The COUPAR Edit
Your go-to for design industry insights and education. Explore our monthly blogs, meet industry leaders in our Take 10 series, and learn from historic design icons. Enhance your business with practical marketing and design tips. Subscribe for monthly updates!
Looking Into the Crystal Ball: Predicting 2024 Design Trends
The magician Alexander claimed to be The Man Who Knows, but we wonder if his crystal ball could predict design trends for 2024. COUPAR sought expert advice for divination. We asked the "Dean of West Coast Design," Gary Hutton, master decorative artist Willem Racké and esteemed architect Jonathan Feldman.
How to Get Your Work Published: Tricks of the Trade
In the competitive interior design market, design editorial features help increase name recognition and brand awareness, boost website traffic, and establish you as an expert. With the increasingly mercurial landscape of print publications, editorial pitching requires strategic thinking. While digital media is equally as important as print media, the look and feel of magazines is more evocative. There are a lot of Do's and Don'ts when it comes to pitching, so we're giving you COUPAR'S guide to editorial pitching for the design industry below.
Take 10 With COUPAR’S Callahan Foley
San Francisco native Callahan Foley has been with COUPAR for over three years. With a marketing background, she brings a different perspective to her role as Design Associate. Callahan’s skills are critical for the team since interior design relies heavily on client, vendor, and collaborator communications. She also enthusiastically embraces all the different design styles COUPAR works in for our clients while favoring Mad Men mid-century.
Style Icon: San Francisco’s Billy Gaylord
Herb Caen described designer William "Billy" Gaylord as a style icon. When Gaylord passed away in 1986, Dianne Feinstein recalled his love of life and mischievous humor. She was one of his pallbearers, along with Willie Brown, Boz Skaggs, Bill Blass, and Calvin Klein. From Mesquite, Texas, Gaylord moved to San Francisco in 1968. A few years later, at the age of twenty-five, Architectural Digest published his brilliantly pale Nob Hill apartment.
La Dolce Vita: The San Francisco Fall Show Gala
La Dolce Vita was in full force at the Opening Night Gala of The San Francisco Fall Show last October 11, 2023. COUPAR and 1,700 guests attended the Fort Mason Center Festival Pavilion event in support of Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The annual affair, chaired by designer Suzanne Tucker of Tucker & Marks, is the West Coast's leading international art, antiques, and design fair, showcasing over 40 top dealers from North America and beyond.
Man With the Hammer: Celebrating 30 Years of QuarryHouse
Congratulations to COUPAR client QuarryHouse on their 30th anniversary! The Marin County-based master stone masons work with elite builders, architects, and interior designers, creating timeless private estates and prestigious public works. Ed and Missy Westbrook co-founded QuarryHouse, taking the company name from the location of their home in San Anselmo on an old rock quarry.
Luis Barragán: Celebrating Hispanic Architecture
Celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month, we look to our neighbor Mexico and recognize the architect and landscape architect Luis Barragán (1902-1988). Barragán's color-saturated geometric buildings etch the contemporary architectural consciousness.
Take 10 With COUPAR’S Wyatt Shigley
Design Associate Wyatt Shigley started as a Design Assistant at COUPAR a little over three years ago. Wyatt segued effortlessly into the role with a B.A.S. in Interior Design from Colorado State University and nearly nine years of visual merchandising experience. One of his current projects is a four-story Pacific Heights Edwardian designed by Julius Kraft, and another is a contemporary ranch house in Portola Valley.
The San Francisco Fall Show: COUPAR Sponsors The Authors’ Alcove
How do young connoisseurs collect now? Art historian, designer, and author Michael Diaz-Griffith explores this topic in his book The New Antiquarians: At Home with Young Collectors. His compendium will be one of the books featured at the COUPAR-sponsored Authors' Alcove during The San Francisco Fall Show.
Jackson Square: When the Design District was North of Market
Before The San Francisco Design Center’s development in the 1970s, interior designers frequented "To the Trade" showrooms North of Market in historic Jackson Square. Just as it took vision, ingenuity, and hard work to transform SOMA's vacant warehouses and factories into a design mecca, so did the restoration of the neglected Classical Revival and Italianate commercial buildings in Jackson Square.
Take 10 With COUPAR's Mary Eaton
Lead Project Manager Mary Eaton has been with COUPAR for over four years and comes from an interior design background. After receiving a Bachelor of Science degree in Interior Design from High Point University in North Carolina, she immersed herself in the industry, working at various San Francisco Bay Area firms. Now she is a vital asset to our Studio team, helping guide projects from beginning to end.
Pride Month Profile: Interior Designer William Haines
June is Pride Month for the LGBTQ+ community, and COUPAR profiles the "King of Hollywood Regency," William "Billy" Haines (1900 – 1973). Haines was an accidental interior designer. The Virginia native came to Hollywood via New York City, where he lived openly as a gay man in bohemian Greenwich Village, working as a model.
Eastern Aesthetics: The Art of Imperfection
Wabi Sabi, the ancient Japanese philosophy of using organic materials with natural imperfections and embracing authenticity, originated in the 15th century. Wabi translates to living with humility and simplicity while being unified with nature, while sabi refers to accepting the lifecycle of anything, even with all its flaws.
Celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month: Isamu Noguchi
Artist, furnishings designer and landscape architect, Isamu Noguchi (1904 to 1988) straddled Western and Eastern cultures; born in Los Angeles to an American mother and a Japanese father. His father, Yone Noguchi, was an acclaimed poet who settled in the bohemian San Francisco Bay Area for seven years. He eventually traveled to New York City and met editor and writer Léonie Gilmour.
Take 10 With COUPAR’S Paige Bellante
Senior Lead Designer Paige Bellante has been with COUPAR for over three years and nimbly transferred her skills in visual merchandising to interior design. The Northern California native worked for companies such as Anthropologie and Nordstrom for eight years.
Celebrating Women's History Month: Interior Decorator Elsie de Wolfe
Photographer Cecil Beaton captured Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl (1865-1950), wearing her "Apollo of Versailles" velvet cape in her Paris apartment during the late 1930s. Elsa Schiaparelli designed the one-of-a-kind couture piece for de Wolfe to reference her taste for eighteenth-century fashion and the spectacular. It also celebrates the Apollo Fountain and its proximity to the interior decorator and socialite's home, Villa Trianon, in the Parc de Versailles.
Celebrating Black History Month: The Art of Aaron Douglas
Aaron Douglas (1899-1979), a significant African American figure in the Harlem Renaissance, was a Renaissance man, painter, illustrator, visual arts educator, and philosopher. New York's Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 30s was the focus of black intellectual and cultural activity.
Pantone Color of the Year: Viva Magenta
Pantone has announced its color of the year for 2023: Viva Magenta. This vibrant, bold hue possesses an undeniably strong energy.
Take 10 With Vistage Chair Walter Paulsen
Where do CEOs and business owners go when they need to make better decisions, strengthen their teams and grow their businesses? For Krista Coupar, it is her monthly Vistage Group meetings. The global organization has an outstanding 60-year-plus track record in executive coaching.
Pillow Talk: René Gregorius and the Renaissance Bed
René Gregorius and Stephanie Pineo, aficionados of early antique furnishings, craftsmanship, and design, opened their Los Angeles business Gregorius/Pineo in 1984 at the back of a North La Cienega Blvd storefront. They later moved to an elegant showroom at 651-653 North La Cienega Blvd. Interior Design Hall of Fame honoree Melvin Dwork told Architectural Digest almost ten years later, "Gregorius/Pineo is one of the best places out there."