Vladimir Kagan, Thom Filicia, Alexander Julian discuss sustainable home furnishings

Following is an edited transcript of a roundtable discussion moderated by Jeff Hiller, president of the Sustainable Furnishings Council, that took place Monday, Oct. 19, 2009, at the High Point Market, in Ballroom B of the IHFC building, with participants Thom Filicia, Alexander Julian and Vladimir Kagan. The event took place on the third anniversary of the founding of the SFC. Also that morning, Hiller  announced the launch of a new consumer education and awareness initiative to feature the SFC's new DESIGNINGreen Leadership Team of celebrity designers and industry personalities who design for sustainable manufacturers and/or use sustainable practices in their work. --Susan Pyle Dickenson, Home Accents Today

Jeff Hiller's opening remarks: (Three years ago) we incorporated (the Sustainable Furnishings Council) as a nonprofit and off we went. Establishing standards for the industry was our first challenge, then building up our membership. Our membership was 41 three years ago, as of today, we have 400 manufacturers, retailers, interior designers, design organizations, responsible members of our community, all kinds of people sincerely committed to doing the right thing. So we have some market mass now and what we need to do is turn the page.

There’s a number of things going on that are making it a little easier to sell what we have to sell these days. Recent reports that have come out about climate change... recent showing that the quality of indoor air is affected by these things called VOCs that aren’t very good for you -- toxic vapors from carpeting, furniture finish, etc. That there are also big things happening in government legislation… illegally sourced wood. It’s very much on people’s minds. I just got back from Asia where I spoke to 380 people who were there to learn about illegal sourcing and how to sell products in the United States.

Where we’re at now - we have the ability to go directly to consumers. There’s a button right on our (Web site’s) home page – find a green manufacturer, find a green retailer, find a green designer. Now we’re ready to turn on the jets. And that’s what these guys are all about. We reached out to very prominent members of the design community, product designers and interior designers, people with credibility built up in the course of their careers, and said ‘hey would you like to help us out now?’ We’re going to go direct to consumers -- it’s a watershed moment in our organization.

People are out there, they’re buying recycled products, they’re trying to do stuff, but only 8% have ever bought in our category, even though 50% would -- most of them don’t know these products exist. So we’re ready to turn the juice on and we reached out to these people -- people that (a) have great credibility and (b) had already been practicing sustainability. 



Intentions are wonderful, action is infinitely better, and so we wanted to make sure those aligned. The people who are helping us are also working for SFC member companies, designing product lines and helping sell products.

The final thing was that I had to ask them to go through some training, so we’re all preaching from the same hymnal. They were delighted to participate… even asked for more, strangely enough. With that, I’ll introduce these gentlemen and mention a couple of others that are also coming on line.

Vladimir Kagan (middle photo, right) I’m sure most of you know. He’s an iconic figure in product design and has been designing award winning products for many years. He’s done some best selling stuff for American Leather, a company that produces incredibly sustainable upholstery. So we’re thrilled to have him on board and welcome the credibility he brings from that raw product design background.



Next we have Thom Filicia (bottom photo, right) whom you may recognize from several different sources – Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Dress My Nest, published author, but first and foremost he is still a practicing interior designer.

And we also have Alexander Julian (top photo, right). What can you say – icon in fashion, apparel and home furnishings design, plus he also happens to be a North Carolina native, from Chapel Hill (and designer of the UNC mens basketball team uniforms).

Alex has done a lot of work for Vaughan Bassett, Thom is launching a line for Vanguard, so you’ve got three big manufacturers of sustainable products associated with these gentlemen. We’ve also got a gentleman in the back, designer and television personality Angelo Surmelis, and brand icon Kathy Ireland is coming on board as well.

Why don’t we start by talking to our friend Alexander on the end

Alexander Julian: It’s Alex. Alexander is the label. Alex is the person. (laughter)

Hiller: Alex it is. Give us an idea of how you got started in the industry -- maybe that first paying project.

AJ: I was born into it. My parents own a haberdashery store (Julian’s) in Chapel Hill, N.C. Growing up, both of my parents worked there so it was my playroom as a kid. My first toys literally were tweed and cashmere swatchbooks. My siblings and I used to make forts out of them and when I’d push my little sister into one of the forts, it had to be cashmere. (laughter) I grew up wanting to be an archeologist. The closest I got to that is my administrative assistant who has to have archeological training to be able to find something on my desk. I did an assets and liabilities chart on myself when I was 18 because I didn’t want to end up at the ripe age of 60 looking back and saying ‘I wish I had.’ The luck of the draw is that I had been raised around colors and patterns. I think the first time I was paid for it was when I was working in my father’s store, about 12 years old, putting colors and patterns together.

