| You could forgive Ashley Stark if she always looked down. After all, if you were usually dressed in something pretty fabulous �" like today's dinner-plate-sized Roberta Freymann bib necklace, worn over a floaty top by Ever, and some killer Michael Kors heels �" you'd probably want to take in the view yourself, now and then.
And certainly if you were one of those Starks, a member of the carpet clan whose name immediately summons images of thick-piled perfection �" the kind that can sell for $100,000 a rug �" well, you can easily imagine the urge to size up every surface that might touch your soles.
But Ashley Stark is hardly one to keep her eyes lowered. For one thing, though she's not yet in her thirties (and, with her petite frame, looks barely in her twenties), she doesn't need to spend a lot of time analyzing this Savonnerie or that Aubusson; with barely a glance south she can identify the age, make, model and design provenance of most anything beneath her four-inch heels. For another, it's not her style to watch her steps. She's enviably confident of being surefooted in the decisions she makes as the creative director of Stark Carpet Corporation, which she joined immediately after graduating from Brown in 2004 and where she works alongside her father, John, and her uncle Steven, who are, respectively, chairman and president.
"I want the company to be a mix of keeping with the heritage and of looking to the future to make sure it's accessible," she says. "We're not just expensive rugs that only your parents can afford. Last year we brought out a line of 240 paints with David Oliver [director of London's Paint & Paper Library]. We hired Jay Hupp from Gracie, and he's already introduced about 40 scenic murals. I'm making partnerships with new designers, and not just interior designers, but some fashion designers. There's a lot in the works I can't even talk about just yet."
During a meeting at the company's flagship showroom, in New York's D&D building, Stark sometimes speaks slowly, in a low, bordering-on-gravelly voice, yet there's an urgency to her words, and to her manner, when she talks about the business. And it's not just because she grew up in the private-school, Park Avenue world of highly privileged girls used to setting their own agendas instead of following those of others. Like the proprietor of any venerable design firm, she lives with the knowledge that in today's trend-a-minute market nothing can doom a company's future more than being identified with the past instead of the present. One-time kudos like being the first firm to do patterned carpets, in the 1950s, or being a presence in the White House since the 1960s, can now be kisses-of-death, even to a design-industry behemoth with 17 showrooms (and 13 agent showrooms), dozens of lines and subsidiary collections and 550 employees. "We have the high-end, we have our roots, but we have to get with our generation," she says, determinedly. "We do have the affordable and modern, and we're always on the cutting-edge, playing with different qualities, textures and materials �" we do bamboo, flax, metallics, even Swarovski crystals." She just has to sell those designs, once she's helped create them.
If that's her challenge, at least it's one she asked for. "Always" is how long Stark says she wanted to work at the family business �" she answers before the question is out. Her grandfather, Arthur, started the firm in 1938, and by the time Ashley joined it had expanded into fabric and wallcoverings, in addition to the impeccable rugs and carpets that remain its hallmark.
But Arthur was an accidental rug salesman; originally a stockbroker, he'd gotten into the business when, after bringing back a Savonnerie from a trip abroad, he was asked by friends to do the same for them. His granddaughter, however, was born and raised to know as much about the backs, and backstories, of rugs, fabrics and wallpapers as she was their fronts. When Arthur died, in 1968, his college-age sons John and Steve stepped in to take over, along with their mother, Nadia, who previously had not been involved with the company. Years later, she would not risk that happening with Ashley.
"My grandmother always brought me here, even as a four year old," says Stark. "Every chance she had, she took me through the racks herself. She taught me everything. And then when she died, Carl and Iris Apfel" �" the owners of Old World Weavers, which Stark had purchased in 1992 �" "basically finished raising me in the business. Carl used to quiz me all the time. 'What's this? What's a brocade? What's a jacquard?' Austin, my brother, wanted nothing to do with it." (Today he produces films.) "But I loved it."
That Stark grew up being not just design-conscious, but something of a design consumer, might also explain the confidence she has in her tastes. She may describe herself as "a major business head �" numbers and math are my thing," but she loves fashion ("most of my friends are in fashion") and, even more, says that "design and interior design are in my blood. When I was twelve years old, I redecorated my room. I said, 'Enough with the pink and green flowers, I want only blue!' Penny Drue Baird, our interior designer, who, fortunately, was a very good family friend, had to bring me every single piece of fabric, and I had to approve it. I was a very demanding client."
Today Stark is betting that whether she's taken a historic pattern "and recolored and rescaled it to be more contemporary" or she and the company's designers have come up with something entirely new, if she likes it, other young women like herself, and the interior designers they hire, will like it too. "When I first started I said to my father and uncle, 'We have to do gray carpets.' And my father said, 'We did them in the '70s, and they didn't sell. People thought they looked too dirty.' But I said, 'Trust me, gray carpet is the way to go,' and they let me do one �" so now it's among our bestselling carpet, and gray is one of our bestselling colors. It was the same thing with overscale patterns. I said, 'Trust me, this is what's going on, it may look too big to you but people are going to border it and use it as rugs.' Also, there has not been a woman in charge of this company in a very long time. When I came in, I was like, 'Okay, where's the lavender? Where's the pale blue? You need some feminine colors here.' My grandmother used to say, 'Never forget your roots, but live for the moment.' That's what I'm trying to do."
In life as well as work, it appears. She might weigh 100 pounds soaking wet, but Stark has become a devoted surfer for the last three years. "I spend all weekend long in the water whenever I can," she says, lighting up at the thought. "I even got my dad surfing again. When he was eighteen, his graduation present was to live in Malibu and Maui and surf. So two years ago, I got him back in the water. He popped right up!" Her other off-hours passion: cooking. "We always had cooks and as a little girl I would sit in the kitchen and watch them. I don't know why, but I just loved it. And later I developed this serious obsession with the Food Network. For one year I watched nothing else, I didn't even change the channel. Now I can take anything from any restaurant and make a healthy version of it, that's my thing. I can make French fries that will knock your socks off!"
Barefoot bliss? Who better than Ashley Stark to know what that is �" and to know how to deliver it.
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