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From significant business changes to noteworthy product launches, there’s always something new happening in the world of design. In this biweekly roundup, AD PRO has everything you need to know.
Business
Havenly has an IRL expansion
Design platform Havenly is expanding its e-design model to include in-person services in Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, and New York City, and the company plans to add the offering to roughly another 20 U.S. cities within the next year. The news comes just months after the company’s acquisition of direct-to-consumer furniture company The Inside.
Material Bank reaches unicorn start-up status with latest funding round
Last week samples marketplace Material Bank closed on a $175-million Series D raise, a fundraising round led by Brookfield Growth with participation from Fifth Wall, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and RXR. The latest capital injection—which brings the company’s total funding to more than $325 million and boosts the start-up to unicorn status with a valuation at $1.9 billion—will help, in part, to fund strategic acquisitions and the development of new tools.
Product launches
Victor Glemaud collaborates with Schumacher
Haitian American fashion designer Victor Glemaud—renowned for his inclusive statement knitwear sought after by celebrities—has joined forces with the family-owned New York design house Schumacher for his inaugural home collection. Unveiled on May 18, Cul-de-Sac by Victor Glemaud spans fabrics, wallcoverings, and trims in 14 different patterns and various colorways that reference both Haitian cultural history and the Caribbean island’s tropical landscape. The large-scale Toussaint Toile, for example, incorporates lush foliage to pay tribute to Toussaint Louverture, leader of Haiti’s late-18th- and early-19th-century revolution.
Grace Fuller Marroquin teams up with The Row
On May 6, New York landscape designer Grace Fuller Marroquin debuted her range of organically shaped ceramic planters for The Row, Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen’s luxury fashion label. Fabricated by craftspeople in the Mexican state of Michoacán, the 20 piña-inspired pieces—available at The Row boutiques in New York and Los Angeles—are sculpted from sun-dried clay and baked in an open-air oven. “I hope that the planters can speak for themselves, but also be brought to life with one’s plant of choice,” Fuller Marroquin tells AD PRO.
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Openings
A monumental Dallas exhibition illuminates Islamic art’s influence on Cartier
Following its run at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity opened at the Dallas Museum of Art—the sole North American institution to present it—on May 14, and it will run through September 18. Co-organized by both museums—in collaboration with the Musée du Louvre and with the support of Maison Cartier—the exhibition highlights over 400 objects, including historic photographs, design drawings, and manuscripts, as well as numerous Persian and Indian paintings from Louis Cartier’s personal collection. Designed by New York studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Cartier and Islamic Art: In Search of Modernity explores the impact of Islamic art, architecture, and jewelry on Maison Cartier patterns, colors, and forms through the cultural lens of late-19th- and early-20th-century Paris.
Roman and Williams unveils newest Guild Gallery show
Downtown New York’s Guild Gallery, an outgrowth of the Roman and Williams Guild, opened its newest exhibition, Living Stone, on May 12 (through July 9). The first-ever U.S. show for Dutch artist Mirjam de Nijs, it showcases 32 works hand-picked by Roman and Williams’s Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch from de Nijs’s Amsterdam studio, including Chaise and Totem, two pieces of furniture commissioned specifically by the designers. De Nijs creates sculptures in a range of scales (including a recent 800-pound marvel) from marble, alabaster, onyx, travertine, and bluestone with the help of saws and chisels alike.
Italian design duo responds to the surroundings of New York’s Hudson Valley
Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, the Italian masterminds behind the Milan and Rotterdam-based design practice Formafantasma, have long been intrigued by experimental materiality, sustainability, and the natural world. Those ideas collide at the site-specific installation Formafantasma at Manitoga’s Dragon Rock: Designing Nature, which opened May 13 (through November 14) at late industrial designer Russel Wright’s home and studio in New York’s lower Hudson Valley. Presented by the Magazzino Italian Art museum and research center and Manitoga/The Russel Wright Design Center, the objects—mostly early works by Formafantasma—are in harmonious dialogue with Wright’s modernist stone, wood, and glass abode.
Hermès bolsters its presence in Texas with an Austin store
Austin’s quirky South Congress neighborhood is now the unlikely home of a two-story 7,600-square-foot Hermès boutique. Part of the mixed-use Music Lane complex that brings together brands like Parachute, Tuft & Needle, Le Labo, and Soho House, the store marks the luxe French retailer’s third flagship in Texas, joining locations in Dallas and Houston. Adorned with mineral terrazzo and cactus and sand-colored carpets, the interior has a distinctly Southwest feel that also pulls from Austin’s live music and skate cultures.
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In the news
Ukrainian bedding company continues to produce amid the war
War is still raging in Ukraine, but Natalya Ishchenko and Eteri Saneblidze, the undeterred founders of the minimalist bedding and sleepwear company Sea Me, have kept the lights on in their Odessa atelier to help give the Ukrainian economy a boost during this harrowing time. Sustainability remains top of mind for the brand.
Spun from medium-weight 100% pure European Oeko-Tex–certified linen, each bedding set is sewn to order. Solid blue, green, and neutral hues, identified by such transporting names as Emerald, Atlantic, and Breeze, evoke the nearby Black Sea and happier days. Worldwide shipping is inevitably slower now, but springing for a new pair of sheets is one small way to support talented Ukrainian designers.
London music landmark reopens with members club
After seven years of planning and three of construction, fans will be welcomed back this month to Koko, the beloved music venue in London’s Camden neighborhood where late luminaries like Prince and Amy Winehouse have performed. Led by Koko CEO and creative director Olly Bengough and local firms Archer Humphryes Architects and Pirajean Lees, this iteration of the Victorian-era venue—which first opened as a theater in 1900—includes such standouts as a pavilion terrace restaurant floating atop the original roof, a reconstructed dome complete with cocktail bar, and House of Koko, a members-only club with perks like private vinyl rooms that are an ode to the site’s BBC broadcast heritage. “I’m excited to bring Koko back to the public at a time when people need it the most—contributing to London culture and giving the building back to the artists and the people where it belongs,” Bengough tells AD PRO.
