Hospitality Design - November 2011 - 83

pro le: michelle bergeron

products
By Stacy Shoemaker Rauen

material girl
New York-based interior designer Michelle Bergeron has always been obsessed with white shagreen (stingray skin), importing it to make furniture for as many residential clients as she could. But her fate with the material was sealed four years ago. While at an aquarium with her two children feeding the stingrays, the sole white one in a sea of gray took a liking to her. “I was sitting there on my Blackberry and I hear this bubbling noise. I turn around and it’s behind me, ﬂapping its little wings,” she explains. “So I go around to the other end of the pool and it follows me. I was so freaked out.” For the next two years Bergeron searched high and low for fake stingray skin, not only because of this encounter, but also to solve the problems inherent in the real stuff, mainly the tendency to peel and stain easily, and not be resistant to water. She came up empty, ﬁnding things done in pleather, leather, and vinyl, but nothing on the same level as what she was accustomed to. “The problem is you never get the real texture with something fake,” explains the Upper East Side resident. That was until Bergeron found a manufacturer in her own backyard who invented a lacquered wood product designed to look like real shagreen. The wood not only gives her the texture she was looking for, but also makes the product water resistant and unwarpable (thanks to the use of marine grade woods), and therefore suitable for contract and hospitality settings. “It opens up a completely different market that was so saturated in terms of residential,” she explains. “It’s not a surface, it’s a lacquered wood product. It feels real.” The other bonus? She realized that as a background medium, the pattern options are endless (think everything from ﬁreﬂies to geometric patterns, some punctuated by agates), as are the color possibilities (she handpaints each piece). And so Skatemoderne—skate, another name for

Clockwise from top left: Michelle Bergeron, leaning on one of her own creations; and four pieces from her Skatemoderne collection: the Amethyst Buffet, a purple hued bar cabinet, a detail of the center of a circular table featuring a beautiful gemstone, and the Agate Tray, done in turquoise.
stingray, and moderne, because most of her silhouettes have a midcentury look—was born some six months ago. Looking back, this desire to create something unique started at a very young age. As a child, she cut up her sheets to make window treatments, and at the age of eight, she “was a faux ﬁnishing nightmare,” she remembers. “We had a pine vanity in a shared bathroom, and I faux ﬁnished it in marble. It was horrible.” After graduating from Boston University, she started a ready-to-wear fashion line at just 24, and then stumbled into her true passion, interior design, by founding event planning business Cititaste with her best friend and now co-owner of restaurant company One Group, Celeste Fierro. (Bergeron would design the events, and Fierro would handle the business and catering aspects.) Those events led to interior design clients, a stint at the New York School of Interior Design, and the rest is history. “I love interiors more than fashion. Rooms don’t get fat, they don’t change,” she laughs. Now her elegant, sophisticated, almost zen-like collection includes casegoods, benches, wall panels, and accessories like trays. And she is just getting started. Next up she hopes to launch a line of candles, alpaca throws, and tabletop accessories. michellebergeron.com; www.skatemoderne.com

www.hospitalitydesign.com

November 2011

http://www.michellebergeron.com http://www.skatemoderne.com http://www.hospitalitydesign.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Hospitality Design - November 2011