Robert Natale fondly recalls days spent listening to music in his father’s car, crediting those childhood memories with shaping his love for beauty. “We’d listen to these albums and sing together,” he shares. “There would be [instances], in chord changes or passages, where he’d show me the goosebumps on his arms from the power of that moment. At a young age, I was attuned to how things beyond the tactile can make you feel something.”
Dalia armless chairs rest atop the handknotted Wander in Cardinal, one of Sixpenny’s inaugural rugs
After graduating from American University in Washington, DC, Natale moved from the New Jersey suburbs to New York City in 2010, joining the “beautiful, chaotic startup” that was Warby Parker. He started on the eyewear brand’s then-scrappy customer experience team, occasionally modeled glasses, and eventually became an in-house copywriter. “Everyone was kind of a Swiss Army knife in those days,” he says. After six years there, he took a leap on his own, freelancing across companies with a focus on brand building, as well as product and experience design.
One of his early clients would end up changing the trajectory of his life. In 2016, Jing Zhang—who would later become his wife—brought Natale on for art direction as she launched furniture brand Sixpenny with two cofounders. Later, as chief of design, he reimagined the brand’s visual identity, and by 2020, their partnership had significantly evolved: They were married and had bought out the company together.
Natale, now CEO and chief of design, continues to evolve the furniture collection. “I just see it,” he says of his creative process. “I’ll see a sofa in my mind—literally an arm or a shape—and I’ll sketch it. We’re constantly banking little nuggets of ideas.” Owning their factory allows room for experimentation and “gives us a rare amount of flexibility and control over the process,” he says. “We have fingers on the pulse at all times.”
Sixpenny’s Wild Air collection includes the brand’s first print, a floral rendered in cotton-linen upholstery shown here on the Yogi curved sectional
Moving beyond the brand’s midcentury industrial roots, Natale “listened to people and allowed the brand to become what it was meant to become,” he points out, leading to a refinement of its early offerings with a softer, more romantic, California-cozy direction.
The latest collection, Wild Air, which “let’s nature be the artist,” he says, also introduces the brand’s first-ever print. “We’ve never done [one], so it was an obvious next step,” Natale says. “Everyone is looking for a bit of romance in their home, and this print felt like a beautiful opportunity for us to showcase that philosophy in something three dimensional.” The watercolor floral draws from Impressionist paintings, which “someone described as looking out at a garden through a rainy window,” he says.
The new collection—comprising rugs, bedding, and casegoods—can be found at the Sixpenny Loft in Dumbo, Brooklyn, a space that encapsulates Natale’s design philosophy: warm and inviting, yet bold and luxurious. Wild Air “captures the romance and creates spaces where you feel held,” he says. “We’re grateful to do something we love, while allowing people to truly love their space and feel excited to be home.”
Wild Air comprises the Tango chair, Terra coffee table, and Yogi sofa
This article originally appeared in HD’s April 2026 issue.