Tailor Made

In a competitive real estate market, a couple decides against house hunting and goes all in on a custom build in the heart of Dallas.

- Carisha Swanson

THERE’S AN UPSIDE TO EVERYTHING. When soon-to-be clients Chris and Lynsey Synek arrived in Dallas poised to snap up a new property, they found that the red-hot real estate market for sellers meant limited inventory for buyers like them:

“Everything they were being shown was too old, too small, and in the wrong neighborhood,” designer Philip Thomas Vanderford of Studio Thomas James says. The Syneks realized they needed to pivot to looking for lots to build on and assembling the right team to do it.

When they came across Vanderford’s work, they immediately set up a meeting—and, as the designer tells it, it was obvious from the start that their sensibilities aligned. Lynsey’s “couture” at that meeting said everything:

“Her outfit that day was very edited, very curated, very specific, and with a little edge. I knew she didn’t just throw it together,” the designer says. “The design aesthetic and color palette for this home was basically lifted from her look.”