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industry insider | Oct 16, 2019 |

Six months ago, interior designer Lauren Hudson watched with apprehension as two beloved fabric lines, Classic Cloth and Rose Cumming Chintzes, disappeared in the throes of Dessin Fournir’s collapse. Somewhere along the way, waiting for new ownership to emerge gave way to the notion that perhaps she herself was the right person to shepherd the brands back into the marketplace. Though relatively new to the design industry, Hudson already has deep experience preserving legacy brands—knowledge she’s now leveraging to attempt a rescue operation for two Dessin Fournir fabric lines.

Hudson’s history of breathing new life into storied brands goes back about a decade. In 2009, she hired Jerry Jeanmard of Wells Design to decorate her own home—a project he suggested would be one of his last before closing the firm. (He had purchased it from his own longtime mentor, legendary Houston designer Herbert Wells, who got his start in the 1950s.) Instead, Hudson struck up an unlikely partnership with Jeanmard: She would purchase the firm, keep it open, and learn the business from him. It was a departure from Hudson’s previous career—as a high school history teacher and recruiter for accounting behemoth Arthur Andersen—but one she took to quickly.

In February 2017, Hudson opened her own showroom in Decorative Center Houston, stocked with many vendors who had ties to the firm dating back to Wells himself. Soon after, she took over the well-regarded Ellouise Abbott showroom—her neighbor in Houston, but also a major player in the Dallas Market Center. Today, the merged entity, the Wells Abbott showroom, carries major lines exclusively in both markets while also carrying on a local legacy.

By late last year, Hudson was in talks with Dessin Fournir to carry the line. “We were given the representation contracts at the end of 2018—just in time for them to go completely belly-up,” she says. She signed the contract with a sense that the company was in trouble—by then, lead times had reached a year or longer—but with hopes of securing a partnership with new ownership. The line never even arrived in the showroom.

As months passed, the conversations Hudson was having about her business with her husband began to change. “It went from hoping for a relationship with new ownership to, well, maybe it should be us,” she says. “It’s not like we set out with that thought in the beginning, but once you get something like that in your head, it’s hard to let go of it—especially if it’s a line you’re already in love with. You don’t want it to go to someone else.”

Jack Thompson Photography

When Hudson joined the firm, Jeanmard introduced her to Classic Cloth and Rose Cumming Chintzes, which became mainstays in her own work (and in her home, which she says is covered in both). “The brands have been the defining lines of my journey through interior design, and the thought of them disappearing or being absorbed into some large collection where a lot of what makes them special might have been lost, was terrible.”

Rose Cumming founded her design firm and an Upper East Side furniture and antiques shop in 1917 after following her actress sister to New York from her native Australia. A precursor to Mario Buatta’s signature look, she introduced a generation of staid New Yorkers to saturated hues and chinoiserie, and brought chintz to the home’s most informal spaces. Cumming also designed and printed her own fabrics, a business her sister continued after the decorator’s death in 1968; the line was sold to Dessin Fournir in the mid-2000s.

Though it boasts a less romantic founding story, Classic Cloth was Dessin Fournir’s in-house line of high-end basics. The wide array of elegant, complementary wovens become an essential designer resource—a medley of supple, textured textiles.

Hudson’s familiarity with both lines—and their strengths and weaknesses—now gives her a leg up in putting her own creative stamp on each. “They are both beautiful in general but need some editing,” she days. “Right now there are holes, especially on the Classic Cloth side. We’re focused on rounding it out to be a full set of foundational basics, made in the best mills in the world.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean dramatic changes are in store. “With Rose Cumming, I’m taking it back to its roots,” she says. “Those chintzes are special, and the archive we have taken possession of is beautiful. There are some fabrics in that archive I can’t wait to get my hands on. If they’re recolored or rescaled—there’s enough that’s not out there right now to keep us busy for several years.”

In short, she says, her mission is simple: “No cutting corners, no dumbing it down.”

In addition to purchasing the two brands and all of their intellectual property and inventory, Hudson is also leasing the aforementioned Kansas warehouse formerly owned by Dessin Fournir, which currently houses the inventory she purchased. Keeping the warehouse, she says, allows the two brands to be operational as quickly as possible. (She has already rehired three former warehouse employees and is in talks with others.)

One of the first major challenges she’ll face is reintroducing the brand to the marketplace, especially in places like Chicago and New York, where Dessin Fournir previously operated its own showrooms. “It’s an interesting situation, because these are very established brands, but it’s also kind of like starting over,” she says. “It’s not only new ownership, but in many cases also new representation.”

For now, East Coast orders will be fulfilled by Ainsworth-Noah in Atlanta, which was the first showroom to represent Cummings’s line after the designer’s own shop and has carried the brand for nearly 30 years. Hudson’s showrooms in Texas will pick up orders throughout the Midwest; starting in November, Michael S. Smith’s Los Angeles showroom, Jasper, will cover the West Coast.

“We never took the line down, we just flipped over the tags and told everyone it was on hold,” says Dennis Hunt, president of Ainsworth-Noah. “I was telling designers, ‘Don’t get rid of your libraries!’ In the back of my head, I always felt there would be a white knight—and now, eight months later, it has happened.”

The line’s revitalization comes as a relief, says Hunt—a dose of good news amid a wave of closures and acquisitions. “These brands keep disappearing or being bought up by large companies,” he says. “Our excitement is that we get to continue to present and push forward these legacy brands that are so deeply rooted in who we are. These lines are staples for high-end designers—especially if we don’t want to become a generic white-linen world.”

In January, Hudson will relaunch the brands in the Tissus d’Hélène showroom; then, she’ll focus on finding representation in Chicago, New York and San Francisco. Another priority will be rebuilding bridges with the brands’ longtime mills, many of which were burned over the course of Dessin Fournir’s demise.

As both a designer and a multiline showroom owner, Hudson remains committed to the showroom distribution model—albeit powered by technology and services that add value for designers. Her understanding of the nuances of the challenges that both sides encounter has made her especially sensitive as she develops a path forward.

“I understand the limitations, but I happen to think the future is bright,” she says. “What I’m trying to do is address some of those challenges in order to support the designer and the showroom.”

For Hudson, that means a website that makes the lines easily accessible to designers, allowing them to check stock and pricing and request memo samples directly from the warehouse, which fills the orders within 24 hours. Designers who request quotes from the site will be funneled to the proper showroom. “That’s the differentiating factor,” says Hudson. “In my firm, if something is easy to order—if it’s properly stocked, easy to get samples, and the showroom I’m working with is informed—we’re ordering it. But if it’s hard, there are other places to go.”

She’s also committed to developing a resource library for top clients that will be beautifully packaged, easy to source from, and continually updated by outside sales reps—a service she greatly values in her own firm. “Even with our offices in the design center, with showrooms next door, there are lines we source in our office because we have what we need right there,” she says. “It’s all about ease of use—and confidence. There are lines we use over and over again because we have confidence in them.”

Though Hudson’s path to the design industry is an unusual one, she says her decade as a high school history teacher and another as a recruiter for Arthur Anderson prepared her for success in unique ways.

“My experience as a teacher [taught me] about being a good steward,” she says. “It’s my responsibility to be a good steward to Wells Design, which has such a wonderful heritage, and to Ellouise Abbott and the showroom she started. The concept of stewardship applies to [Rose Cumming and Classic Cloth] too: Having an appreciation of the archive, being true to the line’s heritage, and trying to leave it a little better than I found it.”

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An aerial photo of the Rainey Street District, with the trailhead area highlighted. Image: Bing Maps

Though downtown Austin condo and apartment projects tend to spring up everywhere around the urban core, the sheer volume of current and expected residential development in the Rainey Street District sets it apart in several ways — not all of them necessarily positive, but ideally those growing pains should make it easier to see what needs fixing.

One impact of the Rainey neighborhood’s growing population is that the area’s become an important entry point for hikers and bikers on our city’s beloved and aptly-named Hike-and-Bike Trail, particularly at the southern end where the trail runs near the intersection of Rainey and Cummings Streets. The Trail Foundation, working in partnership with Austin’s Parks and Recreation Department, announced this week that some improvements were in order for this section of trail and its surrounding parkland, in order to establish a full-fledged “Rainey Street Trailhead” that would increase the area’s recreational potential with new amenities.

