Pillow Talk

Meet the owners behind the Bay Area shop where cushions are king.

By Catherine Warmerdam
Photography by Create + Gather

“WE FEEL LIKE all home projects begin and end with a pillow.” So says Melanie Mount, who with Kelly Bedford Willrich owns The Cushion Shop, the darling Larkspur boutique stuffed to the rafters with bespoke pillows. “They’re the jewelry of the room, and you can change them so effortlessly. It really is an inexpensive way to bring designer fabrics into your home.”

The design duo, both former Pottery Barn execs, opened the shop as an extension of Well Made Home, the partners’ full-service window treatment and custom furniture workshop. “One of our great passions was traveling around the world and seeing textiles produced firsthand,” says Willrich. “The business was founded on the premise of making that artisanal fabric more available to the public.”

In terms of design trends, their timing couldn’t have been better. “The most exciting thing is that color and pattern are coming back in a big way,” says Willrich. “The trend of the last 10 years has been subtle, quiet decorating with a lot of beige and gray. Part of the birth of this brand was in reaction to that because we love color and print and pattern so much. There was a dearth of it in the marketplace.”

With hundreds of textiles by makers like Lisa Fine, Lake August and Seemakrish to choose from, the selection at The Cushion Shop can feel daunting to some shoppers. Not to worry, says Willrich.

“You should choose what you love without worrying about what it means or what someone might think or if it’s on-trend or off-trend. It’s your house, it’s your space; it should be the way you like it,” she advises. “That said, mixing patterns is hard, and that’s what we’re here to help people do. When they pick out what they love, we help them pull it together and make it look great.”

The Cushion Shop at Marin Country Mart,
2257K Larkspur Landing Circle, Larkspur;
(415) 578-2959;
thewellmadehome.com