With its first incarnation shadowed by a controversy over interpretation of its longtime brand, Katie Largent is hoping for a better start for Arden Home.
“The change was really bigger than all of the controversy,” Largent said of the backlash that formed when Plantation Design — a Los Angeles-born provider of the botanical motifs, woven surfaces, and shutters of the plantation style of interior design — expanded to San Francisco and Seattle.
PLEASE HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE!
Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.
In 2016 when the new shop and showroom opened in the Pike Motorworks development on E Pike, the Black Lives Matter movement and online criticism made it clear the 17-year-old brand needed a change.
In October, new signage and awnings went up in SF and on E Pike with a new, simpler brand that Largent said is hoped to evoke the company’s expanded design aesthetic and move away from the past controversy. Largent said she also hopes the neighborhood is learning the shop and showroom isn’t just expensive and high-end furniture.
Her store’s neighborhood is also changing. On E Pine, big brand interior design company Blu Dot has now opened a showroom. Another small business like Largent’s, Homestead Seattle is also part of the Pike/Pine interior design — and plant — offerings. A truly high-end part of the neighborhood’s design scene shuttered earlier this year as the Hayden Collective’s space in 500 E Pike’s Greenus Building now stands empty.
For Arden Home, the two-year process was painful and expensive, Largent says, but she is looking forward to a better connection with the neighborhood.
“We’re Seattleites,” Largent said. “We’re everything that Capitol Hill wants to have in a business.”
Arden Home is located at 710 E Pike. You can learn more at ardenhome.com.
