Lisa Fine

Were it not for her deep Mississippi drawl, you wouldn't know Lisa Fine hails from the South. Famous for her “bohemian” tastes (find her in a fringe YSL jacket and flares on the morning coffee run to Sant Ambroeus), the fabric designer is a far cry from someone who drinks Mint Juleps and stops wearing white after Labor Day.

Shipped off to boarding school (her father was concerned about the “bad habits” she’d picked up at the local Dairy Queen), Fine eventually wound up in New York working at Condé Nast under the legendary photographer Deborah Turbeville. “You’d be out ‘til 4 or 5 in the morning, and then you’d eat breakfast and change clothes and head into the office” she recalls of those early years in the city.

After a self-described (and somewhat premature!) “midlife crisis,” she moved to Paris without speaking a word of French, published a cookbook on aphrodisiacs and agreed to join a friend on a trip to India. While in Mumbai, Fine discovered—and completely fell in love with—embroidered fabrics. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Indian-inspired fabrics that form the core of Fine’s textile business are born of her many travels. But it’s the unique way she mixes and matches them that makes her such a bastion of bohemian style: expect paisley and English chintz next to antiques and color pairings plucked straight from Indian palaces. Her knack for seeing the fabulousness in unexpected pairings is also the reason why her dinner parties—mixes of “kooky, crazy” and “old, stuffy” friends—are so fun. Like champagne and french fries, “most people would never think to mix them” she says, “But when you do everyone has a better time.”