Mannington Commercial's Design Local movement made its way over to the East Coast last month. And Washington D.C. played host to a very unique team.
That's right folks. The designers who assembled to document our nation's capital into a carpet and LVT flooring collection were in fact, all women!
And in true female fashion, these ladies took their sweet time. There was no immediate divide and conquer mentality as I witnessed in Chicago. They sat and very carefully and calmly decided on their location hit list and there was no sign of urgency.
Because they are women damn it. And they'd get moving when they were good and ready, and not a moment sooner.
And perhaps even more interesting was when they decided to do this (well, it turned out to be tried to do this) "ladies room style" as I like to call it: in one big group.
First stop was Eastern market, where food, flower and antiques vendors all gathered in one spot. I piled into the first cab of ladies and once we arrived and waited for the second to arrive, it became evident that "ladies room style" wasn't going to work.I never did find out how or why they never made it was probably best that they didn't and Team D.C. was able to cover more ground.
Afterwards, Krystin Hill of Payette decided to break away and pay a visit to the D.C. Botanical Gardens and I decided to tag along. Here are a few shots from our time there...
It was interesting to hear once the group reassembled (for people who'd originally decided to go out all together) about the variety of places all the designers ended up stopping by. Some ended up in a cemetery, after the Botanical Gardens Kristyn ended up wandering around Georgetown, and a couple even stumbled upon a man who sells antique corkscrews.
"I found it very poetic," said Patricia Duval of HLW about the cemetery she and Bonny Slater of Perkins + Will visited. She was struck by the beauty of the colors and the contrast of the metals she found.
"I was most inspired by the moss everywhere,” Slater said. “If you think about it, it’s nature’s carpet.” She also noted that there was lots of "weather woods" and that she loves "...the concept of dappled light through the trees and I’ve never seen that translated into carpet.”
Many of the ladies were inspired by the aged metals throughout the city as well as D.C.'s transportation system and street grid as it's very accessible and easy to find one's way around.
Maggie Pascoe of Collective Architecture took amazing images of color, siting The Howard Theater and the city's history of go-go music.
Well that's our sneak peak into the D.C. Design Local design scramble. As usual, we don't want to give too much away. Stayed tuned for our recap of the final stop in Austin. And get ready to vote! In early 2013, all teams and their collections will be posted online where fans will get the chance to vote for their favorite. The winning team will have their carpet line produced by Mannington and will be honored at NeoCon 2013 in Chicago!