It used to be the only time you saw wallpaper was either in Grandma’s bathroom or in a Las Vegas hotel. But many fashion-savvy homeowners and trendy businesses are opting for fresh ways to cover up blinding white walls with some eye-opening colors and patterns. Two New York-based Korean American designers have answered the call to revive the old 1970s trend of strict patterns and outdated motifs with their innovative designs. Both have companies based in New York that are only a few years old.
One is owned by Wook Kim, a guy who wants to move wallpaper into the future while respecting its past. The other is run by Jee Levin, along with husband Randall Buck, who is ready to break all the rules. These designers say their route into wallpaper design was a bit of an accident, but already, they are firmly entrenched in the industry, with clients ranging from celebrities to major hotels.
Currently riding the road to success, Kim of his self-titled business and Levin of Trove profess that wallpaper is their calling, even if there’s not a trace of it on their walls in their respective homes.
“I live in a white box,” says Kim.
And Levin’s house: “It’s nothing, but white walls,” she says.
Wook Kim’s “Theory of Evolution”
Wook Kim’s self-titled collection is stuck to the walls of the Frederick Esti Salon in New York and the master bedroom of Oscar-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s Hampton home. Paltrow, quite the style icon herself, chose Kim’s soft Victorian style Feu pattern in gray. It’s one of Kim’s more traditional prints, compared to his use of animals and “Alice in Wonderland”-like colors that are found in much of his work.
Kim started digitally designing and printing wallpaper in 2005 after he created wallpaper for Pharma, a bath and beauty store in New York City.
“It was sort of a fluke,” says the 33-year-old, recently featured in the November 2007 issue of House & Garden magazine. “I had an opportunity with a friend of mine to design wallpaper for a store in New York, and then it just sort of went from there.”
Kim’s limited-edition wall coverings range from soft aerial hues to distant brooding blues to fiery, fervid colors for almost every design. His two separate collections, which can be bought via wookkim.com or in MATTER retail stores in New York, are designed to tie the past to the present while making subtle comments on life.
“When I am designing, there are things that I am concerned about,” he says. “Whether it’s history or even political ideas or the current situation of the world, they are very calculated things on my part.”
Art has been a part of Kim’s life since his family emigrated here from Korea when he was 4. His father started his own business buying and appraising antiques. His mother was a painter, and Kim himself wanted to study fine arts until his parents convinced him it wasn’t the most financially desirable major. Instead, he studied textile design at the Rhode Island School of Design and got his master’s at Cranbrook Academy in Michigan.
