Photography by Katherine Bish
The holiday season is a fun time to be on the lookout for expressive cards and gift-wraps, and amidst the abundance of lackluster papers, happening upon beautiful stationery is like finding buried treasure. Since hitting the market two years ago, St. Louis–based design duo Retta le Ritz has been offering up jewels, with fine stationery that is at once vibrant, refined, stylish and cute. Uncluttered notepaper and cards feature bold illustrations of everyday objects like shoes, cupcakes and toddler toys, while gift-wrap incorporates jovial patterns of colorful candies, buttons, fruit and lattices.
The Retta le Ritz brand is the work of an enthusiastic young married couple. Retta Leritz DiFate, a 28-year-old with a background in fashion and interior architecture and design, has worked with Betsey Johnson and on the home collections of Tommy Hilfiger and Nicole Miller. Eric DiFate, a 30-year-old illustrator, painter, Web designer and Rhode Island School of Design alumnus, was once a freelance artist for Mary Engelbreit.
The two met in St. Louis when she returned home from New York after 9/11 and he was recovering from a motorcycle accident. They instantly connected and within six months were engaged and had started their business (rettaleritz.com). “Our work is very collaborative,” says Mrs. DiFate. “If I had an idea for wrapping paper but got too busy with something else, Eric could take over halfway through, and you could never tell his drawing from mine. We do as much of it together as we can.”
On top of peddling stationery on their website and at national and local stores, including St. Louis Service Bureau and Vellum, they also landed their products in Kate’s Paperie during their first year on the market and are now beginning to sell internationally. Such achievements indicate that with fluid expansions, Retta le Ritz’s success can only grow, and so the duo is now considering wallpaper and textiles. “There are endless possibilities,” Mr. DiFate asserts. “Once we go from illustrations to patterns to wrapping paper, then on to wallpaper and textiles, it’s all such an easy transition. Those textiles could become shoes, dresses or upholstery.”
The plan is to add product lines, not to replace old ones. “There is nothing as refined as receiving a handwritten letter in the mail,” Mrs. DiFate says. “We love the idea of lending our talents to a resurging art form.” Who knows? Someday, we may be writing friends on Retta le Ritz’s notecards, wrapping presents in its paper, sitting on a sofa upholstered in its fabric, even wearing Retta le Ritz clothes and shoes.
