Victor Glemaud Turns Up the Coziness and Color With His New Rug Collection

Throughout his career, Victor Glemaud has looked at what he designs from every angle known to a fashion designer’s eye—until now, that is. When Glemaud, who made his name with curvaceous, size-inclusive, and inventively hued knitwear, started to collaborate with Patterson Flynn on a series of rugs—the company, owned by interiors brand Schumacher, is renowned for its artisanal carpets—he only had to look in one direction: Downward, to floor level.

“You’re designing something that likely will be, in part, covered—whether it’s by a sofa, or a chair, or a coffee table, or whatever,” said Glemaud, who’s making his second foray into interior design with this collection; the first was textiles for Schumacher, and a chance email exchange with them led him to designing the rugs. “What I had to figure out was: How do you get a variation in pattern and color, but also convey the same kind of softness that my knits have? In the end, you don’t want the rug to look or feel flat.”

To be sure: Glemaud succeeds in achieving the rich dimensionality he was aiming for. If I was unrolling one of Glemaud’s Patterson Flynn rugs in my home, I wouldn’t so much as put a footstool on it. With his mix of geodes and scrolling lines, floral-edged borders, and chevron zig zagging—not to mention his color palette (terracotta, pearl gray, azure, yellow)—I’d be loath to cover any of them. And in a moment when the statement rug can sometimes feel a bit like a bank statement—a dispiriting experience because you know exactly what it’s going to say (or in this case, look like)—Glemaud’s designs have a wit and a warmth which feel zingy and original.

When it came to inspiration for his collection, a trip to Dakar in Senegal—where he’d been captivated by the bold graphism of the ceramics and chairs he saw—was writ large in his mind. (Several of the rugs are named after places on the Ivory Coast—Bietry and Cocody among them.) But working on the rugs was also a crash course in learning about things he wasn’t familiar with—including that certain textiles (raffia, abaca, oxidized wool) could bring emotional resonance to the textures he was looking to achieve. The rugs are made by hand, and to order, with the entire process taking several months; Glemaud wanted each piece to bear the hand of their makers.

When it was time to think about photographing his designs, Glemaud knew exactly what he wanted to do—which is why one day at a townhouse in Brooklyn he was joined by his nephews Winter and River, the rugs laid out in various rooms, mixed with mid-century furniture. “I wanted to show this sense of nesting joy,” he said, “showcasing a normal experience that Black families all over the world have, but which doesn’t get shown that often: They are meant to be snapshots of joy.”

Meanwhile, Glemaud is now nesting in Seoul, South Korea, after a lifetime in New York. His husband, Jacques, moved there for work, and Glemaud has settled right in. The only question, as he and his husband furnish their new place, is which of the many rugs will go where.