Eve Ashcraft x Aux Abris
An artist, a maker, and the first collection we rolled out from day one.
Aux Abris had never collaborated on a collection like this. Karen Robert brought in color architect Eve Ashcraft, and we helped take Curious Eve from the studio to Paris and beyond.
The match
We'd been working with Aux Abris for about a year when Karen Robert called with an idea. She had hoped to do a collection with an interior designer who wasn't ready for a product line yet. In her place came an introduction to Eve Ashcraft, a color architect. (Our first question: what's a color architect?)
Karen had never done a collaboration on this scale. It was a first for us too: the first time we'd roll out a collection from the very start, beginning with its debut at Paris Deco Off, rather than joining partway through.
The idea
Show the collaboration, don't just describe it. Aux Abris's audience knows Karen as the artist behind every pattern. This time Eve made the art, and Karen turned it into repeats and real, hangable wallpaper. We wanted designers to see both sides: the artist's inspiration and the maker's technical eye.
So we sat the two of them down in the studio and filmed a full day: building the collection, naming the patterns and the colorways, and what it really means to collaborate. In Paris, we filmed them again, walking through each pattern in detail.
The launch
The studio day became Behind the Collection, a series presented by Fiber-Seal, who happened to be talking with us at the same time. Press was never the main goal. We wanted to see how far three networks, Aux Abris's, Eve's and ours, could carry a collection on their own. The answer: a long way. The films about the collection have been watched 25,853 times, and five newsletters drew 36,149 opens and 1,655 clicks. Curious Eve has performed very well for the brand.
A few months after Paris, Business of Home featured Karen in Meet the Maker, her first time in the series. Then Karen and Eve joined the Creative Lives podcast, talking less about the collection and more about what it takes to run a creative business.
What we'd tell you
Let designers see the hands behind the pattern. And before you pay for reach, see how far the networks you already have can carry you.
More in Trade Secrets
Want to be part of the next one?
Our collaborations are reserved for the brands we work with every month. Every one of them started with a conversation.