By Darcie St. Onge + Rachael Bell

Our interior design studio has been around for many moons, but today we’re celebrating the birthday of our new(ish) shop and to-the-trade showroom which are turning TWO! While the last couple of years have been a crazy, joyous, challenging, and ultimately gratifying rollercoaster ride, we are delighted to feel as if we’re finally hitting our stride and couldn’t be more thankful to spend another year doing more of all the things we love.

On this milestone, we’re getting into the woo and looking to the stars for some guidance by way of Colorstrology: What your Birthday Color Says about You, by Michele Bernhardt. Our colorstrology for both the month of May and for our birthday, May 5th, are totally aligned - hues of vibrant, hopeful, spring green!

THE MONTH OF MAY // Pantone Bud Green

CLOTH & KIND // Good Reads: Colorstrology

It’s no wonder we find ourselves coming back to all the spirited shades of green in our interior design work and in our own surroundings alike.

CLOTH & KIND // Five Points Tudor Cottage

If you snag a copy of the book, let us know what your colorstrology is!

CLOTH & KIND // Pantone Vignette Featuring Caroline Cecil Textiles

What an honor it was to be selected by Pantone as one of a handful of design firms from across the country to create a vignette for their Design Exhibition at Atlanta's AmericasMart, each inspired by one of Pantoneview's Home + Interiors 2016 color palettes. Turns out, the entire process was just darn fun, to boot.

We selected Pantone's Soft Focus palette, which spoke to us both at our core, and almost instantly conjured up images in our minds of a beautifully chaotic artist or collector's studio. Soft Focus is a stellar collection of hues that represent a place between pastels and mid-tones. Subtle and/or muted, sometimes described as 'smoky' and pleasingly versatile, they are often married to a variety of other like shades. Whether in striated, layered or veiled patterning where, when used in combinations, one color blends effortlessly into another.

We've been fans of Caroline Cecil Textiles ever since we were first introduced to Caroline at the Bradley showroom in Atlanta during Design ADAC week. When we got a sneak peek of her new designs and asked if she'd be interested in including a couple of them (TITIK & HUTAN) in our Pantone vignette and she enthusiastically said yes, we knew the design was taking shape just as we wanted. We couldn't wait to use TITIK all over the walls, in true CLOTH & KIND fashion, as a textural backdrop to for the art, and HUTAN seemed as if it was made for Palecek's Strings Attached chair, no?

The AmericasMart showrooms and vendors were all wonderful about allowing us to pull from their inventory to create the space we imagined. Special thanks to Currey & Company for the chandelier, Eliko for the gorgeous vintage kilim rugs, Palecek for that spectacular chair, Go Home for the hide chair and desk, and Golden Oldies for so many of the interesting pieces that made the space look truly layered and patinaed - just the way we like em! Also, a huge shout out to Zoe Bios Creative whose artwork we incorporated. We would have used more had we had the wall space! Much of the art also comes from our CLOTH & KIND vintage collection.

Caroline interviewed us for her blog (which is fabulous, by the way - check it out!) and gives nice insight into our creative process so we wanted to share it with you all here as well.

CCT // Can you ladies share a bit about the conception of your theme and your design process.

CLOTH & KIND // The nice thing about being invited to design vignettes like this one is that it gives us the opportunity for complete and total creative freedom, unlike when we are designing with and for a client and it’s our job to create a space that perfectly suits their personal tastes. We always have a blast letting our minds wander and coming up with ideas that are personally moving to the two of us. For this particular Pantone space, we selected the ‘Soft Focus’ color palette because we were endlessly inspired by the relaxed and creative hues like Tourmaline (Pantone 16-4411), Smoke Green (Pantone 15-6315), Blossom (Pantone 14-1513), Nostalgia Rose (Pantone 17-1512), Cream Gold (Pantone 13-0739) and Peach Nougat (Pantone 14-1220). With such a range of tones, we almost immediately envisioned a colorful artist’s studio with walls covered in vibrant paintings. As with all creative endeavors, when we hit the right concept or idea, both of us are just like ‘YES, this is it!’ and the rest happens organically and very naturally.

CTT // How did you source key materials, including textiles from CCT’s new line?

CLOTH & KIND // In true CLOTH & KIND form, we wanted to swath the walls with a textile to be a stunning and textural backdrop to all of the paintings we envisioned. We had met Caroline Cecil recently at ADAC and admired her work so we inquired if she’d be interested in working with us. When she enthusiastically replied that she was AND she had some new, never been seen before designs that we could use, it was another moment in our creative process where we felt everything coming together just as it should be. We fell in love with her new TITIK and HUTAN patterns and the rest was history. Since HUTAN has a bit of a tropical vibe to it, we played that up further with the Currey & Co light fixture and the Palecek woven chair we selected. Eliko is hands down our favorite source for vintage and antique rugs and we found the colorful Kilims through them. AmericasMart vendors were all so gracious about allowing us to pull from their inventory and use pieces that fit with our project. We’re pretty darn happy with how it all turned out.

CCT // Where did you source the artwork?

CLOTH & KIND // Zoe Bios has an incredible array of gorgeous artwork so we got a couple of large pieces from there, but the rest is vintage from our CLOTH & KIND Atelier collection. We always have to include vintage in projects. It adds a layer of patina that is so key to any space for us.

CCT // Where did you source the chair and what was the process like reinventing it and reupholstering it?

CLOTH & KIND // Isn’t it fabulous? It’s called the Strings Attached chair (which we got a giggle over). Our friends at Palecek are always so incredibly supportive in allowing us to use their inventory for special projects like this one. They were even cool with us reupholstering the cushions in CCT’s Hutan, which felt like it was MADE for this chair.

CCT // Well, it's clear that all the hard work paid off. The vignette was a total stunner, and according to many, the talk of the show. Hey, even Rue Magazine selected it as their favorite vignette! Click here to read their thoughts. If you're interested in HUTAN and TITIK, the two new CCT prints that CLOTH & KIND used in their vignette, stay tuned. We will be unveiling a pre-launch online next week, followed up to the full launch in our showrooms on February 16th.

Be sure to check out the other gorgeous vignettes created by the talented interior designers that participated in the Pantone Design Exhibition including Janie Hirsch, Heather Hogan Roberts, Shaun Smith, Michael Habachy, Robert Leleux, Jamie Durie, Michel Boyd & Kristin Alber.

Thank you again to all of our creative partners and showrooms. You are the best!

PS // Here's a couple of shots from the Pantone soiree at AmericasMart. As you can see, we didn't have any fun at all!