This week in design, KitchenAid’s stylish new stand mixer with wooden bowl is flying off the shelves—but culinary pros are keeping their distance. Stay in the know with our weekly roundup of headlines, launches, events, recommended reading and more.
Business News
A Williams-Sonoma ex-employee has been accused of defrauding the company of more than $10 million and pocketing the funds for personal use, SFGate reports. According to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, Ben Thomas III, a former general manager of a company facility in Georgia, created and operated a fraudulent entity called Empire Logistics Services, to which he approved Williams-Sonoma vendor payments of up to $50,000 at a time. According to the Department of Justice, Thomas used the funds to “purchase a yacht, automobiles, tickets to professional sporting events, pet cloning, an approximately 12,000-square-foot home, and professional landscaping services.” Now he is facing charges that include wire fraud and money laundering—if found guilty, he could get up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine per violation.
Static Media—the owner of sites like House Digest and The List—has acquired online shelter magazine Hunker. Although the latter found fast success following its 2017 launch, amassing 10 million monthly visitors by 2021, the last few years brought increasing challenges. Just a few months ago, Business of Home reported that the site had gone quiet, laying off its entire staff and publishing just a handful of articles written by a freelancer. At the time, a spokesperson for parent company World of Good Brands told BOH that it had shuttered its shelter category but still aimed to invest in Hunker.
Asian furniture manufacturer Green River Group has acquired U.S.–based furniture manufacturer Abbyson Living and furniture importer Vogue Home Furnishings, Home News Now reports. Following the purchase, the companies will be rebranded as Abbyson Home and Vogue Home, though each will retain its individual entity. They will also retain key executives, including Vogue chief revenue officer Adam Paxton and Abbyson’s namesake founder, Abby Rafieha. The acquisition comes on the heels of the July purchase of home furnishings manufacturer Hillsdale Furniture (now HH2) by Green River Group subsidiary Mellow River.
Tupperware has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing its failure to adopt a diverse sales strategy over time, as well the “challenging macroeconomic environment” over the last few years, The New York Times reports. Despite success in its early years through direct sales strategies such as Tupperware parties, the 78-year-old company was late to seek out additional distribution channels and did not offer its products through Amazon or Target until 2022. In its bankruptcy filing, it listed assets of roughly $680 million and debts of $1.2 billion, and it is now seeking court approval to facilitate a sale and maintain operations.
Investment firm Kingswood Capital Management has acquired Kichler Lighting, Home Accents Today reports. The deal will see the residential and commercial lighting brand merge with Progress Lighting—which Kingswood bought in late 2023. Former Progress CEO Sean Veit will serve in the same role for the newly combined companies, while former Kichler president Vijay Shankar will serve as executive chairman.
Massachusetts–based retailer Templeton Furniture is closing its doors after more than 50 years in business, The Gardner News reports. The closure comes as owner and co-founder Bruce Duguay—who established the retailer in 1971 alongside his father-in-law, the late Roland LeClerc—prepares to retire at the end of October. For many years, the business operated by offering customers locally produced furniture. Duguay told the newspaper that the company’s closure was due in part to the industry’s shift overseas, along with ongoing economic challenges in the years since the pandemic.
Launches and Collaborations
Pottery Barn Kids and Pottery Barn Teen have tapped LoveShackFancy for a collection modeled after the clothing brand’s vintage-inspired aesthetic. The resulting product assortment includes a number of motifs found in the lifestyle label’s pieces—such as florals, bows and pastel hues—featured on dorm and nursery decor, accessories, toys and more.
Fashion designer Prabal Gurung has reunited with Rugs USA for the debut of 23 new styles along with a variety of fresh colorways. Designed with a grounding theme in mind, the collection includes soothing neutral tones, organic shapes and luxurious tactile weaves.
Gurung also teamed up with Boll & Branch for this year’s New York Fashion Week. The designer showcased the brand’s 100 percent organic cotton Summit Supima material (the same kind he used to craft a dress for tennis star Maria Sharapova to wear to the 2024 Met Gala) to create a series of runway looks for his Spring 2025 ready-to-wear collection.
Ruggable partnered with Martyn Lawrence Bullard—whose star-studded clientele includes Cher, Kylie Jenner, Ellen Pompeo and more—for a new collection. The 13 styles draw inspiration from the designer’s recent travels to places like India and Morocco, borrowing trellis motifs, dhurrie-esque patterns and ikat techniques to create pieces in hues ranging from soft neutrals to teal, earthy red and sage green.
Recommended Reading
For the California-based Leach family, going in on the purchase of a French chateau together seemed like a dream. Armed with their “talent passports” (four-year residency visas for expats looking to “develop France’s economic attractiveness”), they planned to transform a crumbling estate into a hospitality venture and document the process on social media. As Alexandra Marvar writes for The Wall Street Journal, the Leaches are not alone: With plenty of costly-to-maintain châteaus sitting on the French housing market, an increasing number of Americans are purchasing the properties and joining the growing “chateauverse” on YouTube. But as the family has come to find out, the process of renovating a centuries-old estate includes design hurdles that American DIY pros could never dream of.
On social media, the term grannycore is often associated with a number of design signifiers, ranging from floral fabrics and brown furniture to antique china and hook-and-latch rugs. For The Washington Post, Amanda Long talks to some of the top influencers behind the trend—and while none are grannies themselves, each is paying homage to the generations of design-minded women who came before them.
Across the pond (and in the U.S., for that matter) renting is on the rise, with the U.K. rental market growing by 28 percent compared to the year before—a figure that’s even higher in countries like Denmark and Germany. In the Financial Times, Mark C. O’Flaherty writes about the furniture and decor designers who are rising to meet the growing wave of renters with home innovations like removable flooring systems and freestanding kitchen collections.
