How I Design
Trend, vision, and a creative point of view.
Creative thinking isn’t a report you deliver, it’s a process you can trace. Here’s how I move from what I see in the world to a strong starting point suppliers can build a bed around.
New York · Four Days on the Road
The trend recap, told as a story.
Four days in New York with two of our key suppliers, moving from Texworld and Printsource through Cooper Hewitt, Pretemps, Zarin Fabrics, and a Vispring competitive shop. Some stops confirmed what we already suspected (Texworld: skip it). Others sharpened active projects: the disciplined brand identity of a monogram tie and the Pretemps stone-textured dress are now feeding the Beautyrest Black direction; light blues at Veronica Beard and Carolina Herrera are refining the Serta palette gap between Perfect Sleeper and Masterpiece. And one, Material ConneXion, opened a real conversation about how we source innovation for R&D.
Just as importantly, four days on the road with suppliers is four days of relationship-building you can’t manufacture in a call: they left with a clear read on how I shop competitively, what my non-negotiables are, and the level of detail I expect as we build these brands forward.
Full trend recap deck
Baxter Mills · Border to Bed
A century of American textile history, translated.
Baxter Mills is one of the most valuable inspiration resources I’ve built into my process. The mill houses an archive of historical pattern work, print samples, and woven references that most designers never get access to. On our last visit we pulled a significant volume of artwork: small-scale florals, geometric weaves, abstracted stripes, archival prints.
It’s not about copying what’s in the archive. It’s about giving my suppliers a strong creative starting point, so they can translate a hundred-year-old visual language into something that reads modern, wraps a bed correctly, and holds up on shelf. The result is design with real depth of reference behind it, which shows up in the final product whether the customer can name why or not.
Reference boards pulled from the archive
The Trend & Concept Deck
Turning research into a point of view.
Trend shopping and archive pulls like Baxter Mills generate volume, not direction: dozens of references with no shared meaning yet. The concept deck is where that volume becomes something usable. I organize everything we’ve pulled into themes, pressure-test each one against our Visual Brand Guide, and edit down hard until only the ideas with real legs survive.
The deck isn’t a record of what we saw, it’s the argument for what we build next, built so a designer, a supplier, or a merchant can open it and understand not just the reference, but the reasoning behind it. That’s the artifact I hand to my team and suppliers before a single sketch gets drawn, and it’s exactly what turned one Baxter Mills reference into the border you’ll see below.
Inside the deck · the three design principles
Case Study · The PSX Easter Egg
A hidden “X” woven into the border, Jeep’s-lizard style.
Jeep famously hides a small lizard in every vehicle, a mark that rewards the customer who looks closely and quietly signals the people who built it cared. We wanted the same for PSX. Starting from a single Baxter Mills reference, we translated the source pattern into a custom border artwork that reads as a clean geometric at a glance, but reveals a subtle X woven into the repeat when you look closer. It made it through the full development chain (archive scan to woven program to finished border) without losing the intent.
The Inspiration
Original Baxter Mills archive artwork we pulled as the source.
The Translation
Reinterpreted by our designer, the hidden X worked into the repeat.
The Fabric
The woven sample, X visible on close inspection.
The Finished Bed
PSX bed with the border in place, the easter egg living in the product.
That only happens when the reference is strong enough to survive translation.
Mood Boards · Sketch to Board to Bed
The final bed and the original concept board are unmistakably the same idea.
We start by gathering a large volume of trend input, then pressure-test it against the brand’s identity using our Visual Brand Guide. From there I build concepts along a mild-to-wild range (on-brand, a deliberate stretch, and genuinely unexpected), usually three to five themes refined hard down to two. The concept board becomes the north star: every artwork, material, and construction decision gets checked back against it, so stakeholders can trace the DNA from trend input to concept to art to material to bed.
Beautyrest Black
Comforpedic
Emerging Trends · A Point of View
The signals most of the industry isn’t talking about yet.
