Victor Glemaud Launches Home Goods Line With Schumacher Design House – WWD

Victor Glemaud is keeping busy — with resort shooting now and spring 2023 on deck. But somehow in the interim, the designer known for joyful knits is lending his creative inspiration to interiors.

The new link with design house Schumacher, called Cul-De-Sac by Victor Glemaud, is equal parts an ode to the Haitian-American designer’s clean and chic aesthetic as well as his Caribbean heritage.

Featuring fabrics, wall coverings and trims, the collection brings with it a geometric cut velvet, an entirely new toile, a streamlined shibori and a floral featuring Haiti’s national flower, the hibiscus.

Already the reaction seems to be resoundingly positive in the design world.

“We haven’t rewritten home or anything like that, but what we’ve done is take traditional motifs, added amazing texture, and it feels original. And I think that’s the difference and why people are reacting to it so enthusiastically,” Glemaud told WWD. “From the color mixing to the pattern to the cut velvet, it can be really classic, but it could also be urban, it could be traditional, it could work for the country.”

Schumacher creative director Dara Caponigro said in a statement, “When Victor Glemaud first came across my radar, I was immediately smitten and knew his sensibility would translate beautifully into the world of home. His wallpapers, fabrics and trims for Schumacher capture the same spirit of sophistication, fun, ease and seduction that his fashion does — they feel fresh and cool and stylish — outside of the box yet never trying too hard.”

The standout piece in the lineup is a rare, reimagined Touissant Toile named — and designed by Schumacher artisans — for Toussaint Louverture, a Haitian general and the most prominent leader of the Haitian Revolution.

The design draws on depictions of Louverture, both as a general and, as Glemaud puts it, “his human side” as a husband in the kitchen with his wife, set among a scene with motifs distinct to Haiti: its Hispaniolan Trogon national bird, its hibiscus national flower, its mountains, its palm trees, its lushness.

“This toile continues on what the great Sheila Bridges has done with the Harlem Toile…and a toile is centuries old. People reinterpret toiles, people play with toiles, but what we have done is to make it be this character, to do Toussaint in his life and to show a historical figure who has not been spoken about, who has been overlooked, who has been erased, forgotten. To have this depiction in a very celebratory, joyful, traditional scene scape, I think it means a lot because it is a Black figure in history that a lot of people don’t know about, and is important to Black liberation, to Black emancipation globally throughout the world,” Glemaud said.

His dream, he added, is to see the Toussaint Toile in nurseries.

“For kids to see that, to hopefully live with it, interact with it, be inspired by it, I think the impact is immeasurable. I wish I had seen things like this growing up. I wish I had things like this in my house growing up. But they didn’t exist,” he said. “Black people, whether they’re historical or not, in these types of pastoral type settings, is not a normal thing. You know? Whether it’s in home or fashion or whatever. You just don’t see it that often.”

The 14 patterns and prints — all named to honor important women in Glemaud’s life — come in three to four colorways each, with new hues set to be added in the coming weeks and months. The toile, for one, comes in a crisp blue on ivory, black on ivory, blue on sky and pink on green. The collection will be sold to interior designers and architects through fschumacher.com, via its U.K. and EU sites, through the design house’s showrooms via designated Schumacher agents. Prices for wall coverings begin around $100 and $300 for fabrics.

With this home launch coming a little more more than a month after the designer’s foray into eyewear, it begs the question: what’s next on deck for Glemaud?

Admittedly, he said, “resort” and “spring,” noting that these brand extensions aren’t diverting him from his core fashion line. But there’s still more in the works for Glemaud than clothes.

“I love doing this,” he said of the first home goods drop. “I would love to do other categories. The idea of tabletop, furniture, the idea of colorful stemware, all of those things taking the shapes that we have in the toiles and as well as putting that into flatware.…There’s so many ideas that I have for other home and interior categories.”

Beyond that, there’s something else coming up, too, likely back in the fashion category, though things are still somewhat quiet on that front.

“We’re going to announce a really exciting, accessible partnership after the summer and I’m really looking forward to that,” Glemaud said. “The industry that we live in is so focused on price point and adjacencies and this person is raising their prices so we have to raise our prices and blah, blah, blah. But I think people just want fashion that they can afford at a price. And whether you bought a Chanel handbag, most people are not wearing Chanel top to toe — clothes are a mixture of all of these price points, that’s the way people shop. And I think to be able to provide real, exciting fashion at a truly accessible price, I can’t wait to do that.”