PROFILE

What's In My Portfolio: Stefanie Hauger

Photography by Chino Sardea
06 Jul 2017

Stefanie Hauger is an award-winning painter and designer. She is the proprietor of Vanilla Home, a leading purveyor of luxury furnishings and accessories.

I am completely immersed in a visual and spatial universe. I live and breathe spaces, objects and works of art. It's in my DNA. My entire family has been involved in the arts as museum director, art historian, architects, graphic designers, and artists.

My father was an avid collector of antiques, and taught me how to look for detail and flaws. My mother was a photographer first, and then an artist who was extremely critical of her own work, and later, mine – which was all helpful at the end of the day.

My love affair with the visual arts started when I was a child. Our family holidays abroad were not for relaxation, but for a discovery of what the world had to show us.

Many children talk about being dragged to museums, but for me it was always an adventure and a pleasure. I followed willingly, wanting to learn more about what our history meant and, especially, how significant the crafts behind some of the most important monuments in the world would have depended upon.

I studied Industrial Design after a Fine Arts Foundation Course and then, through a family connection, started my career in interior design.

I came to Singapore as an interior architect, and soon learned what that meant – a responsibility that is hard to imagine if you have never designed a space for someone else.

After five years working with Wilson & Associates, I left and set up on my own. I decided to found Vanilla Home, a lifestyle boutique known for its exceptional selection and quality, and items that were not available or heard of in the market at the time. It was tough to bring unknown brands that were huge in Europe and create awareness for them in Singapore – but we succeeded.

"Many children talk about being dragged to museums, but for me it was always an adventure and a pleasure." - Stefanie Hauger

Somewhere along the way, I needed to get my hands dirty again and I became a full-time artist. This was just a natural extension of me trying to understand how the two-dimensional world interacts and harmonizes with the three-dimensional world, how one object totally fails where another one excels?

My work as an artist has been a huge driving force in my increased understanding of this.

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