This buyer isn’t chasing status or maximalism. They want performance without compromise: technology-designed materials, less chemistry with the same benefits, and a story they can trust behind the fiber, foam, and finish. They read labels. They ask questions the last generation didn’t. And they’ll pay for the answer.
Aesthetically, I’m seeing a quiet resurgence of traditional pattern language (florals, scrolls, bolder motifs) after a long minimalist stretch. The French-farmhouse neutral palette is still the base, but subtle color is creeping in. None of these are hot yet. That’s exactly why they matter: by the time they’re hot, the roadmap window has closed.
Early color signals
The risk isn’t chasing the trend too early, it’s arriving after Restoration Hardware and Arhaus have already claimed the aesthetic and defined the price point.
And it’s not just a forecast: walking both Atlanta galleries, you can already see the edges of this arriving on the floor. La-Z-Boy is quietly seeding the same signals into its assortment: the farmhouse-modern neutral still anchors the room, but the accent pieces are where the color is creeping in. That’s the opening: the trend is validated in the line already; the roadmap question is how far to lean in, and when.
The Calendar Ahead
Where I go looking for what’s next.
Trend work runs on inputs. These are the fabric, furniture, textile, and art shows I’m tracking across 2026 and 2027, the markets I’ll pick from to keep a steady pipeline of fresh references feeding the roadmap.
2026
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Jul 14-15
Première Vision New York Tribeca Rooftop, NYC
High-end apparel fabric and leather sourcing show that previews collections roughly two seasons ahead.
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Jul 26-30
Las Vegas Market (Summer) World Market Center, Las Vegas
Furniture, home décor, and gift market with 3,500+ resources across permanent showrooms and temporary exhibits.
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Jul 29-31
Texworld / PrintSource NYC (Summer) Javits Center, NYC
Co-located fabric, trim, and apparel sourcing show paired with Printsource’s surface and print design market.
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Sep 15-18
Atlanta Fall Market AmericasMart, Atlanta
Gift, home furnishings, and fashion market.
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Sep 29 to Oct 1
LA Textile California Market Center, LA
West Coast textile trade show connecting fashion and textile designers, mills, trims, and manufacturing resources.
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Oct 15 to Nov 1
Round Top (Fall) Round Top, TX
The original and largest antiques show of its kind in the country, stretching over 11 miles of Texas highway.
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Oct 17-21
High Point Market (Fall) High Point, NC
The world’s largest home furnishings trade show, spanning nearly 2,000 exhibitors across the historic downtown district.
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Nov 17-19
Interwoven (Fall) High Point, NC
The only U.S. market dedicated to textiles, leather, and trim for the home furnishings industry.
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Dec 4-6
Art Basel Miami Beach Miami Beach Convention Center
Premier modern and contemporary art fair drawing galleries and collectors from around the world. VIP preview Dec 2-3.
2027
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Jan 12-15
Heimtextil Messe Frankfurt, Germany
The world’s leading trade fair for home and contract textiles: bed and bath, decorative and furniture fabrics, wall and window coverings.
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Jan 24-28
Las Vegas Market (Winter) World Market Center, Las Vegas
Winter edition of the furniture, home décor, and gift market.
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Feb 2-4
Surface Design Show Business Design Centre, London
The UK’s only show dedicated to surface material innovation for architects and designers.
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Apr 13-18
Salone del Mobile Fiera Milano Rho, Milan
The world’s leading furniture and design fair, including Euroluce.
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May 18-20
Interwoven (Spring) High Point, NC
Spring edition of the home textiles, leather, and trim market.
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Jun 9-11
3 Days of Design Copenhagen
Denmark’s citywide design festival held across showrooms and galleries, showcasing furniture and lighting launches.
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Sep 16-22
ITMA Hannover, Germany
The “Olympics” of textile machinery exhibitions, held once every four years.
Why La-Z-Boy
Century Vision isn’t a hundred-year abstraction to me, it’s a focused, deliberate investment in consumer insight and brand reinvigoration, and that’s exactly the kind of moment I want to build trend and vision inside of.