Ellen van Dusen’s Day Involves Making Messes with Fabric and Lots of Dog Time
In our new series Office Crush, we're asking people with the coolest jobs to take us to work. Up next, designer Ellen van Dusen lets us shadow her for a day of textile designing and podcasts.
We first spotted a Dusen Dusen design in our most aesthetically minded friend’s apartment—right next to the Cold Picnic rug and the latest issue of Apartamento. Then came the bespoke bedding at the new Hoxton hotel in Williamsburg. And then the trippy, Magic Eye-inspired ensembles that Greta Gerwig’s girl gang wore to the Oscars this year.
Clearly Ellen van Dusen’s color-forward textile designs have a way of standing out. The Brooklyn-based designer launched a womenswear line in 2010 followed by Dusen Dusen Home in 2015. Both lines have won an army of fans and imitators with their ultra-saturated textiles and modern silhouettes that read decidedly upbeat and modern.
“I’ve been buying so many books on the internet lately, mainly design books like Gaetano Pesce and Bruno Munari, who had similar mobile-type work to Calder,” van Dusen says. “I just like when a specific idea is so focused into one object.”
The designer’s Williamsburg studio overflows with reference books and printed textiles, and her typical workday is just as eclectic. Between emailing factories and examining factory swatches, she’s searching for inspiration for her holiday collection. Luckily there’s a constant soundtrack of custom playlists to keep the creative juices flowing and a resident Boston Terrier named Snips to provide impromptu tug-of-war sessions. Here’s how van Dusen does her day.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle1/4Dog Walks and The Daily
I don’t use an alarm—I’ve been an early riser for probably forever, which I know is pretty rare in this world. I get up around 7 and lounge around with my dog Snips, who usually sleeps in my bed. I read the news, dink around on my phone, then get out of bed. I usually just get my coffee from Fairway and grind it myself, but if I’m feeling fancy I’ll go get an iced coffee from Saraghina, which is pretty close to my place. Then I usually have a piece of fruit like a banana or some watermelon.
I live in Bed Stuy and my studio is in Williamsburg, so I drive to work with my dog after taking her for a walk around the block. I listen to The Daily every morning on my ride in; it’s just a great primer to get through the day. I find that keeping up on the news throughout the day is exhausting so I listen to this then just shut out the world for a while.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle2/4Design Time and Infinite Playlists
My day is a mix of answering emails, looking at fabric samples, talking to factories, and design stuff. I do most of my designing in Illustrator, and it’s constantly open on my computer, so I go back and forth a lot. Sometimes I’m deep in a design phase and I’ll spend all day working on stuff, and other times of year it’s more sporadic. I occasionally take time to go to the analog side of the studio, which is a no computer zone, to just draw and look at books and find inspiration, but that kind of time is a little tougher to get. I finished the home collection a couple months ago and now product is coming in so we’re a little more focused on that.
We have music playing eight hours a day, and if the vibe isn’t right, none of us can get any work done. Today we listened to a bunch of jazz, but we also listen to indie rock and older music like John Cale, Tom Waits, and a little bit of everything. We got really into making playlists on themes, so I just started my fall mix, which has everything from Lucinda Williams’ Reason to Cry to Don't Walk on the Kitchen Floor by Come On—my renovation theme song.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle3/4Lunch Break
Usually I’ll get takeout for lunch from somewhere around here. I like Samesa a lot; they have great salads and sandwiches. I alternate between the Brussels sprouts salad and the crunchy salad. There’s a little cheese shop called Campbell Cheese and Grocery that has really great sandwiches, and I get tacos a lot from this place called Tacoffee. That’s a deep cut—it’s so good, but it’s the kind of place that has 300 things on the menu so you wouldn’t necessarily go in if you saw it. The chicken tinga taco is my favorite! It’s delicious, and it comes with some tasty green salsa and guacamole and little radishes.
4/4Cleaning and Closing
Over the course of the day, the studio somehow gets trashed. We’ll start with a clean space, but at the end there’s always fabric swatches everywhere and threads all over the place, so I like to do a little clean so I can come in refreshed the next day. We don’t have a cleaning playlist but we definitely should. That’s next on the list.
