“Growing up in Florida, I was immersed in themed design. I’d go to Disney World and this Polynesian revue in Ft. Lauderdale—it’s called the Mai Kai. It just felt to me like themed design should be part of anyone’s normal life,” says Leslie Mark.
Leslie Mark runs the eponymous Kansas City interior design firm, Leslie Mark Studio. And it was just a matter of time before she’d create and build Ruby’s Lagoon, a fully immersive, head-to-toe themed bar that’s hiding in a former storage room in a midcentury-modern home.
Our home. Leslie is also my wife.
We’ve been married for more than a minute, so when she floated the idea of an in-home tiki bar, I knew she wasn’t intending to staple a sheet of bamboo to the wall and declare dominance. Whether she’s working on a new theater design for a national movie theater chain or a kitchen remodel for one of her residential clients, Leslie is Spinal Tap eleven. But immersive design is where she evolves into her superhero’s alter-ego.
Ruby’s Lagoon is the nautical story we didn’t know we needed: abandoned pirate ship sinks into Mermaid Lagoon—which is unsurprisingly stocked with an alarming quantity of rum, Chartreuse, and who knows what else. I’ve been making tiki drinks for years, but always in borrowed spaces throughout the house. Ruby’s is a proper home for the cocktail program, and by “proper,” I mean one with an undulating stainless-steel ceiling, a cement reef molded to look like coral, and a wall of water framed through the ship’s starboard portholes. A suspended cluster of illuminated Japanese floats anchors the lighting scheme. And the designer’s self-portrait-like mermaid hovers over the patinaed copper bar top.
I know what you’re thinking: Perhaps we’ve had one too many of those drinks? Ask me again after that mermaid wakes up with a bandaged right ear.
“We want more from our interiors these days,” Leslie says. “I think a result of us all being more connected is that everything starts to feel the same. We influence each other creatively, and it’s hard to find uniqueness in that.” For her, themed design is a path toward originality. “All interior design is theming, but it’s usually more subtle. Midcentury modern or traditional—those are themes. Tropical theming, or any immersive design, hits you over the head with a very specific story, and that’s what I love about it. It’s meant to transport you outside of your every day.”
Immersive design is bewildering. It’s equal parts aesthetics, emotion, and magic, and when it works, it has an almost cinematic way of superseding reality—of creating a sense of wonder. That’s Ruby’s. It’s textbook escapism.
Leslie adds, “I love the contrast of stepping from a ‘serious’ home into a kitschy pirate bar. I think that’s really fun. I don’t ever want to take myself too seriously, and I think Ruby’s is a reflection of that. Interior design isn’t meant to solve the world’s problems. It’s meant to bring beauty and fun and comfort into our lives.”
That fun is infectious. There’s magic in it. And we’re excited to share it.
Track our Instagram adventures @rubyslagoonbar.
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Interior Design
Leslie Mark Studio