needed to save my children, so my husband and I decided to leave our home, business, and leave Ukraine. A long journey awaited us ahead with changes of countries, changes of housing, and changes of work. But my skills and ability to create an aesthetic, comfortable, and ergonomic space around me did not go unnoticed. I met my business partner at one of the Ukrainian women’s meetings in Miami. This fateful meeting led to the creation of our own business here in Florida, now we create interior design not only for houses and apartments, but also for yachts. And although we are only at the beginning of our business in the US, I see great needs in the local real estate market and feel the strength to contribute to its development.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I often dream that my best friend will come to visit me. I will meet her at the Miami airport and we will eat croissants with cream cheese and salmon. In the morning I will invite her for coffee at la Boulangerie Boul’Mich. Then we will go for a walk in Fort Lauderdale, walk along the moored yachts and stop for lunch at Pura Vida Miami on Las Olas. It is in Fort Lauderdale that this coffee shop is especially colorful, because near the coffee shop there is a sculpture “Thrive” – that is the name of the work of the South African artist Daniel Popper installed here.
The sculpture “Thrive” created by him externally represents a 9-meter woman who is tearing her breasts.
The composition also includes a tunnel covered with ferns: the bare inner part of the woman’s breast represents a tunnel that invites you to walk through a green interior, full of peace and comfort. I also plan to rent a boat and take my friend to an island with raccoons. We will take food for them and take wonderful photos with these interesting animals. We will definitely visit Key West Florida, go on a tour of Hemingway’s house, pet six-toed cats and watch the sunset in the Gulf of Mexico. Soon my friend will come to me with her family and we will make all these dreams come true.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Every person we meet on our path, in one way or another, influences where we are now in life. Through love, support, advice and example, or vice versa, through a negative example, as it should not be, through criticism and life’s difficulties, we become who we really are. We are shaped by the people and situations that surround us, whether it’s teachers at school, our family, parents, siblings, friends, just random people who show us the way by their example. I am grateful to every person I have met, as the hero of the cartoon “Kung Fu Panda” Master Oogway said, “coincidences are not accidental”

Instagram: shalena_design

Image Credits
Sofiia Shabanova, Oksana Rozhkova.