Alise O'Brien
When the car pulled up out-side the 150-year-old French textile mill in Alsace, Becky Smith looked up and saw an American flag flying. She gulped, wondering if the owner had understood her schoolgirl French. Did he realize she was just a mom, her new business the result of a midlife crisis and a great family story?
She shrugged, gathered her portfolio and walked inside, greeting him with a big smile. And when she spread the designs on his sturdy wooden worktable, he exclaimed in delight, "But these are fresh! Yes, we will do them! You must have an entire collection!"
Col-lection? She promised gaily that she would have just that — then flew home to figure out how to make it happen.
It had all started with the chair. The perfect boudoir chair, with a graceful curved back that hugged a woman's body. Every woman in Mrs. Smith's family had one, thanks to her great-great-grandmother, interior designer Babou Warfield, who brought European antiques and custom-wrought furniture into her St. Louis clients' homes. Mrs. Warfield — whose husband was related to Wallis Simpson Warfield, the Duchess of Windsor — had several classic chairs custom-made for The Warfield Shops in the Central West End (where Left Bank Books is now located).
Mrs. Smith inherited her mother's boudoir chair, gave it to her oldest daughter, then had to find one for her other daughter. Every comfortable chair she found was jumbo-sized — and shoddily made. When she announced that she was going to have to have the famous chair made — with horsehair padding, cotton wadding, eight-way hand-tied springs, hand tacking and muslin coverings — all her friends wanted one too.
So the chair became a Project. The timing was perfect: A lawyer and accountant, Mrs. Smith hadn't practiced in 18 years. Now that her youngest was in high school, it was time to reinvent herself again — this time maybe with more playful, creative work? She wasn't sure yet — but she had some energy. She called the Smithsonian about the chair, and its experts sent her to Congress, because Congress has horsehair pickers for all of its furniture ...
She pulled it off, named the chair "The Thatcher" (her mother's maiden name). And now that she had the perfect chair in hand, she needed the perfect fabric.
Mrs. Smith wanted her designs to be whimsical but timeless, with the energy and chic of bright colors that bounced off of each other. She thought about Slim Aarons' photos of the midcentury jet set; Lilly Pulitzer's preppy cachet. Then she flew to Key West, Fla., carrying clips of images she loved, and consulted with Martha dePoo, a watercolorist who was one of Lilly Pulitzer's original designers. Ms. dePoo guided Mrs. Smith to another of Mrs. Pulitzer's original artists, Leigh Martin Hooten, who agreed to create a series of designs for the collection. They worked out the concepts together, then Mrs. Smith went home to wait.
And wait. And recheck the date the mill owner was coming to the United States to see the "collection." And buy a book on working with artists.
Finally, on the morning of her meeting, the portfolio arrived by overnight express. And it was perfect. In the first design, one mermaid used a conch for a cellphone; another hugged her seahorse; another examined her lovely features in a mirror. The second pattern, a floral stripe, was inspired by Castellani's Millefiori brooch. The third, a jewel design, used nine intricate medallions. And the fourth was a cheerful mélange, quoting interesting bits from the others and adding a new element, the Grecian wave from the bridge at Versailles, to represent timelessness.
Buried in the intricate patterning of each design was the calligraphed "T" of Mrs. Smith's new company: Thatcher's Fine Timeless Fabric.
The mill owner loved the collection ("C'est formidable! Je l'aime!") and its bright colorways. So Mrs. Smith named it "Princesses" and called it "a collection croisiére" (cruisewear collection). She'd found the French mill by a small miracle: Its name, kept secret by top fabric purveyors like Scalamandré and Brunschwig & Fils, was in old records from The Warfield Shops, because the Warfields had bought the building from the family of the wife of Col. Roger Brunschwig.
And so Mrs. Smith's new collection was hand-engraved in Lyons and printed from table screens in the Alsace mill, alongside the newest Scalamandré and Brunschwig & Fils collections. Mrs. Smith's fabric was glazed chintz of the finest cotton. And when the engraver asked if Mrs. Smith wanted him to smooth any flaws, she said, "No way. Keep it exactly as it is drawn." She wanted the kind of perfection wrought by creative hands, not by a machine.
The same will be true for next year's project: "The Warfield," reinventing Babou's wing chair.
The chair costs $3750 and is available through Sallie Home. The fabric is to the trade only and is at Design & Detail, 2731 Sutton.
