Talk Shop: Karen Robert // Aux Abris
Photo by Susan Miller McCormick
ABOUT KAREN
Karen Robert has always had a flair for creative ventures. She spent 12 years as an interior designer, creating custom wallpapers for clients and friends. A self-taught graphic designer, her passion grew for designing the wallcoverings. She founded Aux Abris, a boutique design studio specializing in fine wallcoverings with highly textured surfaces, in 2015.
Karen honed her design aesthetic during her many years living in Paris, London, and Milan; she loves well-worn rooms with quirky modern touches and exuberance of color, texture, and pattern. The name “Aux Abris” means “take shelter”, which is a nod to her vacation home in Shelter Island, and her husband, who is half French.
Her wish is to inspire designers’ wit and imagination to create unconventional interiors with her patterns and murals, many inspired by early twentieth-century art movements such as the Bauhaus, French Modernism, or Art Nouveau. Karen works from her studio in Westchester and her vacation home in Shelter Island.
Describe your style in three words or less:
Modern, Traditional, Eclectic.
What have been the three biggest influences on your aesthetic in your life:
Living in Europe (Italy, france and England) for most of my young adult life honed my style. It gave me an appreciation for tattered antiques and also for modernism. I love nothing more than a modern rug on an antique wide plank floor or a modernist sculpture in front of a peeling plaster wall.
How did you start your company, and/or what is your favorite thing about what you do:
I started my wallpaper line when I couldn’t find exactly the right wallpaper for a large house I had just moved into. It was quite an old house with lovely quirky nooks , and I needed wallpaper that was both modern and old. I am a graphic designer so I had some designs in the back of my head that I was dying to create. So I got an old printer and bought some grasscloth to print on and started experimenting. Most of the house is covered in these early experiments, most are no longer in my line even. I look back and think I must have been crazy to just dive in like that. But I seem to thrive on jumping over hurdles. Most of what it takes to create a successful company is being imaginative about how to solve problems.
Do you have a mentor in your career, and if so, how have they helped to shape your trajectory:
I was self-taught in interior design and in graphic design. The joke in my family is that we all want to figure out how to do everything ourselves. That leads to a lot of mistakes, but it also leads to innovation and new ways of doing things.
What does your home say about you:
That I have lived in lots of different countries and I like pieces that are unique.
Where do you find inspiration:
For my wallpaper designs I find inspiration everywhere I look. If my eyes are open, I am inspired, especially in nature. Nature has a way of creating the most beautiful shapes in a combination of math and art. If you look at the Fibonacci sequence for example, it is repeated everywhere, from seashells to the shape of our galaxy.
Who are your style icons:
Jean Royere, Jacques Adnet, Gio Ponti, India Mahdavi, Pierre Yavonavich
What are your key ingredients for entertaining:
Invite interesting people and let the wine flow freely. The rest can take care of itself.
But, having said that, delicious food, good music, a fire in the fireplace, flowers, candlelight and nice place settings help of course. And finally, have lots of dinner parties all the time so you aren’t too uptight about it. You can have everything perfect and still have a dinner party flop because the hosts were overly worried and uptight about it all.
Do you collect anything:
I love sets of dishes. Currently I am collecting a set of Royal Crown Derby, Red Aves. It goes beautifully in my dark teal Dining Room.
Favorite Instagram accounts to follow for inspiration:
@mIlesredd, because he’s of course talented, but also funny.
@Casamota for his exuberant eye and he’s also funny
@Taliesan1969 for finding great imagery
@amandacbrooks because she reminds me of living in England and she has great taste
What design “rule” do you always follow, and which is made to be broken:
Since I work with patterns I appreciate symmetry. But only because then it allows the asymmetry to stand out against it.
What are you working on right now:
I am working on a series of prints and murals with animals in them. This all sounds traditional, but right after that I am working on a series of Modernist murals with a line of corresponding silk pillows. So I can’t seem to stay in one lane.
Wardrobe staples:
Comfortable but stylish shoes or boots. As a working woman I just can’t do the high heeled thing anymore. I have a well worn pair of Fiorentini and Baker ones that I have worn to death.
Best interior advice you ever received:
Every room needs an unexpected surprise in it to keep from being boring. Sometimes wallpaper can be that thing, especially if it is on the ceiling.
Best career advice you ever received:
If you are not good at something and your brain doesn’t naturally want to do it, hire someone else to do it. There is no need to try to go against your nature to try to be good at everything. Everything in my life shifted when I hired my first bookkeeper.
Types of home purchases you invest in, and save on:
For me the best way to make a gorgeous interior is to have great built-ins, like built in benches, beds or bookcases with a fabulous bookcase light or sconce built in. It is well worth the investment and makes your house look so much more expensive. Of course, wallpapering every wall helps as well. Nothing screams ‘developer” more than white sheetrock.
The things I save on are designer pieces that I find at places like Live Auctioneers, Chairish and flea markets like Round Top or Brimfield. “The find” makes a piece all the more valuable to me because of the story behind discovering it.
Your greatest extravagance:
Modern paintings. We splurge on them.
Favorite places to shop for home:
Live Auctioneers. If you know what designers you are looking for you can eventually find them there at great prices.
Most prized possession and why:
I love my Dorothy Draper dining table with Warren Platner chairs around it covered in a luscious teal silk velvet.
They were all found on Live Auctioneers.
Your interiors motto:
There is no such thing as a design emergency. If something goes wrong there is always time to fix it. Life is too short and good design should be more about the process.
Your life motto:
A sense of humor and a sense of fun go a long way to making your life happier and easier.
Advice for someone looking to define their own interior style:
Decorating Books. Assouline has the best selection. I just bought 6 of them from the nice lady on the ground floor of the D&D in New York. Some of them are for Christmas presents (but I am taking a peek inside before I send them off… )
Take Ten: My Favorite…
Food: Anything made out of an Ottolenghi cookbook and my husband’s sourdough bread.
Drink: A Cosmopolitan. Not too sweet.
Film: I prefer a miniseries. Films are too short to tell a great story these days. Recently I loved “The Queen's Gambit”, “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel'' and “Schitts Creek”
Hotel: I like a tiny quaint hotel, something like the Hotel Saint Paul on the Rive Gauche. All the rooms are different and it is perfectly located. I like one room there that has all red toile wallpaper and matching curtains and chairs. They don’t use vinyl wallpaper which I find very refreshing. I’m afraid I am a wallpaper snob that way.
City: Paris or London. Mostly because I like to see my friends and eat good food.
Bedding: Well-worn high count cotton that has been laundered hundreds of times.
Tea or Coffee (and how do you take it): Plain loose tea. I am doing the 16/8 diet so I put nothing in it.
Playlist: I am always making new ones, mostly based upon what I hear on WFUV. (Fordham University Radio) here in NY City. It is always featuring great new artists which I need since I don’t have time to spend searching around Spotify. .
Weekend Activity: Designing a new wallpaper. I know it sounds lame, but I don’t have time to design much anymore at the studio, so I use my weekends to do what I love most which is designing.
Design Book: Right now it is Perspectives by Stephen Gambrel. I love his houses and picture myself living in them. If I were to hire a designer I would hire him. I am not sure if I would drive him crazy because I am so opinionated or if we would have a lot of fun. I like to think the latter.
