You see Caroline Cole pillows everywhere—in homes photographed by national magazines and on your friends’ couches. But did you know the name behind the label is really not Cole but Tribout?
By Christy Marshall
Photograph by Susan Jackson
Drew Barrymore was in her “everything angels” phase. Although we have no confirmation of this, we suspect it may have coincided with the filming of Charlie’s Angels or Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, when the diminutive dame was kickboxing crime in its grimy face. Then again, she may have a general thing for celestial beings with wings and halos.
Whatever the reason, when Ms. Barrymore spied a raspberry-and-white cherub-print Caroline Cole pillow in a West Palm Beach shop, she had to have one of her own. Dutifully, to order one for the star, her assistant called St. Louis—or more specifically, Joy Tribout of Joy Tribout Interiors.
“Of course, we monogrammed it and dated it,” Ms. Tribout says … which, just so you know, isn’t done every day.
Selling pillows, though, has been an everyday venture for Ms. Tribout for the past nine years, ever since her son, Torre, graduated from college and suggested they start a company together—and he’d run it. An interior designer, Ms. Tribout had been decorating houses and creating pillows for some 15 years before her son’s light-bulb moment.
Initially stumped on what to call the enterprise, Ms. Tribout, her daughter Tammy and Torre decided to name it after Ms. Tribout’s first grandchild—and Tammy’s daughter—Caroline Cole Caruso.
The down-filled pillows are fashioned out of fabrics and trims by Scalamandre, Kravet, Lee Jofa and Brunschwig & Fils, among others, and then hand-sewn by one of Tribout’s staff of seven sewers and cutters working out of the company’s 7,000-square-foot warehouse in Belleville, Ill. The line includes 450 designs and is sold in more than 300 stores nationally. Locally, the pillows can be found at Neiman Marcus, Brody’s Lamp and Shade, the St. Louis Woman’s Exchange and Tribout’s own store in Clayton. Prices range from $150 to $275 each, with sizes from 12- to 24-inch squares. The company sells approximately 7,000 yearly.
New pillows are designed twice a year, in January and July. For those who thrive on collecting, Ms. Tribout creates one limited edition annually—no more than 50 are made, each one is numbered. And in more than one posh piece of feathers and fabric, you’ll find a Tribout trademark—animal-hair hide.
“I think every room should have a little piece of it, or it isn’t a room,” Ms. Tribout announces cheerfully, albeit with a certain defiance. “You have to have it somewhere.”
