Designer Melissa Kirkpatrick approaches interiors with the same big-picture vision your most stylish friend would apply to her wardrobe. It’s all about the ensemble, which is why, after years of designing interiors and consulting for a high-end fabric furnishings company, the Georgia native decided to develop her own line of fabrics as a whole-room design solution for decorators and their clients. 

Launched in 2011, MK Collection features an expertly curated and tightly focused selection of complementary prints and colorways. As opposed to many fabrics companies whose bread and butter is matchy-matchy and overstyled patterns, Kirkpatrick’s designs work with each other without trying too hard, like the accidental outcome of just having plain old good taste. 

The patterns are deceptively simple (effortlessness is hard work!), but the development process is anything but. Relying on her knowledge of fine art and design, the experience she gained discovering and editing fabrics from around the globe, and her Southern-bred knack for creating lived-in spaces, Kirkpatrick subjects each design to an uncommon level of thought and scrutiny. And she’s not afraid to scrap a pattern mid-development if her instinct says it’s not exactly right.

A Los Angeles resident since 1991, Kirkpatrick travels back east frequently to visit printmakers and distributors (venerable showroom Grizzel and Mann at the Atlanta Decorative Arts Center now carries her collection). While the fabrics are exclusively to the trade, the line of hand-loomed rugs she recently developed for Christopher Farr is available for direct purchase. And coming soon: wallpaper.