The Coco Behind Cocobee Home

Colette Marcellene Ether (Coco)

Principal Designer
Designer of Form + Function

Colette is a self-taught interior designer with over a decade of experience across interior design, home building, luxury household management, and real estate.​​​​​​​​​​

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What sets her apart is not just what she knows. It is how she came to know it. Some people find their calling. Coco was born into hers. She just took the scenic route getting there.

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Growing up, Coco spent her weekends on construction sites with her father, a skilled craftsman, carpenter, and home builder, absorbing the language of how homes are made long before she ever had the words for it.

At home, she was glued to Martha Stewart, This Old House, and The New Yankee Workshop, poring over her parents' copies of Architectural Digest and House Beautiful. She fell in love with the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and William Morris.

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For her fifth-grade science fair, she built a miniature house and decorated every room. 

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She did not win. It was a science fair. 

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She did earn an honorable mention for creativity and independent thinking, which, looking back, is a pretty accurate preview of everything that followed.

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During her undergraduate studies in Business, Coco was presented with an opportunity that would shape her understanding of design in ways she never anticipated. She attended culinary school, training in culinary arts, sciences, and pastry arts.

A lifelong baker whom neighborhood friends had long nicknamed "master chef," it was there that she developed a deep appreciation for the well-designed kitchen and the well-stocked pantry, not as aesthetic ideals but as functional necessities.

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​To fund her education, she worked as a personal chef for Kevin Johnson of the Phoenix Suns and trained under celebrated chef Michael Chiarello at Bistecca, where she gained an insider's understanding of luxury household management, upscale dining, and what it means to run a world-class operation.

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What followed was a career that took Coco through operations management, organizational restructuring, project management at Credit Suisse (UBS), and six years in residential real estate — where design was woven into every listing she touched.

She helped homeowners get top dollar by combining her design eye, market knowledge, and project management skills to coordinate everything from staging and styling to mini renovations, making every listing shine.

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Not everyone has the opportunity to attend design school, or to follow a straight line to the work they were born to do. Design school shapes designers, but so does a father who builds homes with his hands, a kitchen that demands your full attention, and a lifetime of walking into spaces and knowing instinctively what they need.

Every chapter of Coco's journey added something a formal education simply could not have given her. Her path was not straight. It was just richer than most. In 2024, she made it official, and Cocobee Home was born.

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Luxury, to Coco, has never been about having more. It is about living better in the spaces you already have and the ones you are building.​​