For those who love multi-colored throw pillows and statement throws, you're in luck! The Designers Guild and John Derian Collaboration is here to provide the best in whimsical luxury bedding.
It's here! The Best of the John Derian x Designers Guild Collaboration is now available at Fig Linens and Home
Gone are the days when luxury bedding was nothing more than crisp white sheets. Today's high-end linens take inspiration from fashion, art, and the natural world to bring a splash of color to your bed and sofa.
No textiles better exemplify this shift than those created in the John Derian x Designers Guild Collaboration. Featuring playful and bright motifs including the color wheel, birds, libraries, and even an eye, the collection provides surrealist art for your home on the soft furnishings that you use every day.
John Derian is a much beloved, but sometimes elusive designer. So, for those who have been wondering "where can I buy John Derian textiles?" you're in luck! The collection is now available at Fig Linens and Home in our online boutique and at our retail location in Westport, Connecticut.
This article will further explore the styles of John Derian and Designers Guild and examine past collaborations from Designers Guild. Finally, we will guide you through the Fig Linens and Home team's favorite pillows and throws from the new collection.
Who is John Derian?
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.
All About Designer's Guild
The Brand
Designers Guild was established in 1970 by Tricia Guild with the business philosophy of combining innovation and creativity with quality. Their beautiful London-based stores are a destination for design aficionados from around the world.
The brand currently carries almost 9,000 fabrics and 2,000 wallpapers. These fabrics and wallpapers feature gorgeous designs including floral and geometric motifs. In the home, Designers Guild fabrics translate beautifully onto floral throw pillows and luxury Egyptian cotton sheet sets.
Designers Guild bedding is a Fig Linens and Home favorite. Our clients love luxury the beautiful colors and the inimitable patterns of the English brand. Shop all Designers Guild sheets and pillowcases, Designers Guild cushions, Designers Guild duvet covers, and Designers Guild Towels here.
Collaboration with Christian LaCroix
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.
What makes the Designers Guild x John Derian collaboration special?
Designers Guild and John Derian first launched their ongoing collection of pillows, fabrics, wallpapers, and accessories in 2018. The collection has grown each year to include a wide variety of decorative throws and colorful flower pillows.
The collaboration between Designers Guild London and John Derian NYC features designs inspired by John Derian's line of decoupage printed on a natural cotton and linen blend material. The pillows come with an insert included. True to Designers Guild's philosophy, the collection combines gorgeous, original designs with the highest quality materials.
Collaboration Motifs
The below sorts the latest of the John Derian x Designers Guild collection into categories based on the printed images. It displays our favorite designs in three categories of design centered on animals, design centered on plants, and design centered on the ocean.
Painted Animal Decorative Pillows
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.
Floral Decorative Pillows
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.
Seaside Themed Throws and Pillows
Despite their origins in New York City's East Village, these seaside-themed designs transport us far far away. The colorful pillows and throws featuring coral, ships, and tropical fish provide an instant vacation for the eyes.
The Exotic Fish Carmine Decorative Pillow is especially evocative. The design features red and white koi fish swimming across a plumed palace background rimmed by peonies and violets.
Layer these pillows on top of luxury sheets in the bedroom for a polished yet whimsical look!
Don't miss out on the opportunity to add a touch of luxury to your home with this beautiful collection. Browse our selection today and discover the perfect Designer's Guild x John Derian pillow for your home!
Sophie Edwards
Sophie is the head content writer at Fig Linens and Home. She is a bedding, linens, and luxury homeware expert with an interest is the intersection of interior design with fashion, travel and culture. She has a BA in creative writing and sociology from Sarah Lawrence and an MSc from the Oxford University Department of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography.