Daily News
From Home Furnishing Business
It’s Style, Not Fashion for Alexander Julian
April 24,
2017 by Larry Thomas in Industry, Special Events 
Although he has been an award-winning fashion designer for decades, and has sprinkled fashion influences throughout his newest collection with Universal Furniture, Alexander Julian doesn’t believe in fashion.
“I don’t believe in fashion. I believe in style,” Julian told an interior designer-heavy audience Sunday at Universal’s showroom, noting that his approach to designing furniture isn’t significantly different than apparel.
“It has to appeal to women. It has to appeal to men. And it has to be timeless,” he said of his furniture designs. “Furniture was the first things I had ever designed that was not gender specific.”
Julian’s newest design collaboration with Universal is appropriately called Postscript, a reference to the hugely successful Home Colours collection he designed for Universal in 1994.
Postscript features styling that Julian calls “hip traditional,” and consists of 32 wood pieces and nine upholstery pieces. Apparel influences include a button-tufted upholstered headboard that uses four-hole apparel buttons instead of upholstery buttons, and slip-covered dining chairs with buttons on the back of the cover.
Universal President Jeff Scheffer said Postscript already has been well placed with dealers at market, and he expects it to be a major success story this year.
In his presentation, Julian was effusive in his praise for Scheffer and the Universal team that worked with him.
“This is a World Series-winning team,” he said. “We’re going to bring home some trophies, guys.”
His 1994 collection earned a Pinnacle Award, making Julian the only fashion designer to ever win the prestigious furniture design award.
Scheffer told the audience the idea to create another Julian-designed collection was hatched during a chance meeting between him and Julian at a University of North Carolina football game in 2015.
Julian is a longtime Chapel Hill, N.C., resident and Scheffer’s daughter was a UNC student at the time.
The two already knew one another because Scheffer was a Universal executive when the 1994 collection was launched and they worked together extensively at that time.
“What are the chances of meeting him in a stadium with about 60,000 people?” Scheffer said. “But that’s how it got started.”