Last year, Athena Calderone made headlines when she swapped the bright Cobble Hill town house that helped earn her tastemaker status for a moody wood-paneled Tribeca apartment. Her relocation was particularly newsworthy because it marked her transition into a different aesthetic, one that’s more historical and richly hued than the contemporary, neutrals-only look that she spread around the world. Now, Calderone has teamed up with Beni Rugs to release the first product collection that speaks to her new style, a line of 13 Art Deco–inspired rugs.
“This apartment definitely sparked my love of the period,” explains Calderone, who conducted months of research and traveled to Paris and Vienna to expand her knowledge of Art Deco. “What I love so much about design is the self-education and the learning and the diving down the rabbit hole of discovery. This rug collection was really born out of this moment of exploration for me.”
The collection, which is titled Salon, draws on the rectilinear, symmetrical geometry of French and Viennese Art Deco design and architecture. Calderone’s sketches were informed by the ceilings of the MAK Museum and the Adolf Loos American Bar, both in Vienna, as well as the façade of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. “I was seeing all these grids and self-contained, concentric rectangles, so I really played a lot with geometry,” she shares.
Calderone’s travels also influenced the collection’s rich color palette of icy blues and oxblood reds, warm ochres and soft creams. “My eyes are always just absorbing interesting colorways,” she says. “I tried to play with this restraint that Art Deco allowed, but also took bold risks with fusing colors together. I definitely played with more color in this collection, which was inspired by [the period], but also by things that I saw at various museums.”