Round Top Through the Lens of an Interior Designer

About This Episode

Join Casey Brand as she takes us along to Round Top, Texas, during the fall show. After 25 years in design and decades of travel, Casey knows Round Top as a place that began with trucks of antiques in a dirt field and has grown into a destination for designers and makers alike. This episode is a walk through the people she keeps coming back for.

The morning starts at Sapana with founder Jolie Helms, whom Casey met in Houston years ago. Jolie’s blanket coats are cut from vintage kantha quilts from India and Bangladesh, reversible like the blankets themselves, with a collar borrowed from her grandmother’s swing coat. The textiles are sourced and tailored by the same families, a generational craft Jolie’s business was built to keep employed. She also shares the Hope bags, made with She Has Hope: hand-loomed dhaka fabric from Nepal, sewn by young women learning tailoring in a program in Kathmandu.

Next is Tonya Hawkes, who designed handbags for Donna Karan starting in 1992, went on to lead design at Furla in Italy, and launched her own label in 2012, carrying her first clutch straight to Vogue. She talks through resin studs inspired by Sputnik, a scarf collaboration with L’Ambère, and her conviction that when the team is right, the product is right.

At The Compound, Santa Barbara painter Colette Cosentino explains how a 450-foot fence mural for Lotusland caught the eye of Schumacher and became a wallpaper line, and gives a first look at colorways launching in 2026. Across the way, her husband Peter Horjus, an award-winning graphic designer who only recently picked up a paintbrush, shows his graphic cowboys. Just before packing up, Casey ducks into Shapeau, where emergency medicine doctor Lauren Shapiro and her mother turn antique quilts into one-of-a-kind coats and skirts, each finished with hand embroidery.

“If this just lives in my head, nobody gets to appreciate it.”

Casey Brand

What You’ll See

• Jolie Helms's reversible blanket coats made from vintage kantha quilts at Sapana
• Hope bags sewn by young women in a She Has Hope program in Kathmandu
• Tonya Hawkes on Donna Karan, Furla, and taking her first clutch to Vogue
• Colette Cosentino's Schumacher wallpaper and a sneak peek at new colorways
• Peter Horjus's graphic cowboy paintings
• Quilt coats and hand embroidery from mother-daughter brand Shapeau