Dallas-Based Designer Caitlin Wilson is on a Constant Pursuit of Pretty

If you’ve ever visited Caitlin Wilson’s charming Henderson Avenue store, you know she’s all about making things pretty. That’s the foundation on which her signature classic and feminine interiors and product designs are built. Wilson and her team design everything in her store, from the English roll armchairs with ruffled skirts to the chinoiserie-inspired wallpapers. She’s also teamed with fashion designer Luciana Emilia on designs for silk hostess gowns in preppy stripes and plaids, along with new wall and trim colors for the paint brand Jolie. Her ladylike interiors, which have an avid following in the South, have been published in House Beautiful and Veranda.

Wilson has written a new book that puts it all in perspective: Return to Pretty: Giving New Life to Traditional Style (Abrams, $45), which comes out this month. Included are chapters on patterns, pillows, details, and palettes along with sections on rooms that are proper and playful.

Inspired by her grandmother’s skirted tables displaying silver-framed photos of family, Wilson’s quest to make things pretty took shape at her retail shop and design practice in San Francisco and then blossomed among the pastels and florals of her studio and store in Dallas, where she and her husband, Brigham Wilson, moved in 2017.

“Everything must be pretty,” Wilson writes. “For the last decade, I have built a company in constant pursuit of pretty. And even when it seemed impossible, it was worth it.”