AquaVireo

Madeleine Slater founded AquaVireo 15 years ago, when her career as a kitchen designer, with its intensive use of digital tools like CAD, was interrupted by a car accident. “After suffering a whiplash injury, I realized that I could no longer have a static job sitting in front of a computer,” she says. Instead, she considered how to exploit the skills she’d honed as a textile and sewing teacher — and so AquaVireo was born. Now, AquaVireo produces pieces for the home — pillows, blankets, rugs — made from Oeko-Tex 100- certified linens. AquaVireo’s aesthetic goals represent just as much as a paradigm shift as its ecological ambitions: “There is still the belief that linen has to be folded in a different way each time it is to be folded and stored in the dark, just as your grandma used to do,” Slater says. “But linen can be more of an everyday item.”.