The Curators
The Invisible Collection
For Anna Zaoui and Isabelle Dubern-Mallevays, inspiration came in the shape of the iconic Pierre Yovanovitch-designed Papa Bear chair. “It was one of the first items we curated, and it became a lucky charm,” says Zaoui, who cofounded the Invisible Collection alongside Dubern-Mallevays. The e-commerce site is known for showcasing bespoke furniture from some of the world’s best designers—work that was often invisible to collectors (hence the name, which also nods to the short story by Stefan Zweig).
“We sought advice from the two designers we admire most, Pierre Yovanovitch and India Mahdavi, and promised ourselves that if both supported us, we would go for it,” says Dubern-Mallevays of the company’s 2016 launch. Today, their growing collection is also finding a brick-and-mortar life in pop-up exhibitions in Paris, Miami, Milan, London, and New York.
By offering a highly curated roster of 21st-century designers, they’re not looking to follow or even create trends, says Zaoui. “Our goal is to stay true to diligent craftsmanship and dedicated faithfulness to original works.” During the collaboration and manufacturing process, the team follows closely along with every step, from bespoke request to delivery. “We visit the workshops, talk to our designers, and we are sometimes present for the delivery to witness the unveiling of a special piece among its surrounding décor,” Zaoui says, referencing their supervision of the recent installation of Le Refuge by Marc Ange at the Moco Museum in Amsterdam.
The duo is also excited about a recent launch with contemporary furniture designer and architect Charles Zana, including the plush and versatile Alexandra sofa, the clean-lined Djo armchair, and the sculptural Calanque table. The team, spread throughout offices in London, Paris, and New York, is looking to spend more time in the U.S., scouting for design talent and preparing to open a permanent physical showroom in New York in 2020. “Our goal,” says Zaoui, “is to make exclusive designer pieces available to a wider audience who appreciates great design.”
The Trendsetter
Janice Feldman, JANUS et Cie
Before JANUS et Cie founder and CEO Janice Feldman opened her New York showroom in 2000, she confronted her lifelong fear of heights in the most dramatic way possible: trekking up the Himalayas to 16,500 feet. The experience gave Feldman the confidence she needed to take her business to the next level. “I always trust my instincts, which has been essential to the success of the company,” she says.
Feldman developed a strong appreciation for nature while growing up in California’s San Fernando Valley. As a child, she developed her artistic skills, creating murals on long butcher paper and taking woodshop instead of home economics. After college, she relocated to Europe where she supported herself by painting portraits of tourists and selling antiques. In fact, a 16th-century walnut highboy in nearly mint condition is one of the assets she used to acquire a loan to open her first showroom at the Pacific Design Center, which her husband founded, in Los Angeles in 1978. She considers this “a groundbreaking moment in my career, as it allowed me to grow and define the JANUS et Cie brand into what it is today.”
This led to such milestones as creating furniture from recycled materials when it was still unprecedented, as well as opening 19 showrooms around the globe. Notably, her collaborations with designers like André Fu and Paola Navone, among others, have embodied her daring ethos. Like Feldman herself, they’re “not afraid to push the limits of their imagination,” she says. Today, the company’s catalog lists more than 6,000 items, including decorative accessories and performance textiles.
In 2016, the high-end outdoor furniture provider became part of Poltrona Frau Group, the parent company of luxe brands including Cassina and Luminaire. “We are continually looking to what’s next,” she says, “and we have some exhilarating things on the horizon.”
The Palmia collection consists of a lounge chair, side chair, and three-seat sofa
The Legacy Builder
Deborah Herman, Fabric Innovations
Deborah Herman transforms ordinary materials into dynamic, otherworldly designs—a trait she picked up from her father, who turned kimonos into bespoke bedspreads for the waterbed industry. At 15, she spent a month working alongside him in his factory, and it inspired her to follow in his footsteps. “I was always fascinated by the physical, tactile part of making a product,” she says. “That’s how I fell in love with it.”
When she turned 19, after making it through high school and college in six years, Herman joined the family business, increasing its revenue by a factor of 10 in two years. In 1997, she founded Fabric Innovations, which now provides fabrics and linens to nearly every major hotel chain.
