On the Moodboard: Sophie Collé's Wallpapered World
The designer told Personal Space all about the inspo behind her latest release
You’re reading the first edition of ‘On the Moodboard,’ a column in which I talk to some of my favorite designers working today about the references that enliven their work. The references could be high brow or low brow, well-known or totally unknown.
Designer Sophie Collé’s career first exploded in the early pandemic on Instagram. With their vivid hues and playful forms, her handcrafted furniture pieces popped on screen. They stand as an important reference point in the maximalist Gen Z design trends that have been unravelling ever since.
Now produced by Areaware, the infectiously cute Splat side table might be Sophie Collé’s best known design, but the Brooklyn-based designer has broader ambitions than just furniture. “I do want to be a Martha Stewart type, with a hand in every pot,” Collé explained to me earlier this week. “I’ve always been really interested in creating the entire holistic environment.” She’s collaborated with brands including HypeBeast, Windmill, and Home Depot, and her new collection of wallpapers with PhotoWall is one step further in that direction. The group of five unique designs bring her color-happy, post modern-influenced sensibility to walls for the first time.
Below, Collé discusses the references that influenced each design, from Giorgio de Chirico paintings to a Robin Williams movie that the internet would rather forget.
The wallpaper: Swirling Spirals, available in blue, pink, and yellow.
The reference: One of Collé’s childhood bedrooms.
COLLÉ: I started designing the "Swirling Spirals" pattern due in my part to my obsession with spirals. I then thought of introducing a stripe idea and the whole time I envisioned it in blue. A few weeks later I stumbled upon an old picture of my childhood bedroom that I didn't remember at all, I must have been younger than 6 or so. We moved a lot, so my mom experimented with my room a lot, and this was one of her quick decorations.
DAVIES: What was your relationship to your living spaces and creativity growing up?
COLLÉ: My family moved to France when I was like six. It was a crazy immersion, because how they live there is just so different than how we live. I actually remember being very happy there, because all we ever did was go to museums. That short period of time really, really informed who I am. When we moved back to the States, it was the most gigantic culture shock I've ever had, because life just felt so plain again, moving back to the suburbs. I just remember things becoming very gray again.
My mom was an artist, so I spent so much time in her studio. She didn't send me to pre K, I spent a year in her studio, basically being her intern. We were always in this environment of creating and making and not really consuming, which now, as an adult, even though I am creating all the time, I do feel like more of a consumer than I'm a creator. I do long for that childhood of constantly just creating. Especially in all of our small living rooms, I always had my Lego table set up. It had a perforated top, and you could just build on top of it and then throw everything in the middle.
The wallpaper: Checkmate, available in blue, multi-color, and yellow.
The reference: The “Stardust” neon sign in Vegas, a 99 cent store in Brooklyn.
COLLÉ: I love old signs, diner billboards, any sort of signage with personality is a huge inspiration. I especially love the "Stardust" sign that Denise Scott Brown and Venturi loved. The "Checkmate" print pulled from the classic checkerboard pattern that I associate with diners and games. The diamond shape, coincidentally there is a 99 cent store near me with similar diamonds in the signage which I have always loved.
DAVIES: What’s your relationship to taking inspiration photos out in the world, versus collecting online? Do you consciously reference the things you take photos of or does it just seep in subconsciously?
COLLÉ: From 2017 to 2019, all I was doing was taking architectural pictures. I went to Virginia Tech, so it's kind of in the middle of nowhere. You're basically surrounded by mountains, farms, and football. But if you drive a little bit outside of Blacksburg, you hit Christiansburg and Roanoke. They're these super rural but also industrial cities that very much feel like Americana. I would just go on these road trips with my roommate, just taking pictures. Looking for color, looking for signage, looking for forms.
That's when I really was transitioning out of being like industrial design, gray, black, steel, wood and finding color again. I actually don't think I credit those towns enough. There is this one garage shack that was all primary colors, and that really informed my thesis, and then a lot of my other discoveries and things like that.
I try to absorb a lot of what's around me instead of on my phone. I use Pinterest for other things, like, I have a really cute wedding moodboard going, but I try to see what already works well out in the world, even though, you know, the internet is the real world it just feels like cheating.
DAVIES: I totally get that. I feel like I am such a image collector in my life, but I've never gotten into Pinterest much, kind of for that reason. It feels a little more impersonal.
COLLÉ: You don't have to dig, it's like, going to a curated thrift store instead of Goodwill. It's like, where's the work?
The wallpaper: Confetti Canvas, available in pink, pink small, white, white small
The reference: Toys (1992)
COLLÉ: Toys is one of my biggest inspirations, and was my favorite movie in elementary school. It has a really weird plot and has terrible reviews, but the set design and artistry of it really stood out during rewatches in late high school and college. It's a POMO fever dream fantasy! It is a general inspiration to all of the prints and all of my work, to be honest.
DAVIES: I have never heard of this movie, so this is awesome for me. I love the look of it.
COLLÉ: It's hard to find. Every once in a while, it gets on Hulu, and then it will disappear off the ether. I purchased a DVD of it so that I could always have it on hand. It's nuts. It's like a fucking fever dream. Like, I've never dropped acid, but I would imagine it to be like that.
DAVIES: When was your most recent rewatch?
COLLÉ: Probably a year ago. I watch it probably like every year and a half, but sometimes I don't watch the whole thing. There was this one time in 2018 I was like, so fucking depressed working at this art museum. I had rediscovered it maybe a year before, but I couldn't find it anywhere, and so when it finally landed on Hulu, I like watched it obsessively every day for 20 days. I kid you not, I've archived most of them, but I think I posted about it nine times on Instagram.
The wallpaper: Memphis Metropolis
The reference: The paintings of Giorgio de Chirico
COLLÉ: Memphis Metropolis is of course inspired by Memphis Milano, my top favorite group, but l've also been a long time fan of De Chirico, and his moody fantasy paintings. I also am obsessed with columns, and love his flat yet distorted perspectives.
DAVIES: When did you discover his work?
COLLÉ: He's one of my mom's favorites. I feel like she actually taught me about him when she was teaching me, like, what not to do about perspective. She was like, "This is cool, but this is wrong."
The wallpaper: Woodshop Mural
The reference: Sophie’s own hand-painted woodshop mural, completed four years ago, which has since been painted over.
COLLÉ: Photowall initially found my work on Pinterest via this photo. It was only right to include the intial inspiration for the collection as a whole.
DAVIES: Now that the woodshop mural doesn’t exist in its original form, how do you feel looking at it, or at the wallpaper inspired by it?
COLLÉ: I feel nostalgic. I think I feel very nostalgic right now for like, the past four years, because my life looks so different all of a sudden. Like, I'm not covered in dust in the woodshop all day. I'm sending emails all day, I'm a project manager, I'm working with fabricators.
DAVIES: When you were painting the original woodshop mural, how did you figure out the colors you wanted to use?
COLLÉ: That was when I first started doing custom commissions, so I had a lot of random colors in the shop, and I had a lot of colors that I would have never used in my work. My mom had given me a huge crate of paints that she wasn't going to use anymore. It was like a mix of colors that I was using in my work and a mix of colors that I had stolen from my mom, like the hot pink. It was very fast-paced, I had my friend Jack help me and I think we did it over the course of like two days. It was not planned at all, it was like, "Oh Jack just did a black shape, I'll do a blue shape. Oh, there's blue there, I'm not gonna do blue again for another three feet."
I really thought the Robin Williams movie was going to be Popeye and Toys was a much kookier and fun surprise! Loved this!!