The Power of Interdisciplinary Design
How My Passions Are Coming Together at Three Birch Hill
First, I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who braved the snow and bitter cold to attend the Bethel Woods Holiday Market. Your kind feedback about my work truly warmed my heart (if not my hands)!
I often talk about the intersection of different ideas in my work—the blending of town and country, urbane and rustic, art and design. After all, that’s at the core of why I started Three Birch Hill in the first place.
Today, though, I want to talk about something a bit different: the intersection of disciplines.
Let me take you back to eighth grade, when my home economics teacher (shout-out to Mrs. Case!) assigned a budget exercise. We were asked to choose a job from a newspaper classified ad and create a monthly budget based on that salary—mortgage, car payments, the whole nine yards. Since I had boldly declared in the fifth grade that I would be an architect, my occupation was easy to choose. My teacher was dubious, however, and asked if I would want to choose something different. I didn’t.
At the end of the assignment—I’ll never forget—she pulled me aside and encouraged me not to give up on my love of sewing. She actually suggested that when it was time, that I apply to school for fashion design.At the time, I was too focused on architecture to consider it, but her words stayed with me.
Fast forward almost 25 years, and I find myself stitching labels into silk scarves and luxurious Pima cotton bandanas, all featuring my original illustrations, like I’ve stepped into my own little Hermès workroom. It’s not hard to see the thread (pun intended) that connects my childhood passions to the work I’m doing today.
This intersection of disciplines is what excites me most about my holiday collection. It’s painting. It’s textiles. It’s fashion—all wrapped up into one silky and effervescent expression of my festive self. I’ve come to realize that what once felt like competing passions are, in fact, complementary. They’ve always strengthened each other, even when I didn’t fully recognize it.
The older I get, the clearer I see that I don’t have to be defined by just one goal or one career path. To borrow a quote from Ralph Lauren, "I was never just one thing."