Taking the road less traveled is a maxim by which Jamie Herzlinger lives. When she opened Jamie Herzlinger Interiors in 1991, she was a seasoned design industry insider, but her experience was in fashion, not architecture. When she interviews clients, she talks to them about art, music, literature and politics as much as interior design. And when she takes on a project, she treats it as if it were the only one she were handling, investing personalized attention in every last detail. But by doing things a different way, Herzlinger has cultivated a reputation for creating projects that are as original and spectacular as the clients who commission them.

As with most visionaries, Herzlinger’s calling manifested itself early on. Born and raised in New York City’s Garment District, Herzlinger remembers not playing with dolls so much as designing their clothes and playhouses. Chalk it up to her designer mother Nan Herzlinger, her great aunt who spearheaded the millinery department for Mrs. Bergdorf or her coat-manufacturing grandfather, but design is simply part of Herzlinger’s pedigree. By 1985, she’d honed her own distinctive talent to the point where she could successfully launch her own fashion label. (Recognized by Women’s Wear Daily as the up-and-coming fashion designer for women, Herzlinger’s pieces were available in the finest specialty boutiques in the country.) So it came as a shock to the fashion world when she suddenly closed up shop one day and moved west.

“I wasn’t living my passion,” Herzlinger explains. “I wanted my work to include greater emphasis on texture and proportion with elements of angles and corners, art and furniture, lighting and window treatments, wood and stone. I wanted it to be about architectural and interior design.” With characteristic determination and zeal, Herzlinger started once again from scratch, hanging her shingle for Jamie Herzlinger Interiors in the heart of Scottsdale, Arizona.

Relying on the same qualities that brought her success in the fashion world—intellectual inspiration and a commitment to authenticity of design—Herzlinger has established her company as a powerful force in the architectural and interior design community. Some of the primary influences in her work hail from Italian, French and American architecture of the 20th century as well as music, literature and history. But Herzlinger is as attuned to contemporary demands for functionality and cutting-edge technology as she is to the classics, and so she has become expert in integrating those with aesthetically honest design.

Of course, architectural and interior design is most successful when it’s a collaborative effort, which is why Herzlinger works so closely with each client. And Herzlinger’s triple role of interior designer, architectural designer and general contractor for every project guarantees richly beautiful designs that come in on time and on budget. It’s no surprise, then, that Jamie Herzlinger Interiors, which now operates out of offices in Scottsdale and New York, enjoys a discriminating clientele of Fortune 100 CEOs, Wall Street executives, national sports figures and others who recognize the value of having a home that is at once classically informed and state-of-the-art. Hers may not be the common path but, as it did for Robert Frost observed in “The Road Not Taken,” it has made all the difference.