Pulling Back the Curtain on Sight Unseen — A Conversation with Jill Singer
Jill Singer and I have been friends since college. She founded Sight Unseen in 2009 and has become an influential voice supporting designers. We talked over Zoom in May of 2020.
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
RRD: Let’s start at the beginning, Jill. Where did you grow up?
JS: I grew up in St. Louis. There’s not that much to say about St. Louis, to be honest.
RRD: Which high school did you go to?
JS: I went to Parkway North High School. Do you know that’s the question you’re supposed to ask people from St. Louis?
RRD: I do. People are dismissive of St. Louis, but I know an insane amount of people in design, in creative work, in technology who live in New York but grew up in St. Louis.
JS: That’s because St. Louis is a place you leave to go to New York [laughs].
RRD: Why do you think that is?
JS: I don’t know. My mom is constantly trying to convince me of St. Louis’ place on the cultural map, and she’s not wrong.
There’s a good amount of museums, most of them are free, and recently there have been these stories of people who used to work at, like, Blue Hill, who moved…
