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Friday Five with Paulette Cole of ABC Carpet & Home

Chances are you’re well aware of ABC Carpet & Home, the eclectic mecca of all covetable things like furniture, accessories, and of course, carpets. At the helm is Paulette Cole, the CEO and Creative Director, who in 2004 transformed the company to embrace a mission-based focus by bringing responsibly resourced product to the forefront. Continually guiding the New York City-based institution and its core values, Cole makes sure that they stock beautiful wares in hopes that you’ll be able to create your own sacred space, one in which you’re able to “align your vision and values to impact your home and our collective home, the planet.” Let’s see what inspires this passionate businesswoman in this week’s Friday Five.

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1. Beauty
A tool to create a platform for positive social change, the beauty we see and we seek is a pure reflection of our beauty within. Thereby, the change we put into ourselves is a mirror of everyday beauty, from the majesty of Mother Nature to the unexpected kindness of a stranger. And like a vintage patina with its enchanting imperfections, we grow all the more richer and vital together under the guise of time.

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2. Wellness
It is what we place on our body, it is what we place in our body, and it is what we place our body in – wellness is the experience inspired by a choice to digest beauty’s reflection. It is awe-inspiring to tap in to our history’s indigenous intelligence and see how what has informed us for centuries still affects us today. Like slow food and slow design, these movements embody much more than celebrating local culture. The wellness revolution is a holistic pursuit of goods, mediums, and ideas, which champion pure intention and simultaneously respect and benefit the self, our community, and our planet.

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3. Wisdom
The divine knowledge of oneness – it is to see the beauty in the world and know that it is self, to pioneer our paths based on informed decisions, to have gratitude for the universe as a designer, while recognizing the interconnectivity of it all. Held together by the thread of space and time, wisdom is taking active responsibility for our place in this journey – it is the living realization of the “be” in “be the change you wish to see…”

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4. Love
Love is the only natural resource of infinite abundance. If wisdom is the interpretation, love is the expression. When Mother Teresa said, “Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action,” she never mentioned where it ends. It doesn’t. Once in motion love amplifies and extends to our neighbors and our partners until it reaches out beyond the cosmos, one day to return where we may recognize it in the intimacy of a candle’s light, in a spark of creativity, or in the compassion of a helping hand.

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5. Pink
For me, it’s just always been pink. If I had to guess – I would say it had something to do with love.

Photos courtesy of ABC Carpet & Home.

Caroline Williamson is Editor-in-Chief of Design Milk. She has a BFA in photography from SCAD and can usually be found searching for vintage wares, doing New York Times crossword puzzles in pen, or reworking playlists on Spotify.