Since its founding in 2015, Lisa Says Gah has become known for its bowtie-pasta cardigans, checkerboard coats, and swans. Today, the California-based label is releasing its first home collection, which has a similarly playful ethos: “The Lisa Says Gah world really naturally extends into the home,” says founder Lisa Bühler. “Home and clothing ultimately tell the story of who you are.”
The collection is a collaboration with Etsy, a platform Bühler often uses for her own inspiration (things that make her shout: Gah!). “When you go to Etsy, you’re always going to find something that delights you,” she says.
Lisa Says Gah has stocked independent designers alongside its own line for more than a decade. This year, Bühler co-judged the Etsy Design Awards, and selected three winners to co-design Etsy Says Gah!, a nine-piece collection exclusively available via Etsy. Bühler says she prioritized “unexpected, collected things that you just don’t automatically go to when you think of homeware.”
The home collection’s foundational inspiration comes from Lisa Says Gah’s two fall lines, Pastoral Daze and Swan Dance, which pair horses and swans with paisleys and cabin-inspired knits. Bühler worked with the Etsy designers by sharing mood boards, giving notes when she wanted more of a motif or a different color combination, and trusting each maker with her own medium. “They’re the expert[s],” she says. “The process felt like really trusting and putting it in their hands.”’
Each maker applied the same mood board differently. Jacqueline Sanchez, a Houston-based ceramicist who won this year’s Grand Prize for a vase covered in more than 1,500 hand-applied scales, sculpted the swan in relief on a pale pink vase wound with green vines. She also set a horse’s head in a blue baroque cameo on a cream mug and dotted a wavy platter with tiny fruit as a nod to the brand’s food prints. “[I liked] having the freedom to incorporate elements that feel really true to my work,” says Sanchez. The vase is a piece Bühler keeps coming back to: “You would just be happy to have it on the table without flowers,” she says.
