NewsGallery: CHRISTIANE LEMIEUX: THINKING OUTSIDE THE GRAPHIC TEXTILE DESIGN BOX

By CHRISTINE AYE
Christiane Lemieux is the brains and beauty behind Dwell Home Furnishings. Dwell Home Furnishings was founded by Lemieux in 1999 with hopes of bringing modern textile design to the world of bedding. "I was dissatisfied with the lack of colorful and graphic textile design being created for the modern home. I set out to establish a product line that was contemporary and exciting," as Lemieux remembers. Her company is now well-known as a leader and modernizer in the bedding market.

Christiane Lemieux: Deliberately Dwelling on It via Gestalten.

With so much success in such a short period of time, she started Dwellbaby, Dwellkids, and Dwelltable, with Dwellbaby launching as a separate company in 2002. What makes her company so different is that she incorporates and plays with geometric shapes, mixing it often with stripes and abstract floral prints, which all come into life by infusing vibrant colors into her designs—offering the baby world of design a much more sophisticated approach (featured right and below).

Aside from starting her own company in the late 90’s, she is also an author, writing her first book UNDECORATE. UNDECORATE was released in March of this year, and is about a different method to interior design—advocating the idea of throwing out all of the “old rulebooks.” An overall e-commerce based business, in October 2010 this all changed. Lemieux opened her first real Dwell store located in ABC Carpet & Home. Dwell Studio also created a line for Target back in 2008.

Prior to making it big in the textile and furniture design scene, Lemieux attended Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada and Parsons School of Design in New York, where she found her love initially for fashion design. She first began her career in fashion, working as a fabric assistant for Isaac Mizrahi. Shortly after, she worked as an assistant designer of women’s woven clothing, fabric design, development and merchandising for the Gap. Finally, after much hard work and immersing herself in the interior design world, she ended up as the Design Director with Portico. In the long run, she felt it was time to start her own company, and that's how Dwell Home Furnishings was born.

Check out some of Christiane Lemieux's work below and see for yourself.