Herman makes it a point to impart lessons learned during her tenure in the industry to help her clients make better decisions. Notably, she has talked many designers out of using taffeta for drapes, which tend to wrinkle and require steaming. In the same vein, she and her team have developed innovative, easy-to-install box spring covers and duvet alternatives that are designed to help staff turn rooms faster. “I save my clients a lot of money,” she says.
In the past six years, Fabric Innovations has quadrupled in size, thanks to new customers like United Airlines. “What I do is different every single day,” says Herman, “and it’s fascinating.”
The Bali pattern from the Destinations II collection in Twinkle, Plantation, Sea Shell, and Surf colors
The Manhattan Throw collection features patterns named after the city’s iconic locations
The Multitasker
Carey Schuster, Yellow Goat Design
A one-time designer of high-end hospitality spaces in Sydney, Carey Schuster didn’t have any sales and marketing experience when the owners of Yellow Goat Design, who she had collaborated with on some of her projects, asked her to launch the company’s U.S. operations at the height of the economic crisis. She went for it anyway. “Somehow, against all odds, we managed to make it happen,” she says, adding that the real stress came when she encouraged the founders to open a factory in North America to service clients there a year or so after she started the division.
That’s an understatement: Under her designer-first leadership as the U.S. CEO, Yellow Goat Design has created bespoke lighting and over-the-top installations for major brands such as Aloft, Four Seasons, and Swissôtel, collaborating with the likes of Stephen B. Jacobs Group, HKS, and Contour Interior Design, to name a few. “Our designs are telling a story, whether it be their brand identity or the history and location of the space,” Schuster says.
Consider the opal acrylic installation in Google’s Chicago office by VOA. Referencing the building’s former use as a cold-storage facility, it’s a conversation piece that elevates the space to another level. “Not only does it draw people in, but it also keeps them in the space longer,” she says, “and it’s photographed, Instagrammed, and talked about.”
Schuster is gearing up to release the company’s fall/winter collection, and down the line, she envisions opening a Yellow Goat Design showroom, all while parenting four children under the age of 8. “I wanted my cake, and I wanted to eat it too,” she says. “Somehow, I made that happen, and it’s very exciting.”
The hanging shades of the 200 Drop Pendant are made from transparent acrylic tubes
Metal tubes bent into an unearthly form make up the Epitome pendant
The Entrepreneur
Lisa Villarreal, Lily Jack
Lily Jack founder Lisa Villarreal didn’t plan to join her family’s furniture import business, but when she found out her mother wanted to shut it down, she jumped in, taking it from 12 clients to 350 in her first year. “I went out and tried to sell everybody,” she says. “The entrepreneurial side of me was born and that was that.”
In 2000, Villarreal launched Lily Jack, which is named for her grandparents. In the past two decades, the company has focused on creating finely crafted casegoods and upholstered pieces for marquee clients, such as the Wynn, the Ambassador Hotel, Hyatt, and Four Seasons. “Not having a lot of education or experience, it’s been a difficult journey,” she says. “I figured it out as I went.”
While Villarreal has built a solid team of designers and craftspeople, she is still closely involved in every aspect of the business, ensuring it is run in a way that would make her grandparents proud. “Everything comes from integrity,” she says, noting that it’s a lesson she learned from her grandfather. “If you do that and you have a passion, you can do anything.”
In the beginning, Villarreal expected to work for a few years until she had children. But while she did have kids, including son Jake, who recently accepted a job at Lily Jack, Villarreal could never tear herself away from the business. “I discovered the passion, and I want to grow and become the best in the industry,” she says. “It’s in my blood.”
The Swivel lounge chair wrapped in walnut veneer with a metal base
The Self-Starter
Mandy Li, Mandy Li Collection
Mandy Li knew virtually nothing about the industry when she founded a company offering stone-topped vanities in the late ’90s. “I needed to support myself, and I didn’t want to open a store and wait for people to come and visit,” she says.
