EP 86: Parisian Interior Decorator Sumner Hargrove

As a fifth-generation Texan, Sumner Hargrove began riding horses bareback at her family’s

ranch at the age of three! She went on to do her undergraduate degree magna cum laude at

Mary Baldwin College in Virginia in English Literature and Philosophy, followed by a master’s

in Public Policy and Public Finance from New York University. She then worked on Wall

Street as a municipal bond analyst and public finance officer for a Japanese bank. At the age

of 30, she decided to follow her dream since high school to move to Paris to study French

and see what else might happen along the way.

Second career pivot…she taught marketing, finance, and media in English at French business

schools and grandés écoles got married and had boy/girl twins, re-inventing herself again

after their births as a managing editor in the marketing department of a French software

firm as well as at the headquarters of a major French services company, in charge of internal

communications for the 400+ marketing staff around the world.

Most recently, when her twins went to university four years ago, she decided it was “the

moment” to go back to school again, this time to fulfill a childhood dream to become an

interior decorator at last! She received a French diplôme d’état in interior decoration and

space design in 2017, founded her interior decorating agency, Flights of Fancy, in 2018 and

has never looked back!

You can find out more about Sumner Hargrove, the Founder and Creative Director of Flights of Fancy, at www.flights-of-fancy.paris or write her at sumner.hargrove@flights-of-fancy.paris. In addition, her videos are on her channel on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYctsP-8Kef48-gZADxKdPg and her Instagram account is under Sumner Hargrove.