Meet Jason Nixon | Designer

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

Hi Jason, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
John Loecke and I had been magazine editors in New York City for more than two decades. We were writers, editors, stylists, producers, and so much more. Learning to wear so many different hats gave us a wonderful panoply of skills sets that were anything but rote and routine. We could scout, produce, and style a photo shoot and then write the accompanying article. Dovetailing with that, folks kept asking us to design this homes after seeing our Manhattan apartment. John and I had a come to Jesus and decided that he he had the skills to take the plunge, quit his corporate job, and put out the interior design shingle. His first project became a feature in O at Home, the Oprah magazine. As for me, I kept the day job for a few years to tap the salary, benefits, and wonderful access that being the Editor in Chief of Gotham and Hamptons magazines gave me. Eventually, I, too, grew tired of the quasi-corporate world and jumped over to help John take the Madcap Cottage brand to the next level. It has been 15+ years, and there has been no looking back. We would never, ever go back to a corporate position, life is too short.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
John Loecke

Co-Founder, Madcap Cottage

“Good taste need not be expensive, but it should be expressive,” states John Loecke, named by House Beautiful magazine as one of America’s Top 25 Young Designers early in his career. Loecke’s philosophy? “Banish the beige!” as his idol, the celebrated 20th-century designer Dorothy Draper once proclaimed.

“Your home should make you happy,” says Loecke. “It should be the kind of place where you can retreat and relax in a wonderful, gracious setting with plenty of pizzazz and pop. And good design should be available to everyone!”

Loecke first became interested in the world of interiors as a child in Davenport, Iowa upon seeing a photograph of Chatsworth, the ancestral home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire in England. His encouraging—but pragmatic—mom helped him construct a Chatsworth-inspired country house from cardboard boxes where the design-minded tyke would dream about long picture galleries, Chippendale chairs, and palm-filled conservatories. As he moved into adolescence, Loecke’s parents, ever obsessed with the idea of finding a bigger, better house, trotted their son from one open house to another. Loecke carried along a notebook to sketch his favorite rooms; later, he would rearrange his parents’ living room to match his drawings.

Fast forward to college where Loecke studied graphic design and journalism at Iowa State University before he followed his passion for a career in publishing to New York City. First up, an assistant job at Ladies’ Home Journal before he got his big break as an editor at American Homestyle & Gardening magazine. He eventually became the Home Editor at Parents magazine and started designing interiors for friends as a side hustle.

Finding himself in demand as an interior designer (and, hello, House Beautiful nod!), Loecke decided to put out his own official shingle and co-founded the Madcap Cottage brand with partner Jason Oliver Nixon. Loecke and Nixon eventually said “sayonara” to NYC and (with their merry band of pound-rescue pugs and Boston Terrier) relocated to High Point, North Carolina where the Madcap Cottage team brings story-driven content and lifestyle products—including fabrics, wallpaper, lighting, tabletop, bedding, and more—from sketchpad to point of sale at their bustling studio in a 1940s-era former radio station.

Loecke is the author of “The Organizing Idea Book,” published by Taunton Press in January 2006, and “John Loecke’s Grosgrain Style,” published by Clarkson Potter in Fall 2007. Along with Nixon, Loecke co-authored “Prints Charming: Create Absolutely Beautiful Interiors with Prints & Patterns,” published by Abrams in 2018, that was named one of the year’s top design books by Southern Living magazine.

Next up?

Says Loecke, “More time with the four pound-rescue at a color-filled bolthole high in the Virginia mountains. And collaborations with a hotel brand and a fashion/accessories partnership.”

Jason Oliver Nixon

Co-Founder, Madcap Cottage

Growing up in Tampa, Florida, Jason Oliver Nixon aspired to be one of his two fictional heroines, Eloise at The Plaza or Harriet the Spy. Until, that is, he saw the film “Auntie Mame” at the age of 8, and then all bets were off. Fast forward, and after trotting through Maine’s Colby College with degrees in Spanish Literature and Art History (“We spent HOW much on that education,” quipped dad Jary Nixon)—and an internship at Conde Nast’s HG magazine—Nixon hightailed it to the bright lights, big-city action of Manhattan.

Three years at Condé Nast Traveler magazine led to a Senior Editor position at Random House. Nixon eventually quit the book industry after deciding that magazines were just that much more fun and, frankly, less wordy. He won a James Beard Scholarship to advance his food-writing career—hello French Culinary Institute at night!—and, by day, became a receptionist at the WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association) to pay the bills. “It’s a sport on a court, that’s all I know,” Nixon was overhead saying at the Xerox machine one doldrums afternoon. TV beckoned in his future, and Nixon became/wangled/coerced/finagled a Field Producer gig at E! Entertainment and helped launch E! True Hollywood Stories.

“Anna Nicole-someone is on the phone,” cooed Nixon’s mother at Thanksgiving dinner one year.

The stint at E! led to a Producer gig at the Food Network where Nixon oversaw “Gourmet Getaways with Robin Leach” and traveled the world with the Brit-born bon vivant. Nixon would soon team up with entrepreneur Jason Binn to launch what would soon become the most successful regional magazine group in the US, Niche Media. For almost ten years, Nixon served as Niche Media’s globetrotting Editorial Director and oversaw the launch and day-to-day operations of a dozen-odd glossy luxury magazines, including Hamptons, Gotham, Los Angeles Confidential, Aspen Peak, Boston Common, and Capitol File.

Nixon eventually tired of writing about other’s people’s work and projects, and with his partner, John Loecke, he co-founded lifestyle brand Madcap Cottage. As Loecke built the Madcap business (our first interior design project received a whopping 8 pages in O, the Oprah magazine!), Nixon kept his day job (and health insurance!) and went on to re-launch Four Seasons Hotels magazine and soon became the Global Lifestyle Editor at Delta Sky magazine, a publication with 5 million + readers.

In 2014, the Madcaps decided that it was time to leave NYC after 20+ years and picked up and moved to High Point, North Carolina, the furniture capital of the world, and Nixon came aboard full time at Madcap Cottage where he oversees new business development, marketing, brand strategy, and social content.

A voracious reader, Nixon loves nothing more than holing up for a weekend with the Madcaps’ four pound-rescue pups and languishing amongst vintage design books with a bottle of rosé wine and his Instagram account.

So what’s next?

“World domination,” says Nixon with a saucy wink.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
John and I are mad, mad, mad for Pinehurst, North Carolina. We love that the town is supremely walkable so we are always scampering about with our four pound-rescue pups in tow. The restaurants! The shopping! The resort-inspired sensibility! The architecture. We would start the day at the incredible, throwback Pinehurst Track Restaurant, a diner-like establishment off the beaten path, for an omelette or pancakes. Next we would wander downtown Pinehurst or head over to up-and-coming Aberdeen for a walk about before lunch at Mason’s Restaurant & Grocery. The afternoon would have exploring the incredible grounds of the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities with the pups. Dinner would find us at Elliotts on Linden, we adore the incredible service and decor paired with knockout cooking.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Jason Oliver thanks his amazing, super-chic parents for taking him around the world from the age of one and exposing him to incredible design. John thanks his mom for trundling him and his siblings to art classes in Iowa from an early age that showed them the world.

Website: https://madcapcottage.com

Instagram: Madcapcottage

Image Credits
No credits needed.