RUNWAY STYLE
With their rhinestone buttons, French lace accents, buckles, bows and broaches, Casey Fisher’s designs are at the height of haute couture. Despite their shapely legs and stunning silhouettes, you won’t see any of his fashion-forward creations strutting down a runway anytime soon. It’s not because they don’t merit the attention. It’s because they can’t walk.
Fisher designs and creates high-couture home furnishings.
His company, Haute House, offers what Fisher calls “runway furniture.” In fact, he presented a fashion show of his home furnishings last year during one of the semiannual trade shows in High Point, N.C.
His designs incorporate numerous fashion elements such as rhinestone buttons in tufting, broaches on top of ottomans, and scarfs or belt buckles adorning the backs of chairs.
“It adds a little oomph,” Fisher said.
He said he gets his inspiration from odd pieces of jewelry and watching old movies.
“I see these women dressed in hats and scarfs and such. I can’t wear those so I put them on chairs and sofas.”
Fisher said his designs are especially appealing to women.
“We’ve got this woman out there who just loves really pretty stuff. She wears it and she wants her furniture to look pretty. It’s kind of like creating her own couture line for her home — just as she would put together her own clothing line from the couture houses in Paris.”
Through an extensive fabric and trim collection, there are hundreds of combinations.
Fisher started Haute House about six years ago. Prior to that, he had been working with Pacer Upholstery in Los Angeles.
“I started designing there and was always coming up with new things. I did a little trick to chenille. I hot washed it; just threw it in the washing machine and we made slipcovers out of it. It started a gigantic, global trend.”
Once the fabric industry noticed what Fisher was doing, he said his career began to take off. He started experimenting with color and texture, which in turn broadened his perspective and vocabulary in the industry.
He also was afforded the opportunity to visit antique stores and swap meets, where he found odd-shaped furniture that he would reinvent the scale and bring back to life.
Fisher got his start in furniture-making in 1989 when he was living in San Francisco, where he was born and raised. He spent his summers as a lifeguard at California School for the Blind and spent the remainder of the year working for a friend at his upholstery company, which did pieces for Michael Taylor Designs.
Fisher said watching the pieces being upholstered inspired him. He thought of ways he could improve each piece, making small changes here and there, while honing his skills at the same time.
Eventually, the sunshine of Los Angeles and the need to leave San Francisco, where all but six of 100 friends died from AIDS, prompted him to move south.
Fisher said that he doesn’t spend hours at a drawing board coming up with new designs. Instead, he will peruse old periodicals and catalogs for his inspiration. Then, while hanging out with friends who are artists and store owners, he just throws things together.
“I don’t put a board up, although I can. It just all comes together,” he said, adding that he appreciates the “fun value” he gets by working in a more relaxed, casual atmosphere.
Among his new designs is upholstery with vagabonded fabrics. “We strip them all up, make them look like they’re falling apart, with the threads falling out, and then sew them back together.”
He also is working with sheer slipcovers. “It gives you this dual look — sheer shiny fabric on the outside and pattern on the inside. It’s practical and glamorous at the same time,” Fisher said.
In addition to traditional upholstery pieces such as sofas, chairs, ottomans and chaises, Haute House offers upholstered beds and case goods.
In the near future, the company also plans to launch a line of lighting, which Fisher said is based on old hats with feathers.
Haute House also does interior design and has a contract division based in Las Vegas that works on boutique hotels.
“Our trademark is the upholstery; it’s what we started with. But, so many people have asked us to do things, we do try to accommodate them.
“We don’t just do furniture. We will do anything; we get our fingers in anything we can,” Fisher said, adding “I would like to do car interiors at some point.”
Haute House’s furnishings are available at Mortise & Tenon custom furniture. Additional information can be found on the company’s Web site, www. haute-house.com.