Video Transcript

Kelly Hoppen definitely has a signature look and I happen to love it! She spoke with me about her new collection, the inspiration, details and using her signature color.

The inspiration is very much an accumulation of everything that I am – which is neutral, simple, easy to live with; but it’s all about texture, you know it’s about 50 pieces but there are 800 different ways you can mix and match everything.

You have a lot of pieces that have high-luster, low-sheen, naturals, can you talk about the mixture of material?

I love Chinese lacquer and obviously this was made in China by hand. And it’s very beautiful the way it’s done. Lacquering is always layers and layers, and this is thick and it’s shiny and it’s glossy but what I love about it is mixing it with some of the very earthy woods. There’s obviously a lot of taupe, white, black, but the combination of all the mixtures that you can change and move it around – I’ve found with all the people buying the collection they’re loving that because it makes them feel like they’re involved and they can make a choice.

The details are beautiful. Can you speak to that?

Well, you know, on the top of the table there’s this little groove and then if you look at the mirror you’ve got the same groove there or in the cubes. What we’ve done is we’ve made all the furniture in three sizes. So the people in Japan have much smaller homes, the people in Florida have very big homes. So there’s a real mixture, but the details are very, very subtle.

One of the other details is the nailhead trim and how you’ve incorporated that throughout the collection.

Yes, well the nailhead is one of the things that you would use on a trunk and obviously we’ve gone and done the trunks in leather with the sort of signature bands. Then we’ve done the trunks in lacquer, which is a new form of doing the trunks. Then also we’ve done it on the back of the chairs, the side of the chairs again. A chair, normally you look at the front of the chair and you sit on it but when you push a chair in the backs are important. So I’ve tried to use detailing like that.

We’re seeing a lot of gray as a neutral, can you talk about this new neutral color?

It’s different shades of taupe, which I’ve always said in all my books and lectures and everything that it’s a very good neutral color for people to then add what they want onto it. But we’ve done the taupe colors and we’ve done the sands, then we’ve done the charcoals, the blacks, the whites – so again it kind of mixes with whatever you choose.

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