Thom Filicia: Oh my goodness. Well, let’s see. My career started in fifth grade. We were told not to draw on our desks and, of course, I did. We had a substitute teacher that day and I drew an entire house on my desk that just sort of sloped up this mountain and it just continued and continued. The teacher came by and she said ‘you know you’re in trouble but before we erase this off your desk can you stand next to it so we can take a picture of it?’ And in sixth grade I worked on some designs with a good friend that were put up in front of the principal’s office, and so that’s where it started. I think the first time I was paid was when my Uncle Peter was building a house… I was sort of hanging around in the background, and he saw that I was interested and said, what do you think of this house? Here’s $25 if you can tell me what to do… and it worked out.

Hiller: Vladimir, your first big project?

Vladimir Kagan: This goes back so far. I never wanted to be a designer. I wanted to be an artist and a sculptor. But my father was a cabinet maker and we were refugees, and kids worked with their parents, so I worked in the shop. When I was 18 years old we worked with John Wanamaker, big furniture maker, and also for Raymond Loewy. But John Wanamaker got the assignment to replace the furniture in the cocktail lounges of United Nations at Lake Success. And they had ordered furniture that didn’t make it so at the last minute they came to me, and I designed the whole cocktail lounge. None of the drawings survived and there are no photos of the end product but it opened many doors.

Hiller: I know you’ve designed a lot of products over the years, was there one favorite that you have?



VK: In the fifties, I did a lot of furniture that was unique in America… organic shapes – my serpentine sofa, the sculptured rocking chair. Now if these guys hadn’t screwed up you’d have pictures here! I spent three hours yesterday putting a wonderful slide show together! (laughter)

Hiller: Which you will all be able to see at www.sustainablefurnishings.org!

VK: So the pieces I did back in the fifties became very iconic over the years and every one of my commercial manufacturers wants me to reproduce myself. I’ve had more opportunity to go forward with my High Point manufacturers than I’ve had with my upscale clients who select my stuff from the fifties. So there are a lot of designs that probably never sold well here but at least I have the ability to make them and work with new materials and new technology. So what’s my favorite design? I haven’t the foggiest idea! (laughter) But, I must tell you, my latest design is totally non-green… shhhhh.

Hiller: Leave this room! (laughter)

VK: A limited edition fiberglass chair introducing at the Cooper Hewitt museum in New York on the 29th of this month for Pucci (photo right, Ralph Pucci International).

TF: I think the piece I respond to the most… I designed a console, with sort of a pop culture reference and the inspiration for the piece came from my house in upstate New York. An eagle lives somewhere nearby and fishes all year long in my pond. Even in winter, he comes out and breaks the ice. When I was growing up eagles were almost extinct -- on the endangered species list -- you just didn’t see them. So I started to incorporate it into my furniture line and people really like it.

Hiller: Alex, of all the things you’ve done, somewhere along the line, is there something you’ve thought was the greatest thing since shoes but you couldn’t get anyone behind you and it’s sitting there in the portfolio yet to be produced?

AJ: It’s hard to select between all of those (laughter) but I’d have to say that, in terms of furniture, I did a table about 10 years ago that I believed in so much – a cocktail table that morphed very simply into a dining table. Perfect for apartments, small spaces, this was a nice little piece that worked very easily, but nobody bought it.

Hiller: Sustainability really is about balance – it’s about using resources in a way that ensures there’s enough for future generations. And in your own lives, you three have to keep balance between the public persona and the incredible demands that are put on you in that role, and the fact that you’re still practicing, designing products, trying new things. Help us understand how you’re able to find balance.

AJ: I literally achieve it by balancing on a bicycle. I go for long rides up very steep hills and I would say that’s where I do my most creative thinking. Those of you that have met my wife know that she decided 25 years ago that keeping my ego in check was going to be her mission in life. She hasn’t succeeded.

TF: I think it starts with what he said about Alexander and Alex – being able to separate yourself  from what’s happening around you and keeping yourself grounded as a person.

Hiller: How do you approach (incorporating sustainability) in your designs?

VK: Whether or not you use sustainable products, we’re still trying to accomplish the same end product, so its really an issue of substitution. If we want to make upholstery we have to use foam. If it’s cost effective and marketing effective, the manufacturer will substitute the good stuff but other than that you’re still making the same piece of furniture. It’s really more about pushing the consciousness of it, the awareness, and the potential salability of going green with the end product. I don’t think the design has changed just because you’re going to make a green design.

TF: Vanguard as a company has even created this very responsible recycling program… as far as materials, certified wood, recycled metals, water based/low VOC finishes and paints, we’re also looking at durability and cost. So it gets back to looking at things: what makes sense for this piece? What makes sense for its use? What makes sense for manufacturing, cost, etc.? And you have to look at it and say, okay today here’s what’s responsible. And maybe a year from now, the product will mature, and the things that are available to us as designers and manufacturers will become more readily available.

