Larry Laslo to Design for Robert Allen Group
By Carole Sloan -- Home Textiles Today, 6/19/2006
New York — In a far-reaching design collaboration, interior and home furnishings designer Larry Laslo will create total room concepts for The Robert Allen Group.
Laslo's first licensed collections for The Robert Allen Group, to launch in early to mid-2007, will embrace a wide range of decorative fabrics including velvets, leathers, sheers, and outdoor constructions, as well as decorative curtain rods and trimmings.
The designer, who is known for using show business references in his works, especially Hollywood of yore, said, “There definitely will be a show business element in the collections overall.” But basically, the collection will follow his design philosophy of timeless contemporary.
Laslo also sees “a definite need for menswear looks in cream to darks, with small geometrics, plains, swirls, as well as overscaled motifs and big florals. Overall, I'll be doing many things.”
And the many things will include working “on total room collection concepts,” related Andy Pacuk, senior vp, The Robert Allen Group. An important element can be “interaction with Ferguson Copeland, Directional, Haeger, Rosenbaum and Frederick Cooper” — all Laslo licensees in other home furnishings categories from furniture and lighting to dinnerware and accessories.
Noting, “We're a home furnishings business, not just fabrics,” Pacuk pointed to potential synergies among all the products.
The collection, Pacuk ex-plained, “will reflect Larry's distinct contemporary style. And he has a personality — both with himself and his products — that attracts other interior designers. And he also will make our own designers more intelligent about interior designers' needs. He will be designing for them.”
The fabrics will be toward the upper end of the price spectrum, Pacuk said, “and while we're still in a preliminary mode, the collection probably will be mostly wovens.”
Laslo's furniture for Ferguson Copeland already is carried in the Robert Allen/Beacon Hill interior designer showrooms across the country.
“Our collaboration with Larry is a natural evolution of the strong working relationship we enjoy in projects including the glamorous Kip's Bay Show House bedroom he created this year with Robert Allen and Beacon Hill fabrics,” said Jeff Cordover, president of The Robert Allen Group. “Larry's distinctive contemporary sensibilities” will broaden the company's offerings,” he added.
