Pillow people love autumn. As we'll happily tell anyone who'll listen - switching out pillow covers adds seasonal colour and new energy to a room and it's not half as drastic, or costly, as reupholstering your couch. (I am deeply impressed by those fearless souls who recover furniture in bold prints, but I could never do it.)
Only Pillows in the Building
The posh New York City apartments belonging to the characters in ‘Only Murders in the Building’ (now streaming on Disney+ and Star in Canada and Hulu in the US) as created by Production Designer Curt Beech and set decorator Rich Murray, offer a motherlode of design inspiration. Richly layered and expensively accoutred, each apartment is full of ‘I need to freeze frame this for further study’ details. And pillows. So many pillows.
Sting, in his cameo as a rock star and murder suspect, has an invitingly smooshy, velvet pillow-overloaded couch.
Steve Martin’s faded tv star cum amateur sleuth finds love while his patterned pillows clash daringly with his Paul Smith-ish striped sofa.
Martin Short, whose purple coat and always a silk scarf-wearing Broadway director, Oliver Putnam, has the most over-the-top apartment and the best pillows. To whit, a pair of pomegranate-pattern, sheared velvet beauts living on a tufted couch. (My screen cap, below, because for some puzzling reason, the press photos aren’t as pillow-centric as I would like.)
Bold pillows on Oliver’s couch: pomegranates are traditionally a symbol of fertility and abundance.
From the archives: wouldn’t this pillow array and suzani on socialite Jacqui Getty’s bed be perfect in a living room?
Here in the budget-aware real world, we have to rely on our own pillow-finding skills instead of a production design team:
Winners and HomeSense are always a good resource and their Fall 2021 edit is full of on-trend colours. Go early and go often and you will be rewarded.
Put the kettle on and start searching on Etsy for silk Ikat pillows.
Etsy is a great pillow and textile resource. Unlike Oliver’s pomegranates that wrap around the whole pillow, Etsy offerings often have the decorative fabric on one side only, but they are (relatively) inexpensive and it’s easy to find something under $80 Canadian.
I think it was at New York City’s ABC Carpet & Home that I saw my first $400 pillow. And that was years ago. Who knows how much they cost now? Seriously, does anyone know? I could use the laugh.