Sight Unseen x Heymat
How Sight Unseen and Heymat are Transforming Interiors with Artful door mats
Heymat's collaboration, with online magazine Sight Unseen, is a collection paying homage to the legacy of iconic female furniture designers: "The Iconic Women Collection". Each design draws inspiration from famous furniture pieces from the past that are beloved by Sight Unseen's founders, Jill Singer and Monica Khemsurov. We had a chat with Jill and Monica about their thoughts on the design process.
Renowned for their dedication to showcasing the latest trends in design and the visual arts, Sight Unseen also champions uniqueness and encourages individuals to infuse their spaces with their own distinctive style. This philosophy shines through in the new collection for Heymat, where the colorful doormats are meant to complement a thoughtful interior.
Why did you want to celebrate women in this collaboration, and what significance does it hold for you?
Design has traditionally been a male-dominated field. It’s something we’ve seen throughout history — Charles Eames was consistently credited more than his wife and collaborator, Ray, for example; same with Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Le Corbusier and Eileen Gray, etc — and frankly, it’s something we still see with maddening frequency today. So many talented female designers, both then and now, who haven’t received their due. As a women-owned business — and as a design platform dedicated to raising the voices of independent designers who don’t always look like the traditionally vaunted designers of the past — we are particularly sensitive to this kind of neglect. We explored a few other more form-based tropes with this collection, but ultimately decided that honoring some of our favorite female designers from history was the direction we wanted to pursue.
What was it like to design a doormat collection, and how did you approach the process differently compared to other design projects?
A doormat has so many considerations we’ve never thought of before. Because we were working with large planes of color, we had to be cognizant of which colors might show dirt, and we had to be particularly sensitive as to which color combinations would feel at home in an entryway, where they might be competing with all of the other furniture in a room. The designs we created have character, but don’t overpower the rest of the interior.
“Your home interior isn’t just about a flat notion of “decor” but about how you feel and what you think about when you’re around your objects”
Sight Unseen
The collection aims to complement a thoughtful interior. What advice would you offer to homeowners looking to incorporate these doormats into their existing decor?
We advocate for thinking of each item in your home as something special and worthy of attention and consideration — even your doormat! This is because when you take special care to choose items in your home that you love, even utilitarian ones, it creates an extra moment of happiness for you in your space, and it means that the things you do live with are things you’ll ultimately keep longer and appreciate more.
Debuting during New York Design Week 2024, the Iconic Women Collection has already captivated design enthusiasts worldwide. Featured in both Wallpaper* magazine’s guide to the event and selected as a finalist in the Residential Flooring category for the 2024 NYCxDESIGN Awards, these doormats have been lauded for their innovative approach to indoor mats, perfect for entryways, patios, or balcony doors.
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