We’re being vague because they’re being vague — the first community engagement event for the project takes place on Saturday, September 28, meaning we don’t have exact details regarding what might be on the table just yet. “The community will advise on what would make this area more functional and explore ideas on preserving the ecology of this space,” says the city’s very short press release on the upcoming meeting, but it still has us thinking.

The present state of the trailhead isn’t bad by any means, it’s actually one of the nicer parts of the district in terms of natural beauty — and it contains what’s gotta be one of the most striking outdoor restrooms ever designed. Seriously, as public toilet architecture connoisseurs we like it very much. The trail entrance here also leads users directly into the tranquil rear grounds of Austin’s Mexican-American Cultural Center, provided you’re heading westward:

It’s truly a pleasure to walk the grounds of the MACC on the Hike-and-Bike Trail. You should try it!

Still, it’s easy to imagine what we could do here to create a space people feel compelled to linger, rather than simply stroll through. There’s a lot of shaded open space directly off the trail in this area, as seen in the photos provided by the Trail Foundation — in fact, the second picture below almost feels like foreshadowing for what might become a plaza or recreational space of some kind. Is it cliche to suggest, like, giant chess or something? How about a pétanque court?

Whatever happens over here, there’s at least one good reason to start thinking about these improvements — a lot of new neighbors moving in directly across the street from the trailhead area at the upcoming 44 East condo tower project. Recent coverage of the building, the construction of which could get moving any time now, mentions its developers Intracorp will contribute funds to the trailhead improvement effort.

Let’s at least give them something interesting to pay for — so go to this month’s event and tell them what you’d like to see in downtown’s fastest-growing neighborhood.

Early Tuesday morning, CWA announced that Claude Cummings of Houston won a runoff election over Ed Mooney by a margin of 59% to 41% to be elected as the 1st Black President of the 600,000-member Communication Workers of America.

Congresswoman Shelia Jackson-Lee of Houston took to Twitter at 2 am Texas Time to praise Cummings.

“After many long years of fighting for working families from Texas, to New York, to California and beyond, Claude Cummings has been elected President of one of the most powerful unions in the nation, the Communications Workers of America,” wrote Congresswoman Shelia Jackson-Lee on Twitter at 2 am Texas time.

“Claude is a great leader and will be a real force in fighting for CWA members and as well working families across the United States for all to have a better quality of life,” wrote the Congresswoman. “Congratulations Claude Cummings, all of us in Texas are TEXAS proud!”

A 50-year veteran of CWA, Cummings first became active in the union in 1973. For many years, he headed the Human Right Department of CWA. In that role, the 71-year-old Cummings won a reputation as a progressive, inclusive labor leader with a multiracial vision for moving the labor movement forward.

His elections came as sexual misconduct and violent intimidation scandals have rocked CWA. (See our widely-cited story “Rival CWA Presidential Candidates Covered Up Violent Intimidation & Sexual Misconduct within the Union”)

Ultimately, Payday played a significant role in derailing the campaigns of two candidates running against Cummings, who Payday Report exposed as covering up violent intimidation and sexual misconduct within the union. Our reporting was highlighted on electronic billboard vans that circled the CWA Convention in St. Louis, which many voting members saw of the union.

By contrast, Cummings effectively persuaded union members that he could best bring the union forward in a more inclusive and progressive direction. His campaign ad emphasized that he had already changed practices within the union and made changes within the union.

“Where others have talked about change, I have made change happen even inside of our own union” Cummings says in his ad as he recounts a battle against sexist practices within CWA.

Payday will have more analysis of what occurred over the next day and week. Stayed tuned.

DSAES News

The Division of Student Affairs and Enrollment Services is proud to announce that Varselles L. Cummings has joined the Center for Diversity and Inclusion staff as the center's new Director. Varselles hails from Fresno, California. He earned his B.A. in Mass Media Communication from Wilberforce University. Wilberforce University is the first privately founded historically black college in the nation located in Wilberforce, Ohio. While at Wilberforce University he was involved in several co-curricular and extracurricular activities. He was involved in everything from the Student Government Association to Residence Life to Choir. His undergraduate involvement sparked his interest in the field of Student Affairs.