Hiller: Wood dominates a lot of the conversation but there are solutions in all of the materials.

AJ: One of the reasons I was pleased to participate in this forum is what you guys are doing -- making consumers aware of the alternatives. Those of us that have believed in sustainability for a long time, which is a lot of people in this room, know that believing in it isn’t enough -- it’s getting consumers willing to pay for it that is the issue. For the younger generations coming along, its this kind of awareness and education. I didn’t grow up recycling, but my kids did. I mean it does cost more to do it right, but it’s a good fight. Vaughan Bassett, for its price range, is the lowest carbon footprint furniture company in the United States. All of the woods are harvested within 200 miles of the factory.

Hiller: When you’re talking to the manufacturers, does it (sustainability) enter into the conversation?

AJ: It’s always in the conversation – how can you make it better, how can you make it more sustainable, what can you do beyond design.

VK: The most important contribution we can make is to make quality products that don’t end up in the trash bin. With the consumer becoming aware of buying better quality merchandise that will last longer -- of course the furniture industry doesn’t want to hear that – (laughter) but I think if we keep an eye on quality that’s one very important thing. We were discussing yesterday the forms. Ten years forward, are you going to take those cushions inside and put them into recycling or will they end up in a dump or landfill? So the recycling really starts at the manufacturing level. I know that at American Leather, every scrap of unused foam rubber goes back into some recycled form whether it’s lining or reconstituted foam, and the same thing with wood chips -- they use the wood for energy. The recycling becomes a practical, possible thing. And I still haven’t answered your question... (laughter)

Hiller: What are you working on/where will you be in ten years?

TF: I’m working on a program with Shaw hospitality -- the idea is they install the (hotel) carpeting and when it’s time to replace it five to seven years later, they come back and take it and recycle it into the next batch of carpet. Hopefully that full circle can be applied to many other products in home furnishings.

AJ: I’m working on so many different projects… I would say in general that early on I saw my mission as an ‘aesthetic Johnny Appleseed’ and what I would try to do is step forward in my mission to recolor the manmade parts of the world. (laughter)

Hiller: Sustainability – how does it apply to your work and your life? Is there one subject area you’re most interested in? Landfills? Toxic pollution?

VK: The furniture industry, even though it has great opportunities to go sustainable, is not like the food industry. We can get milk now from grass-fed cows, a great move forward from corn-fed, but in our work we’re still dealing with products that will take a long time to bring into a totally sustainable environment. In my work, I’d love to find more better quality foams that don’t use petroleum products. My big peeve is using petroleum -- anything that is petroleum based is really a no-no, so those industries that are working to overcome that will make a great impact. The other thing of course is the energy factor, the consumers of electricity. Alex, you say Vaughan Bassett’s furniture is  made with wood harvested within a couple hundred miles of the factory. But when manufacturers use exotic wood, it comes from rain forests -- I’ve seen big furniture things made from wood and I’m told that they’re from ‘fallen’ trees. Well, somebody  felled them before they became fallen (laughter).

Hiller: Vladimir, I know that family is important to you; you talk often about your six grandkids. What would you like to leave to them in that regard?

VK: I want at least one of them to come and work with me. That would be wonderful. I have six beautiful granddaughters… and three great kids, each one with a career. One makes jewelry, one of them works with my wife and has a good business head and good taste in fashion. My son is an artist and he’s the kid that should have started working with me, but he makes more money selling his paintings than I make making furniture (laughter).

Hiller: Thom?

TF: Wow. Gosh. What was the question? (laughter)  I think climate change is probably the most pressing -- it's important to get people to understand what can be done and how powerful this can be. You know, I was thinking about when I was a kid and how affected I was by the commercials with the Indian standing on the side of the highway shedding a tear when he saw all the litter – that changed a generation. I don’t think I know anyone who doesn’t recycle or who would even consider throwing trash out of a car or disposing of anything recklessly. And in that way, I think what we’re doing here is really important because it’s about educating where we’re getting these raw materials from -- the manufacturers, the retailers, the designers -- and now we’re reaching out to the consumer. It’s exciting, and it’s only the beginning. I find it amazing that you’ve grown from 41 to 400 members in such a short time, and I’m looking forward to being a part of making the number go to 800 -- very quickly.

AJ: I feel the same and back to something I touched on earlier -- I think consumer awareness is the most important because the power is in those credit cards and those dollars. That people understand, demand and will pay for a sustainability component… that’s how you propagate it. And I have a slogan I’m happy to give to you: Green is keen; if you’re green you’re not blue. (laughter)

Hiller: I’d like to open it to the floor for questions now.

