A soft place to land
Silk Laundry founder Katie Kolodinski ushers The Everywoman into her home of collected treasures.
As this story is being written, Katie Kolodinski is en route to the Kalahari for a rhino conservation project. Yes, really. The founder and creative director is often on the move: in recent months alone, she has been to Mexico, her childhood homelands of Canada and Australia, and, most recently, her adopted home in Spain. She and her family settled on Barcelona, for its energy and its sun, and she has set up her studio there to continue designing for and creative directing her silk-centric clothing label, Silk Laundry. “I have tried to settle a few times, but we’ve had some hiccups along the way that have prevented that,” Katie says, of her semi-nomadic lifestyle. “The universe had different things in store for us, I guess.”
When it came to finding a home in Barcelona, Katie had a vision of exactly what she was looking for. “I knew I needed something with a little soul and natural sunlight,” she explains. “I wanted a space with history, and a space that made you feel something. I also needed something big enough that I could practise violin without bothering anyone, and we could put in a piano for my kids.”
“My home is my place where I am able to recharge. It’s where I can read, and draw, and garden a bit. It’s where I can switch off from the world.”
The home that Katie and her husband eventually landed on has more than just a little soul; more than just a little natural sunlight. It has soaring ceilings and well-worn parquet flooring, with little pockets of interest everywhere you look. Here, see the stately wood panelling that wraps the living room; over there, a raised platform hugged by bay windows that overlook the boulevard below, where an easel and rotation of art projects are given place of honour.
A home like this would maybe always have been beautiful, but its particular brand of charm comes from the care and consideration that Kolodinski has poured into it. The designer finds joy in uncovering one-of-a-kind furniture and homewares, the unique design ethos of Spain slowly infusing the apartment with its history and aesthetic. “When you’re shopping for older pieces, you’re generally avoiding trends and purchasing things you truly love — long after a trend may have passed,” she says. “I think a lot of [objects] have energy and some sort of soul, for lack of a better word.”
Taking a place of pride beside a blush-hued sofa is a handmade fibreglass floor lamp, its organic figure shaped as if a flower opening to the sun (“No brand to be found,” she says, when I inevitably ask, my own home in mind. “But now I can’t imagine my home without it!”), encountered serendipitously on a walk by the streets near her office one day. Usually seated beside it, a whimsical cat scratching post in the shape of toadstools: “[Scratching posts] usually are so ugly that when I find a fun one, I grab it,” she says. “I have a palm tree he loves too.’
A Spanish mid-century wooden divider, found at a furniture dealer nearby and deliberated over for many months before coming home with Kolodinski, sits just beyond the living room, hiding her “practical and functional, but eyesore” of a stationary bike. “One day I walked past and [the divider] was gone, and I felt pure devastation that I missed it,” she explains of the moment she knew the investment piece was the one for her. The very next day, she went into the store and asked about it, and fortunately, the divider had simply been moved to the back. “When I finally bought it, my mum was with me, and she agreed it was beautiful. So now, even though the divider is new to me, that piece will hold a memory of my mother, and I love it even more.”
Each move to various cities around the world has allowed Kolodinski to expand on designs and products she never would have needed if she were still in Australia: to stretch her creativity and label beyond what it was. At the time of Silk Laundry’s conception, Kolodinski had been inspired to meet her own simple needs of a silk slip dress that was perfect for the heat and humidity experienced in Australia. After a move to Montreal, and the need for clothing that could be layered, the label moved into soft suiting and lined garments.
Now settled into her home and new life in Barcelona — a routine as considered as her home, with Mondays marked with fresh flowers, Wednesday lunch breaks with a private pilates instructor, and weekends punctuated with “beach, parks and friends and gardening and cooking” — the next collection from Silk Laundry reflects this serenity, its founder’s deep immersion into science and nature, and “perfection found within.”
“I have always held a profound curiosity about the natural world, and this year my curiosity led me on through the illustrations of Ernst Haeckel, the geometry found in nature, mathematics, Fibonacci and the golden ratio,” she enthuses. As she explains, the sequence of numbers written by the 12th-century mathematician of the same name can be used to predict outcomes all across the natural world, from the reproduction rates of rabbits to the shape of galaxies. The collection boasts custom grid crochet patterns, reminiscent of graph paper; and touches of primary blue and reds inspired by the ink pens used in school. “For prints, you can expect rabbits, graph paper and some golden ratio line drawings.”
In addition to the pure silk that the label is known for, the collection will also incorporate a new fabrication of hemp and wool with the appearance of denim, but with the benefit of wool’s comfort and hemp’s sustainable properties.
Kolodinski shares one more reflection before she turns her mind’s eye from her Barcelona home to the wilderness of the Kalahari, the desert that awaits her in southern Africa.
“It’s so beautiful to be able to look around a space and see not just things, but memories.”
Acquire things you really love that you can imagine yourself keeping forever,” she says, her philosophy for her label converging with her eye for found objects. “I think a lot of things have [a kind of] power and soul and can change your headspace for the better.”
Photography: Melanie Rodriguez