Since starting her eponymous company in 1997 with a beautifully graphic collection of Indian flat weave cotton carpets, ED contributing editor Madeline Weinrib has seduced the fashion, art, and design worlds with bold, unabashedly painterly textiles. An artist first, she crafted a business out of her contemporary take on traditional Asian and Middle Eastern fabrics, rendered in high quality, handmade creations that also helped support local weaving and artisanal industries in the countries she visited.

Her rugs, pillows and textiles helped usher in a global, bohemian aesthetic in home design and over the years, she has collaborated with everyone from the Cooper Hewitt Museum to Manolo Blahnik.

Several weeks ago, Weinrib announced she would be shuttering her business, a shock to her legion fans, whose members include Celerie Kemble, Jana Pasquel and Claire Distenfeld. Ahead of two closing sales—an in showroom one in New York from May 8th to May 19th and an online one from May 25th through June 15th—Weinrib chatted with us about her first textile designs, the impact of social media on asethetics, and her plans for the future.

You were a painter before you started your business. In what ways did the pieces you created for your company you to express something you couldn’t with just painting?

I wasn’t trained as a textile designer. I was obsessed with being a painter but I was very frustrated as a painter as well, because everything I did felt derivative. I don’t think I’m alone in this kind of frustration—I think it’s a problem in our era to find your own way and your own voice. I started looking at historical textiles, and I was able to put a more contemporary, personal spin on them and make them more minimal, change the palette, change the scale and try to create something that felt unique. What I couldn’t do as a painter, I was able to achieve as a textile designer.

What was the first thing you did that took off?

My flat weave cotton carpets. The zig zag was one of my first designs, and it took us six months to sell the first one. It was not successful. I think it was seen as very aggressive and it taught me a lot—that things that are new and different do not immediately excite people. It takes time. It was really when we showed people how to use them that that they took off. My father owned ABC Carpet and Home, and he was advising me on my business and he did say to me, “Don’t make cotton carpets, Maddie, no one ever buys them.” So here we go. That was fun.

Why do you think your aesthetic resonated with people?

I happen to think—although this was not conscious at the time—that I was making global designs at a time when the world was indeed becoming more connected. And perhaps it’s that I put a more contemporary spin on something that was very traditional. Sometimes when things are very, very traditional, we don’t see them much anymore, they’re so much a part of our world. So my decision to put a contemporary spin on something very traditional maybe brought in a whole new audience. What I find so amazing is we entered into a new century and everything is upside down, everything is different, it’s just extraordinary and it’s global and I think my work is global.

Travel has been so important to your business, both in terms of aesthetic and production. How did you become so enamored of travel?

In my early 20s I met a guy in New York who lived in Rome and about three minutes after I graduated college I got on a plane to go to Italy. It was the beginning of me traveling and getting to really experience different cultures. And this was an eye opener. And it’s become something I really enjoy doing to this day. I don’t really love to travel so much as a tourist—I like to travel as I’m working. Because I get to meet the people and eat what they eat and understand the culture so much more than I did.

You’ve done collaborations over the years with everyone from the Neue Galerie to Manolo Blahnik. What is a particularly memorable collaboration you did?

The Art Production Fund produced a print that one of my favorite artists, Billy Sullivan, made and it was a collaboration with me. He came to my home and took photos of my table and my plants and my fabrics and my napkins and he did a beautiful drawing of it. And Art Production Fund turned it into a print. And it’s a very small edition of 30 and it’s beautiful.

Your decision to close your business must have been very difficult—what were some of the big factors for you?

There were a lot of things brewing. I have a showroom in New York and a showroom in San Francisco. And a couple of years ago I was realizing that my rents were going to double and the expenses of my business were getting higher and higher and higher. Now again, I think this is a sign of the times. I think a lot of people are struggling with this one: how do you sustain a small specialty business in a world where it is so expensive to run something? I started really questioning what my options were. I could sell my company, have a larger company run my operations, but I always felt in my heart that what I would have to do to sustain the cost of these businesses is mass produce what I was doing with the artisans and I just couldn’t do it. It would have been a total sell out to me. And I didn’t feel like I wanted to wreck my life’s work. So I made the decision. It happened all of a sudden because I was able to get out of some leases. This was a very difficult thing. My work’s been my life.

Years ago, when the cotton rugs started doing so well, it was really exciting and when I would visit India I would go with my manufacturer to visit weavers. And the better the carpets did, the more weavers would come to work, people who had no work and they were setting up a community, they had clean water, they had medical care and this was truly exciting. But ultimately all the knock-offs made the whole system we were creating unsustainable.

Speaking of knock-offs, how important was that in your decision? I mean, your customers can tell the difference in quality between a knock-off and the real thing.

All my customers would say they could see the difference. And I think that’s true for the most part. But we are living in an era that has many problems for all of us in creative industries. And what I wish more than anything is for there to be dialogue around this. How do we stop when everyone feels that we are on a train with no brakes? Where are our ethics going in our creative industries? I think it’s such a large concern. And the thing about design is it depends on your point of view. I guess some people have this idea that it’s throwaway chic and you can put in a new look next year. I don't feel that way. I feel that a beautiful home is layered over periods. I want people to buy my carpets with the idea that they can enjoy them for the rest of their life.

And what about social media, Instagram specifically: how do you think it’s affected people’s aesthetic tastes and the design world?

Well I have a lot of feelings about social media. I do the social media for my company because anything that expresses the vision of the work, I feel I must do myself. And the first thing I would say about it is it can be a lot of fun. And it can be a great tool for getting information into the world. But it’s problematic, even beyond the obvious problem of people watching your things and take them. The other problem that I’ve noticed that maybe before social media, I would see images that I thought were exceptional photography—I would need to go a museum or open a book about this person to see an image—and suddenly now it’s like, “Oh that picture again.” And that to me has a very negative effect. And I think we lose our sense of wonderment when so many special things are too available.

On a brighter note, you’re working on a new hotel in Marrakech, El Fenn. Can you tell me about that?

Vanessa Branson built El Fenn in 2004, I believe, and I have been staying there since the beginning. And Vanessa chose a really bold and bright color palette to go with the hotel and I really resonated with this as you can probably imagine. And we had gotten to know each other over the years. In my typical way and even Vanessa’s typical way, we really don’t have a business plan at all. But I have certain jobs at the hotel, I’m working on the boutique and making products there, I’m seeking out beautiful global finds that I feel resonate with what we’re doing there. We won’t have a website because I’m feeling that I want to bring it back to another period where shopping is an adventure. I had fun when I first started going to India and Morocco and Istanbul to search for things. I’m a hunter. I want to go somewhere that nobody knows because I like to find it and discover. And what I’m hoping will happen with the boutique is that sense of discovery, that you can’t just go to the internet and see what’s there—you have to actually come and feel things and discover. So that will be a really wonderful project and I’m just starting it now.

Do you see yourself at some point starting another business on your own?

Yes, very different. I am taking a studio in New York. And it will be sustainable. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet—I’m hoping to do really interesting, creative projects. I do not want to have any more lines of products people can order. I want to be open to ideas, so it’s almost like a think tank. If I keep it small—I will not have a shopping website—it’s very manageable. I think it won’t open until November and it will be private. I don’t know what’s going to come out of it, but I’m hoping for something wonderful. I have a blank slate.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Vanessa Lawrence

Senior Editor, ELLE Decor

Vanessa Lawrence, the Senior Editor at ELLE Decor, writes about home, design, style and the arts and was previously at W Magazine and WWD.