For Reference

Brooklyn, for-reference.com
A longtime New York interior designer, Leilani Zahn got to design her own coming-out party this spring when she decided to move into furniture, lighting and objects: In collaboration with The Future Perfect, she created a temporary apartment space featuring her new lights, textiles, and soft goods and styled with work by friends and contemporaries, including De La Espada, Brrch Floral, and her husband, Karl Zahn.  

What is American design to you, and what excites you about it?

American design to me is a young, industrious, thoughtful, funny, amorphous category that considers history deeply and challenges it regularly. What excites me about American design currently is how it will change from this year forward. We have come to solidify our values pretty quickly over the last few months and I think this will inherently change the design landscape. There’s going to be a level of consideration that will raise the bar of quality, taste, and comfort that will hopefully produce not only better products but more social responsibility.

What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? 

Release of the Outlines lighting system I designed with The Future Perfect. Developing a line of furniture that includes re-thinking the formalized schedule of a day and the way we interact with these pieces. 

What inspires or informs your work in general? 

The future. I enjoy thinking about future landscapes and how we will evolve into them. It informs the way I think about the longevity of my ideas and how to adapt them to create something more than a trend. 

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