Had the dice rolled a different way, Brittney Forrister would be running a boutique car lot called Clutch — an entrepreneurial nod to her dad’s love of classic automotive design and its sleek, shiny curves. Outside, colorful vintage cars would’ve lined up in neat rows, selected and shined; inside: vintage clothing, carefully found and folded.
“I’ve lived a lot of lives,” Forrister says, laughing and leading a quick tour around the place that takes up a lot of her current life, boutique textile showroom The Lot. “What’s so interesting about that is the consistent theme: I’m selling something, and it’s old and it has a story.”
With The Lot, Forrister sells and shows distinct fabric and wallpaper designs from a carefully selected crew of represented designers, many from the Southeast United States, some from as far as South Africa and Norway. She and her Nashville showroom primarily serve interior designers — the kind of folks who, for instance, might see the lines on a Chevy Bel Air and ponder the depth of the story they tell.
Nearing six years in, The Lot is comfortably established in a sweet brick-and-mortar space on Charlotte Avenue, tucked alongside the esteemed LeQuire Gallery. But fittingly (and fortunately), although Clutch never engaged, her small-business success still began behind the wheel.
“It was just out of my little transit van,” Forrister says, remembering her maiden miles establishing The Lot, mere weeks before COVID shut everything down and everyone in. “I traveled all over the place… what I was doing was really kind of like an old-school traveling sales rep, where I was putting these brands — we’d sign them to represent them and then get in front of as many designers as possible within the Southeast. Which honestly was really fun. It was an adventure.”
During the lockdown days, Forrister pulled into parking lots to meet with designers, opening the Lot van’s doors and unfurling her designers’ wares.
“It was like a man with a trench coat and Rolexes in New York City,” she remembers. “But it ended up working out really well for us. And then we were able to [open a space].”
Setting Up on Charlotte
Inside The Lot’s cozy showroom, waves of swatches wash across the east and west walls, painstakingly organized to give each individual design equal and elegant play. There are light and bright fabrics, earthy and muted colors, warm and cool ones. Tones shift through solids and stripes, florals and checks, abstract and intricate, modern and traditional.
Disparate as the designs might seem, The Lot’s collection does have a throughline. To see it clearly, though, you need to look under the hood.
“Each brand has such a really cool story,” Forrister says. “You put them all together in this space and it just works so well.”
The stories extend from the artists themselves to the individual patterns, and from the personal to the conceptual.
OTEA Textiles principal Cara George uses old world-inspired patterns to pay homage to Otea Pollera, her great aunt and the one family member who stayed behind in Italy when the rest migrated to the U.S.
With her Gyri Design work, Gyri Susrud transports herself back to a family cabin in the Norwegian mountains, pulling inspiration from the traditional textiles her grandmother and great-grandmother hand-wove to decorate the walls.
Bulgaria-born, Los Angeles-based Vera Neykov uses her Milton Textiles to deliver an inspirational tour through art history, channeling the spirit and color palettes of masterpieces — Matisse to Edward Hopper and many in between — and creating new and novel designs.
These underlying narratives aren’t just nice-to-haves, from Forrister’s perspective. They’re an essential part of The Lot’s own distinct personality, and they’re key to both supporting and inspiring the Southeast’s thoughtful interior designers.
“We’re hired out to tell the stories of these artists, and I think that’s really exciting,” she says. “And then designers use those to bring a story to life in the homes of their clients.”
Giving The Lot Its Love
To tell the story of The Lot showroom itself, Forrister tapped into the rich Nashville interior design scene, collaborating with local talents Amanda Khouri and Jessica Stambaugh, who’ve both shared the Charlotte showroom space.
Khouri, who specializes in residential design (her work can be seen in the Flower magazine showhouse feature on page 49), welcomed the step into commercial design and the rare opportunity to share the wheel.
“As an interior designer, especially a residential interior designer, you don’t necessarily get the chance to collaborate with other designers very often,” Khouri says. “Jessica and I have very different but in some ways overlapping tastes, and it was so much fun to put those together. And of course with Britt’s taste. We’re all friends, and it was fun to have a little bit of the push and pull.”
Looking around the showroom today, Forrister doesn’t see push and pull so much as she sees a complex puzzle, put together perfectly.
“There’s so many prints and patterns,” she says, smiling. “It’s true eye candy.”
Alongside selections from The Lot’s line, the showroom houses “little finds” Forrister’s collected over the years at vintage shops and antique stops — a mix of pretty picks that, true to form, are old and have a story.
She stumbled on collections of antique wallpaper samples and old ribbon cards on treasure hunts; they’re stylishly framed and displayed. Vintage fixtures cast cool light and vibes.
“Right now some of the artwork is missing on the wall,” the founder/finder points out — designers and visitors regularly ask to snag stuff she’s selected to outfit and beautify her HQ.
“All the stuff that isn’t fabric and wallpaper adds to the aesthetic of our home,” she says. “I hope it makes it feel like a place that designers want to come in, and they feel inspired.
“But also,” Forrister notes, hinting a wink, “it’s for sale.”
LEARN A LITTLE ABOUT THE LOT
thelotshowroom.com
@thelotshowroom
