Remember the name Lynn Hollyn.
If strategy and shrewd marketing can catapault a designer into stardom, then Hollyn is aiming at becoming the Martha Stewart of U.S. home furnishings. ”I am an Everyman`s designer,” said Hollyn during a recent Chicago visit to introduce her home furnishings at selected Plunkett Furniture stores. ”My goal is for everyone in American to have a beautiful home.”
Make that an Everywoman`s designer. Although Hollyn`s first furniture collection only recently appeared in stores, a number of merchants are betting her designs will be winners, especially with female consumers.
”It`s a collection designed for ladies by a lady,” said Mike Meyers, general manager of Traditions, a design center in Rockford. ”It`s a very feminine collection . . . the ladies who come in ooh and aah. You get a man in and he doesn`t want it in the house. But ladies have more insight and always have when it comes to the house.”
Gender insight into home decorating may be debatable. The fact that women make an estimated 80 percent of the furniture buying decisions is not. Despite this, the designers and decisionmakers in home furnishings are overwhelmingly male; so a frankly feminine collection created by a woman is not only novel but news.
”I am the first woman to design (wood bedroom and dining room furniture) for a major company,” she said while in Chicago. Tinged with hyperbole, the statement has few public challengers.
Her furniture, made by Lexington Furniture Industries, is marked by carving, curved lines, hand-painted floral details, antique and painted finishes. Hollyn`s styles obviously are inspired by European furnishings, a melange of styles the designer insists are new and not copies or
reproductions.
When the collection was introduced at the twice-a-year International Home Furnishings Market in High Point, N.C., it created a sensation.
”We had to go back three times before we could get into the showroom, it was such a hit,” Meyers recalled.
The presentation was as impressive as the 75 pieces of upholstery, wicker and wood.
Lexington and Hollyn had surrounded the furniture with a lavish display of color-related fabrics, wallcoverings, floorcoverings and accessories, many abounding with lace, bows and floral motifs. All designed by Hollyn, the products represented 16 different companies and hundreds of items comprising an instant collection of floor-to-ceiling home goods dubbed ”Lynn Hollyn at Home.”
Behind this burgeoning empire stood Hollyn, a slender 38-year-old New Yorker better known to consumers by her designs than her name. Creator of
”Lynn Hollyn`s Town and Country Cat,” a book that has spawned everything from calendars to cups with country motifs, she also is responsible for a best-selling pattern of a white goose with head turned backwards on a blue backgound that has been printed on products ranging from paper to porcelain.
”She brings together the country look in a slightly different way,”
says Sandy Jones, creative director for Gibson Greeting Cards of Cincinnati.
”She uses familar patterns and colors in a different way. It would be the same as Ralph Lauren. He created a look.”
Hollyn decided to launch her own design business ten years ago when she was pregnant with her first child.
”I wanted to coordinate a child`s room,” she says, ”but I couldn`t get what I wanted.” Eschewing cartoon motifs, she searched for patterns from classic children`s tales such as Peter Rabbit. They were not to be found. Frustrated, she switched to floral fabrics.
”I couldn`t get curtains that coordinated,” she recalled. Seeing a void she thought she could address, she purposely wrote and illustrated the ”Town and Country Cat,” then mailed calendars based on it to companies she thought might buy her designs to launch her career. The ploy worked. She has created a new design theme for a cross-section of companies and products every 18 months.
She supervises a Union Square studio with a network of 70 designers, illustrators and artists around the world and divides her time between a Manhatten penthouse apartment and a baronial country house in the rolling Berkshire foothills of Connecticut. Married to real estate executive Michael Taub, her family has now grown to four.
”My home is my priority,” she said. ”I treasure the objects in my home more than the clothing I wear.” Apparel wears out or goes out of style, she pointed out, but furnishings can go on and on to be enjoyed and used by several generations.
”I create a whole dream of what a home should be,” said Hollyn of her coordinated home furnishings. ”But it all can be broken down into individual items. . . . Maybe it`s even like a recipe. You put it all together and it stands as a whole, but break it down into ingredients and each stands on its own.”
”I do believe spare rooms will give way to lavish rooms,” she declared. She said people of all economic levels are looking homeward to recreate some of the traditions and serenity which have all but disappeared from the public life of the work world.
Sensing the time was right for a switch from American country to the more eclectic mode of the European provinces, she called Carl Levine, senior vice president of Bloomingdale`s Department Stores.
”She said she had something she wanted to sell the furniture industry,” Levine recalled. ”I took a look and it looked right for the early `90s-very traditional, very comfortable with a little color.” He suggested she call Lexington, a fast-growing furniture maker.
”I think everyone in the room was of the same mind,” said Geoff Beaston, vice president of marketing, of the initial meeting with Hollyn.
”The idea of blending styles and the light colors was new, fresh and something that would have appeal to women. It can take on masculine characteristics in certain finishes.”
Many U.S. retailers agreed, as did officials of Itokin, Japan`s second largest retailer. Executives of that company recently opened a ”Lynn Hollyn at Home” store on Madison Avenue in New York and Tokyo. There are plans for a chain of stores throughout Japan.
But will it sell to consumers? Will Hollyn succeed or fail?
Retailers only now are beginning to gauge consumer reaction. Lexington shipped the furnishings, with price tags ranging from about $325 for an occasional table to $2,000 for an elaborate king-size bed, in summer and early fall, just as an admittedly difficult business climate took hold.
Some merchants opted only for a smattering of furnishings, while others, such as Plunkett, are displaying more elaborate ”Hollyn at Home.”
”It`s doing real well,” reported Meyers of Rockford. Hugh Plunkett said, ”It has been strong, but it`s too early to tell” whether it will have a major impact or will be a short-lived trend.
The two merchants agree that women love the look. Plunkett also suggested it is most appealing to suburban and country consumers.
That doesn`t surprise Bloomingdale`s Levine. Despite his role as broker, Bloomingdale`s as yet has not bought the line, perhaps in part because he does not believe it will appeal ”to the lady who wears a short black skirt.
”It`s sort of the `90s interpretation of Victorian,” he observed.
”It`s a little fussy, but today fussy sells.”
Hollyn expresses no doubts about the future and is not wasting time building on her current success. She is designing a home collection called
”Elegant Country” for Drexel Heritage, one of Lexington`s sister companies. This new higher-priced collection, complete with coordinated floor coverings and home accessories, will be unveiled in April.
”Lexington is meant to be for mid-America, more affordable furnishings,” she explained. ” `Elegant Country` is meant to be more special, more expensive.”