After his graduation in 2008, Varselles stayed at his alma mater and worked as an Admissions Counselor for two years. In 2012, Var received his Master's degree in Postsecondary Educational Leadership with a specialization in Student Affairs from San Diego State University (SDSU). While at SDSU, he worked in the Resident Education Office at San Diego State as an Assistant Residence Hall Coordinator. He also served as the Graduate Advisor for the Afrikan Student Union. In June 2012 Varselles relocated to Texas to work at Texas Christian University where he served as a Hall Director from 2012-2015. Most recently, Varselles served as a Program Advisor in the Department of Multicultural Services at Texas A&M University where he advised Aggie Black Male Connection (ABMC), Black Student Alliance Council (BSAC), and Southwest Black Student Leadership Conference (SBSLC).

“The great poet Tupac Shakur said, "I may not change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world." This quote has been integral to how I approach my role as an educator and Student Affairs professional. I am excited about the possibility to spark the brain of world changers at the University of Houston as the Director of the Center for Diversity and Inclusion. Serving in this capacity will allow me to continue developing students and professional staff as well as advance my career goals as a Student Affairs professional. #GOCOOGS

Var has over 11 years of experience serving in various Student Affairs roles and is very excited to be the Director of the Center for Diversity and Inclusion and part of the University of Houston DSAES Student Life Team.

"Varselles brings a great vision and a proven track record in developing programs, services and partnerships related to the areas of diversity and inclusion for students and other stakeholders in the university environment. His background and experience from several other campuses will be invaluable as he leads the UH Center for Diversity and Inclusion, while also bringing a student-centered approach to working with students and student organizations in their pursuit of student success." said Keith T. Kowalka, assistant vice president for Student Affairs, UH.

Please join the Division of Student Affairs and Enrollment Services in welcoming Varselles to the University of Houston!

More about the Center for Diversity of Inclusion: The Center for Diversity and Inclusion (CDI) engages, empowers, and educates the highly diverse student population at the University of Houston by providing workshops, programs, student leadership opportunities, and brave space environments to promote cross-cultural communication and culturally-responsive practices that help diverse communities connect. The cultural competencies gained through CDI's programs facilitate a learning environment where UH constituents are better equipped to understand multiple perspectives, practices, and promote a culture of inclusion.

FORT BEND COUNTY, Texas (KTRK) -- A devastating amount of floodwater is expected to affect dozens of neighborhoods in Fort Bend County.

Officials with the Fort Bend County Office of Emergency Management released a list of dozens of neighborhoods they expect to be affected by the disaster, outside the levees, LIDs and MUDs that were the subject of mandatory and voluntary evacuations.

Those neighborhoods include:

Andover Farms

Bella Vista

Braebend Estates Addition

Brazos Lakes

Brazos Valley

Brynmawr Lake

Canyon Gate at the Brazos

Canyon Lakes at the Brazos

Chelsea Harbour

Clayhead Manor

Colony West

Crystal Lake Estates

Cumings Road Area (C A Dickerson)

Cumings Road Area (Duran Subdivision)

Cumings Road Area (Tinsley Estates)

Cumings Road Area (Rio Brazos)

Edgewood Addition

Estates of Brazoswood

Estates of Teal Run

Foster Creek Estates

Foster Crossing

Foster Island Estates

Fresno Gardens

Fresno Gardens Deluxe

Glendale Lakes

Glenwood

Goldenrod Estates

Grand Reserve

Grand River

Greatwood Crossing

Greatwood Knoll

Gulf View Acres

Heritage Farms

Heritage Heights Acres

Huntington Oaks

Jones Creek Estates

Karaugh II

Lakes of Mission Grove

Lakes of Williams Ranch

Lakewood Estates

Lexington Settlement

Lomas Hills

Long Meadow Farms

Magnolia Place

McCrary Meadows

MP Estates

Oyster Creek Country

Pecan Bend

Pecan Chase

Pecan Creek

Pecan Estates

Pecan Hill

Pecan Lake

Pitts Subdivision

Plantation Meadows

Ridgewood Estates

Rio Vista

River Forest

Rivers Edge

Riverside Ranch

Rolling Creek

Rolling Oaks

Rosedale Addition

Royal Estates

Royal Lakes Estates

Royal Lakes Manor

Shadow Grove Estates

Sovereign Shores Estates

Sun Ranch

Tara

Teal Run

Teal Run Court

Teal Run Meadows

Teleview Terrace

Texana

The Retreat at Sovereign Shores

Westcreek

Windsor Estates

Woods Edge