Colorful Pillows: The Designers Guild & John Derian Collab

The John Derian Company Inc. was founded in 1989 in New York City. The brand began with John's obsession with decoupage. Utilizing a unique technique involving 18th and 19th-century prints, he started creating decoupaged plates, paperweights, and glassware in his East Village studio. 

In 2016, John released the John Derian Picture Book with compilations of his favorite images from his 18th and 19th-century archives. The book quickly became a New York Times bestseller. The Eye Sepia Decorative Pillow, featured in the image to the right, uses the image from the cover of the bestselling book. 

John Derian has worked on a variety of collaborations from creating clothing with Todd Snyder to creating Wallpaper with Pierre Frey. He even worked on a John Derian candle with LAFCO New York. The collaboration with Designers Guild brings John Derian's eclectic world to the medium of home textiles.

John's work has been featured in the New York Times, Elle Décor, Vanity Fair, Bon Appetit, New York Magazine, GQ, and more. 

For more hands-on exploration, learn how to recreate John Derian's decoupage style with House Beautiful here. 

Like John Derian, Designers Guild is no stranger to collaboration. The brand has worked on collections with William Yeoward and English Heritage. A Fig Favorite is the Designers Guild x Christian Lacroix collaboration. 

The iconic fashion house of Christian Lacroix was launched in 1987. The playful, exaggerated luxury of the brand quickly gained lasting acclaim. In fact, Anna Wintour named the November 1988 cover featuring Michaela Bercu in a bejeweled Lacroix top as her favorite Vogue cover of all time. The image has been described as "The Vogue Cover That Revolutionized Fashion" and Gigi Hadid recreated the look in 2014. 

The Designer's Guild x Christian Lacroix collaboration renders the busy elegance the brand has become known for on decorative pillows and throws including Lacroix's iconic text and design.

The Christian Lacroix pillows pictured on the right display just a few of the gorgeous designs used in the collection. Again, the nexus of fashion and interior design becomes a space for innovation. 

The care with which this collaboration was executed foreshadows the later gorgeous prints of the Designers Guild x John Derian Collection.

Butterflies, birds, and rabbits, oh my! John Derian's Designers Guild collaboration features several unexpected playful animal prints. For instance, the decoupage-inspired "In the Library" pillow features a parrot, a kangaroo, and a bunny on a backdrop of an ornate gilded library. Another favorite is the whimsical "Heavens Zinc" decorative pillow. This Designers Guild and John Derian Throw Pillow features a giraffe over a map on the front and a butterfly over a map on the back. 

What we love about the animal Designers Guild x John Derian pillows is that they are both familiar and otherworldly. The strange combination of animals and antique settings creates an almost surrealist feeling, which the playfulness of the imagery renders comfortingly humorous.

Budding botanicals are the subject of many 18th and 19th-century prints, and therefore the subject of many of John Derian's designs. These John Derian x Designers Guild pillows feature flowers, mushrooms, and fruits. 

A Fig Linens favorite is the Chanterelle Carmine Decorative Pillow. The pillow features a variety of foraged fungi on the front and a red and green speckled leaf backing. The Flower Vase Parchment Throw features an intricately illustrated flower vase brimming over with pink peonies, bluebells, and buttercups. The throw would look gorgeous draped casually over a sofa in the living room. 

These naturally inspired illustrations give the feeling of being extracted from some mid-century botanist's notebook. The Designers Guild x John Derian Collection offers something both classic and modern.