Athena Calderone’s obsession with Art Deco inspired her new Crate & Barrel collaboration

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Since her first collection for Crate & Barrel in 2022, Athena Calderone – interior designer, entertainment guru and founder of EyeSwoon – has followed a new creative direction. While her first line focused on lighter tones and curvaceous silhouettes, her new furniture collaboration with the home brand, launching in time for the holidays, features moody tones and warm, cozy textures. “It looks very sophisticated and has a timelessness,” says Calderone Beautiful House. “But there’s something very intimate about it that really feels in keeping with the season.”

Calderone’s designs are meant to be lived in as much as they are admired. “It’s always very important to walk the fine line between elegance and comfort,” she says. “I want people to feel like they’ve entered a space that feels like a bygone era but has all the comforts of modern day.”

Once again, Calderone drew heavy inspiration from her own home—but this time it was an entirely new space. Last year, the designer moved into a historic Manhattan apartment filled with late Art Deco details. “I was so inspired by this new movement that I was so deeply immersed in, which was my home in Tribeca,” she says. When researching the period, she traveled to Vienna and Paris, as well as several U.S. cities that had notable examples of 1930s and 1940s architecture and decor.

Calderone fell in love with the angular shapes and fierce symmetry of the period, and this inspired his choice of longer, slender silhouettes and geometric shapes. Several pieces in particular evoke the Art Deco movement, she says, including the Onirique triangular lamp in alabaster with a hammered wrought-iron base and the Rodin dining chair with tapered wrought-iron legs and shimmering velvet seat.

When it came time to photograph the collection, Calderone felt strongly that a suitable historic home should be the setting. She immediately thought of the Saarinen House in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, on the campus of the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Not only was the house an excellent example of the Art Deco period, but Calderone was inspired by the house’s first owners. Eliel and Loja Saarinen loved to entertain and created the space to foster collaboration, community and experimentation. “I just saw this beautiful, serendipitous overlap between how they lived and how I like to live,” she says.

It took some convincing, but in the end Calderone convinced the house to let them film the collection there. His pieces felt right at home.

Rafiné Sofa 105″

Blue Viscose Cadre Rug 6’x9′ by Athena Calderone

Nouveauté floor lamp 3 metal lights with linen lampshades

Dualité Travertine and Burl Wood Block Leg 56″ Coffee Table by Athena Calderone

White Facet Vase 8.5″

Le Tuco Shearling Accent Chair

L’Union black metal arch floor lamp with rattan shade

Memini Burl Wooden Floor Mirror by Athena Calderone

Honore 38″ Natural Oak Wood Bar Cabinet

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