Sneak Peek: Our New Apartment Therapy Capsule Collab!

A few months back, my good friend Christiane Lemieux of Cloth & Company (and also founder of Dwell Studio) and her business partner Meganne Wecker (President of Skyline Furniture) asked me to collaborate on a capsule furniture collection using their brand new weapon: a huge digital printer on which they can now print designs in minutes. After getting the pitch and then touring the Skyline factory in Chicago, I was not just impressed. I was blown away. The possibilities of digitally printing fabric are as huge as digital was to photography. I was in.

The rest of their pitch was simple: show them the absolute top trends among our readers and let them design fabrics to match, which we’d then use to cover two small collections of furnishings. They wanted to show us how quickly they could now go from IDEA to CREATION, based on what we see actually living within our community.

So we looked at the data and the editors and I pulled the top four trends, which we then whittled down to two: dark florals and mud cloth. Armed with inspiration images, Christiane created original designs to match and, ta da! We’ve created a beautiful, very accessible capsule collection of furnishings which will be available for purchase next week. The entire process will have taken less than a month, and the most time consuming portion was the creative part and not the manufacturing.

Dark and moody fall florals ran as a post just this past October and it not only piled up tons of pageviews, it was quickly dubbed “totally swoon worthy.” This is very much on trend right now, but we suspect that it won’t last forever. It’s VERY fresh and chic.

This post, Trend Report: This is The New “It” Home Accessory, debuted last August and nailed another trend we’d been seeing grow for awhile: mud cloth patterns. With crisp simplicity and authenticity, mud cloth has gone from a truly African tradition to a widely referenced textile language all its own.

So these photos are the inspiration, drawn from what you, our readers, love right now and next week I’ll show you what we made and see what you think — stay tuned!

This capsule collection will be making its debut at the biannual furniture market in High Point, North Carolina, this weekend, and it will be available on Amazon for limited time purchase over the coming months. If you’re in High Point, you can stop by and see what Cloth & Company has made in the Amazon showroom, and I’ll be there smiling and signing books. I’ll post images of the launch and then come back next week to show you everything.