Ilse Crawford — Creative Director and Designer

Now I’m not gen­er­ally into hero-worship, but this lady is liv­ing a design dream com­pletely of her own cre­ation.  At the risk of sound­ing a lit­tle James Lipton, her resumé bleeds com­pe­tence and reeks of genius.  She is the head of the Department of Man and Well-being at the Design Academy Eindhoven, author of two, very-relevant books on design and a reg­u­lar keynote speaker at inter­na­tional events. She con­cep­tu­al­ized the Soho House Brand, worked across Product Development and Regeneration as Vice President of Donna Karan Home and served as Creative Director of the Swarovski Crystal Palace, where she assem­bled a team of vision­ar­ies to rein­vent the chan­de­lier, show­ing in Paris, Milan and New York.

But before all of this, she was, per­haps most influ­en­tial to those of us in the United States as the found­ing edi­tor of Elle Decoration UK, where she boldly pushed the bound­aries of object-driven design beyond any­thing seen before, and intro­duced the new wave of mod­ernism we so enjoy today.  In con­sid­er­ing all of her accom­plish­ments, ilse’s most rev­o­lu­tion­ary con­tri­bu­tion to our world is the recipe blend­ing design inno­va­tion with indi­vid­ual self expres­sion, ele­vat­ing lifestyle to a pre­vi­ously un-named level of spir­i­tual evo­lu­tion.  She may have no equal in bring­ing such free­ing ideas to a wider audience.

ilse Crawford has been named one of Great Britian’s 30 most influ­en­tial women by Harper’s Bazaar in the “Power Issue”,  for being “the per­son that defined the way we want to live”.

You may view the work of ilse Crawford at the site of her stu­dio of Design and Art Direction: Studioilse, mod­ern and emo­tional design at www.studioilse.com

ELLE DECORATION UK was inci­den­tally, the most crit­i­cal inspi­ra­tion behind the cre­ation of HighStreet and we’d like to thank ilse Crawford for her pro­pelling light.

Thank you Ilse Crawford.

Leah Spurrier. HighStreet