Audience member: The indian was actually an Italian-American guy (laughter)… and those advertisements were put on by a group called the Ad Council which had its roots in (marketing an idea, funded by manufacturers, that) littering is everyone’s responsibility. It was an interesting way for manufacturers to shirk their responsibility – 'the problem is not that we package stuff in unrecyclable garbage, but that you as a consumer have to deal with it properly: put the trash in a trash bin and don’t throw it out on the side of the road.’ At the end of the day, what difference does it make if that unrecyclable candy wrapper is on the side of the road or in the dump?

TF: I still think what it did for a generation is impressive.

Audience member: Oh, I totally agree with you, but what was interesting was that the manufacturers saw it as a way to give back responsibility for the situation… so it became your responsibility too.

TF: A lot of the litter they were showing in that commercial started with the ‘please don’t litter, be responsible’ campaign, and it worked. You can t just wake up one day and say ‘okay, throw all your furniture out and go out and buy all new environmentally-correct furniture.’ That’s just not the way it works.

Hiller: That brings up another point - don’t take things at face value, ask questions. 'Greenwashing' is the term and how you avoid it is by asking the right kinds of questions.

Audience member: I’ve got a quick question, too. As a green manufacturer, we just did a LEED renovation of our factory, we’ve been buying green power for years, the machine shop in our factory is solar powered. I’m wondering if you could say which is most important – materials, like soy-based foam, or metal or a certain type wood;  method of manufacturing -- that a product is made in a sustainable or green manufacturing environment; or locale, like distance of production to final location. Which among those three is the most important? It’s been a very big challenge for me as a manufacturer.

AJ: I think they’re all important issues. Myself, I have the ability through Vaughan-Bassett to deliver bedrooms with a low carbon footprint, and they have lots of other sustainable programs as part of the process, but I can only do what they can do.

VK: Of the three things, mine is to try to keep the jobs in America -- outsourcing has been ruinous for this country. (applause) Even though the unemployment rate is down we still lose 200,000 jobs a month. We’ve got to fight very hard to keep the jobs and the production in America. That’s my first concern.

Hiller: Which brings up an important point -- all three of these gentlemen work for American companies that manufacture in the United States. (applause)

Audience member: Do you have people you work with that are producing fabrics in the U.S.?

VK: Textiles are one of the few areas where you can go really green because they can make fibers now out of bamboo… all kinds of natural materials. But of course 50-60 years ago we also knew about wool, we knew about cotton, we made rayon from wood, so we were already green when we started off. But we can go back in the textiles industry to the more natural materials and still come up with the same beautiful products.

TF: In that area it’s much easier to be green in terms of organic dyes and natural fibers. I’m working with Kravet -- we’re developing fabrics that are environmentally friendly and offering them as options for people purchasing furniture. There are certain colors and palettes that work better with synthetic dyes. So it’s about choices. Sometimes you’re looking at the durability of a product, sometimes for commercial installation this may be the more responsible finish in terms of the environment, but how long will this finish actually protect the piece and keep it out of a landfill?  You have to look at it and balance your solution.

Audience member: The notion of sustainability right now to the consumer is that it’s  more expensive… the second part is more about what’s going on in transportation and packaging… look at these trucks that cart most of the furniture around the U.S. Again,  keeping things closer is a tremendous achievement for anybody and that’s not being brought to the forefront. It’s always about the materials and never about the trucks and packing materials and all the things that go into it. The designers and factories need to take that into consideration as part of the whole picture. You can’t just sell parts and pieces.

Hiller: I would assume you guys aren’t involved in the packaging of the product but it’s an excellent point that in the industry we need to consider all dimensions and certainly packaging and shipping is a huge part of it.

Audience member: I design for indoors but consumers are spending more time outside… I understand it’s a durability issue, but do you see the same concern for outdoor product that you see for indoor?

TF: I don’t work in the area of outdoor furniture…

VK: I do, and we’re naughty… (laughter)

TF: When I shop for outdoor furniture with clients, very often they’re talking about responsible wood products for outdoor and also recycled metals, etc.

Audience member: Any sense of the current availability and price of certified woods?

TF: My experience has been that all of the frames and woods presented to me were already a part of the program. Vanguard was a founding member of the SFC.

Hiller: One of the key points in all the wood discussions, if your wood is sourced in North America or Canada, you’re typically in great shape anyway; but if you’re importing it's become a critical consideration. Price has been steadily decreasing… more demand for that type of product will bring those prices down, lower those barriers of entry. There is a misperception that these products necessarily have to cost more. Most options, and you can quote me on this one, most options cost nothing more… not somewhat more… nothing more.

With that, let’s wrap it up, thanks for coming – standing room only, how could you possibly ask for more than that! And please visit the showrooms of Vanguard, Vaughan-Bassett, American Leather and all the other great (SFC-member) showrooms listed in the literature on your table. Thanks so much.