While she had clients in hospitality, most of Li’s revenue came from multi-unit housing, but the 2008 recession took a heavy toll. Undeterred, Li leaned into hospitality, ultimately producing lines of casegoods, sliding doors, and custom upholstered pieces for luxe hotels across the globe. “There have been growing pains, but we’ve maintained the quality of our product, our service, and scheduling, which is extremely important in this industry,” Li says. Now, her pieces are found in the likes of the hotel Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas and the JW Marriott Denver Cherry Creek.
Though the pipeline is robust for the foreseeable future, she is not resting on her laurels. Li recently collaborated with Christian Schnyder of LA firm Beleco to create a new line of cocktail tables, side tables, and lighting. And her new brand, Boulevard Eight, offers the same pieces directly to consumers. “We’ve built a great foundation, and we’re due for another jump,” she says. “It’s time to take the company to the next level.”
Li’s side and nesting coffee tables complete the lavish living space in a suite at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas by Virserius Studio
Custom coffee table, sofa, and ottomans outfit a W Atlanta suite, also by Virserius Studio
The Risk-Taker
Michelle Monnier Wildenhaus, Studio Twist
Michelle Monnier Wildenhaus credits her long, unconventional career to taking advantage of new opportunities. Indeed, she went from interior designer to rug designer to sales and marketing rep before founding Studio Twist in her late 50s in 2012. “It was the biggest learning curve, career-wise, that I’ve ever had to go through,” she says.
As a rug designer, Monnier Wildenhaus handpainted jacquard patterns all day, and she is still actively involved in the conceptual stage for the company’s artistic custom textiles. “We go pretty far afield for inspiration,” she says. Innovative patterns, such as a new collection based on abstract expressionism, are Studio Twist’s stock-in-trade.
For example, at the Graduate Lincoln in Nebraska, Studio Twist created a faux bois-patterned throw to complement the corn motif on the drapes. Meanwhile, a custom plaid blanket plays off of the signature red headboard wall at the Redbury New York. “Our textiles speak to our client’s brand or sense of place,” she says.
While running Studio Twist can be all-consuming, Monnier Wildenhaus takes time away to recharge, recently attending a weeklong sewing workshop in France. She also knits, crochets, and cross-stitches whenever she has a spare moment. “It calms my mind at the end of the day,” she says. “I’m always making something.”
Blue throws dress guestrooms at the AvroKO-designed Calistoga Motor Lodge and Spa in California
The Abstract collection includes 20 distinct patterns
Gold tones are woven throughout the Bankside pattern
The Artist
Shanan Campanaro, Eskayel
Shanan Campanaro was creating fashion graphics for Express when she first transferred one of her signature watercolor paintings onto wallpaper for her apartment. Friends were wowed by her work, and she began developing it into a collection, officially starting Eskayel in 2008. “Everyone started flipping out about it,” she says. “It was natural to go into textiles after that.”
Today, the Brooklyn, New York-based company’s ethereal patterns can be found in hotels like the W Chicago, Mountain Shadows Resort in Paradise Valley, Arizona, and the Four Seasons Resort Maui at Wailea, where the headboards and pillows are upholstered in the company’s fabric. While Campanaro has licensed several patterns from her employees, she still designs most of Eskayel’s collections herself.
Referencing her own travel photos, Campanaro paints the same scene repeatedly, using water and inks that bleed into one another. “I’m looking for happy accidents,” she says. Her latest collection, Omaggio, was inspired by an image of her parent’s verdant backyard in San Diego. “When you look at my work, you get a feeling,” she says. “I’m trying to impart a sense of place, a lush garden, a calm pool, or palms blowing in the breeze.”
Over the past few years, Campanaro has developed partnerships with companies such as ABC Carpet & Home, Clé Tile, Steelcase, and Canadian home furnishings store Elte, for which she is rolling out a line of wool and silk Persian knot rugs featuring some of Eskayel’s most popular patterns. “They are gorgeous,” she says. “We don’t take ourselves too seriously, but we definitely do take our products seriously.”
Omaggio is inspired by an image of Campanaro’s parent’s lush backyard garden
