They say that throw pillows are like stuffed animals for adult women. I admit I spent many days as a kid lining up my carefully curated stuffed animal collection for story time. And, while I don’t read to my throw pillows like I did my stuffies back in the day, there is a sort of emotional attachment to throw pillows that defies explanation. How can an arrangement of squares and rectangles in artfully coordinated patterns and textures bring such joy?

 

During one recent quest for the perfect block-print pillow cover, I came across a pillow by Jolie Marche on Instagram and stopped dead in my scroll. It’s rare for design to capture both a timeless and modern aesthetic, but this single Jolie Marche pillow managed to nail it. My curiosity peaked, I reached out to Jolie Marche’s founder Kristi Heldman to learn more about her gorgeous textile brand.

A lifelong Tennessean, Kristi founded her brand in 2005 after shopping for textiles for her own home and not finding what she was looking for. She began hand-sketching fabric designs, digitizing them and having them printed off, then sewing the pillows herself. Kristi is self-taught, but says she discovered her artistic side in childhood–mostly out of necessity. “We didn’t have a lot of money growing up, so my mom would buy the plain white t-shirt at Walmart or whatever, and I would always come up with a way to embellish it to make it prettier.”

 

When Kristi’s daughters were young, she devoted herself to their care. As a creative outlet, she designed and sewed pillow covers–and was even able to get them into a few local retailers, including Iron Gate. “It made me think, you know, maybe I’ve got something here.” As her girls grew older, Kristi considered taking her tiny pillow enterprise more seriously.

 

Then, in 2020, an unthinkable tragedy struck her family. During the height of the pandemic, Kristi’s husband suffered a spinal cord injury in a freak accident. He was hospitalized for nearly two months and facing life as a quadriplegic. As Kristi and her family were dealing with their new reality, her entrepreneurial instincts kicked into high gear. “It was divine intervention. God knew I was going to need something to help me deal with what my husband was facing,” she shared.

Kristi began by trying to get the word out about the Jolie Marche brand. “We started with social media. It’s hard to beat the algorithm, but I started sending pillows to influencers hoping they would post them–and they did! We kind of took off from there.” With now over 80,000 followers on Instagram, Jolie Marche has over 300 interior designers in their trade program and their textiles are used throughout the St. Regis Hotel in Cabo San Lucas.

 

Jolie Marche (French for “Pretty Market”) launches two to three collections per year, with Kristi deriving her inspiration from nature and antique stores. “A picture in an antique store can inspire an entire collection. I see color first usually and I love unexpected color combinations. I also have a pattern bank in my mind, so sometimes I see something that reminds me of another pattern I saw once and that will inspire a design” shares Kristi, adding, “I have to surround myself with pretty things so I can create pretty things.”

All of Jolie Marche’s pillows are made by hand to order and everything is made in the U.S.A. “In this disposable era, that’s important to me. You can absolutely buy something from me direct off my website, but you might have to wait fourteen days for it.” In addition to pillows, Jolie Marche will offer fabric by the yard in January 2025, and in spring 2025 the brand will launch a wallpaper line.

 

“Our growth is more than I ever would have expected, and I feel extremely blessed,” says Kristi. To add to her blessings, her husband was able to recover a good deal of his mobility and is walking today. “God is truly great.”