Josy Cooner Brought the World to Her Home, Now You’ve Got a Shot at Buying It

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If you don’t recognize the name Josy Cooner (Collins), try Scott + Cooner, the 21,000-square-foot haute modern showroom in the Dallas Design District that has been a Dallas icon for the last 25 years. Quite simply, it is the best place in town to source beautiful modern home furnishings.

Lloyd Scott and Josy Cooner-Collins teamed up to start a modern furnishings showroom when Dallas was mired in country French and wagon wheel ranch. Believing in all things beautifully modern, it was, “Make Dallas modern or bust!”

“Less than one percent of one percent understood contemporary modern as we did,” Scott says. “We were part of a movement to bring it to the city at a time when modern vendors were rolling their eyes at the Lone Star State.” In fact, when the showroom opened, Cooner-Collins says no vendor even considered pitching modern furnishings in Texas.

But this duo changed vendors’ minds and went on to open a second store in Austin.

Cooner-Collins is also an interior designer with fingerprints on many homes and businesses around town, including Victory Park’s W Hotel. Now retired from her store — the founders sold it in June of 2021 — she is curating clients, taking on a few fabulous jobs all over the country, and loving it. Her signature sleek design combined with fun, colorful, almost whimsical details, is highly sought after.

And nowhere is that style more evident than in her personal home, now listed for sale.

Set in Forest Hills on the boulevard and about a block from White Rock Lake is Josy’s personal lifestyle collection in the form of a beautiful, Texas-flavored mid-century gem set on a 0.60-acre lot with mature trees and lush landscaping. Not only is the home filled with her world, but crafted by her discerning eye: everything in the house is a designer product of Scott & Cooner. They are the brands she helped build, and they surround her.

From the poliform kitchen with a built-in wok and vintage Viking stove, to the Sub-Zero refrigeration system, the Miele coffee center, and the whimsical Neidhard sconces in the loggia, 8205 Forest Hills is not your usual cut of home. It is a spread of six bedrooms, and five and one-half baths on one-and-a-half stories, everything a blend of natural materials, clean lines, and great design. Every bedroom has an ensuite poliform bathroom and rock-stone floors. The natural stone is dry-stacked on the exterior and around the living room fireplace, with slabs of polished blue Israel limestone.

“I’m very much a naturalist,” says Cooner. “I love wood and rock. I like things to be simple, I don’t like it to be fussy.” She has deep chocolate grasscloth in the powder room.

Five children were raised in the house. It is a home with wonderful karma; you feel it.

In 2002, her family bought a 1930s-era sprawling ranch on a prime corner in Forest Hills. Extensive renovations, down to the foundation and beams, took place. It was her biggest, and most personal, design project.

“I did not want to completely demolish it,” she told us. “You see these gigantic homes going up and they completely change the identity of the neighborhood. We wanted to rebuild in the same Texas style, and really, that’s a lot harder to do.”

But she crushed it, of course. There was incredible attention to detail. Her goal was to give every child their own space. She had her team — Nick Glazbrook, an old-school architect, led the rehab which took a year+ and included adding big-ticket items such as a new guest suite and outdoor living area. Gonzalo Bueno and Mauricio Lobeira advised on matters such as redoing the fireplace in stone, opening up doorways, keeping the Israel blue stone, and adding a magnificent bronze front door that is a museum piece in itself.

As she walks through her home of 22 years, Josy points out the architecture and objects that have stitched her life together, a kind of kaleidoscope of her history. There is her Kauri wood dining room table from New Zealand that is 35,000 years old (no, that’s not a typo), the tribal art, Jennifer Pritchard ceramics, and the French wood chest where bread was made on the family farm where they often hid Jews from the Nazis.

“I was born in Normandy, France, and raised by a French mother — I had many European influences,” she says.

Josy “Josette” moved to Texas at the age 10, and swam as a competitive swimmer for Texas Christian University, where she studied interior design and merchandising. Next, she worked for a New York company in Dallas for seven years before launching Scott + Cooner.

With water such an important influence in her life, Josy wanted a family-centered home within walking distance of the lake. Nature is very important to her and her family, and the sprawling yard beckons outdoor play and socializing. The huge front yard on the corner lot is perfect for kickball tournaments and impromptu soccer. The backyard is pure paradise, with the basketball court, 12-foot deep swimming pool (they don’t make them that deep anymore), cabana area, ping-pong table, and grilling station. A runner, she has traversed the neighborhood countless times, from Forest Hills Boulevard to White Rock Lake.

The pool is 12 feet deep and stays cool all summer.

“This home was always filled with people, always at least four kids,” she says. “They brought their friends home. I cooked, and we loved it. We have always loved to entertain.”

The children are grown and now leaving the most comfortable of nests. Josy Cooner is well versed on the stages of life, and understands her next phase requires a bit less square footage and property, perhaps.