How NYC-based Jacob Winter ‘infuses the ordinary with the otherworldly’ in his mushy rugs
This is A HOT MINUTE WITH, a quick-fire interview series championing all the rising talent catapulting into fashion, art and music’s fickle stratosphere. From pinch-me moments to bad dates and even worse chat-up lines, think of it as an overindulgent conversation – like the ones you have in sticky club toilets at 4.A.M. Except these guests don’t regret the overshare…
Courtesy of @jacobwinterr
NAME JACOB WINTER
AGE 23
LOCATION Williamsburg, Brooklyn
STAR SIGN Scorpio sun, Leo moon
GO-TO CURSE WORD All of them, like I literally just say every single one…but I gotta say fuck, honestly.
“I’ve never really had any huge inspiration for anything, like my inspiration literally just comes from whatever task I’m doing,” explains Jacob Winter, head designer and CEO of New York-based MUSH STUDIOS. “I just create it in my head.” Founded in September last year, Winter’s quirky home décor company with its amorphic rug designs quickly turned viral. Specialising in handmade items that “infuse the ordinary with the otherworldly,” Winter set up the company after finding an audience for his unique tufted rugs on TikTok last year. Almost two millions likes and 98,000 followers later, he now runs the Brooklyn-based studio full-time with his partner, Franki, and their Italian Greyhound, E.O.
Mush was born out of an idea to create a sensory homeware brand at a time when physical touch was hard to come by. “It’s like a mushy feel,” says Jacob, emphasising that Mush rugs are designed to be interacted with and inject a childlike energy into the everyday rooms we’ve become accustomed to during the pandemic. Now working on their third drop, the product has quickly evolved into something that evokes a sense of nostalgia without looking kitschy. “When we were working on our first drop, we didn’t really know what the customer fully wanted,” recalls Winter. “So we broke it down and separated the customer into two minds: an adult’s mind and a kid’s mind. That really helped us focus on what kind of rug people gravitated to the most.”
Their first two rug drops were about creating fun, imaginary spaces through décor; Drop 2.5 is, in Winter’s words, “the best girlfriends that you just got to bring back a second time”; and now they’re in the stages of planning Drop 3, which the young designer says will be a muted affair. “We have the sketches down, we don’t have a full type of vision for what we want it to be called but it’s very one step back,” he says, surrounded by a swarm of technicolour Mush rugs. “It’s going to look like the beginning stages of creating a mush rug…These rugs are gonna be all the same colour but with various shades, cool tones or warm toned, and we’re playing more with colour this time round. This is literally going to be the best drop because it’s just gonna be the most.”
Harry Browse: What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Jacob Winter: When I was a kid I wanted to be a paediatrician. Ever since I was younger, I just always wanted to take care of babies and I don’t even like babies now.
HB: What three things are you grateful for?
JW: My family not being affected by Covid, and that’s like my whole family: aunts, uncles, cousins, everyone. It sounds arrogant, but I was gonna say social media, because without social media, I would not be able to do what I’m doing now. So I’m thankful for social media’s role and how it can be good for small businesses. Third, I’d say my dog because my dog is my whole entire life.
HB: Where did your dog’s name come from?
JW: When me and my boyfriend were looking for a dog, we liked the name pistachio. We were trying to break down the word - obviously “piss” doesn’t work, we didn’t like “pistach” – and then finally we settled on E.O. My main thing was that we wanted this alien type of name: like GRIMES, she copied us.
HB: What are you inspired by?
JW: When I think of the idea, I have to research for hours and hours and hours; there’s no precise website or person or anything. But it definitely has to be queer.
HB: How does a Mush rug go from idea to final product?
JW: The first thing we do is create the whole theme for the drop, and then once we have the idea, then we try to play around [with it]. Once we have that nailed down, we design around 10 rugs per drop, and then the hardest part is finding the yarn colours to match what was in our minds and what is on our iPads. To find that in real life just takes a really, really long time. After that, we grab the yarn and all the supplies, make the rugs and get it photographed and then just drop it.
HB: In which fashion icon’s living room would you love to see one of your rugs?
JW: Okay…my number one is kind of basic, but it’s CHARLI XCX. We’ve been trying so hard to get in contact with her management… Every time we create a storyline or any time we’re creating an actual rug she’s just playing. So, to know that she has it while we’re listening to it would just be like full circle – that would be the dream.
HB: Do rugs belong in bathrooms?
JW: NO. They don’t. Everyone puts them in bathrooms, we don’t know why. We tell them like, ‘Hey, it’s not waterproof - it’s gonna get mouldy probably!’ No one ever listens.
HB: First thing you plan to do post-pandemic?
JW: The first thing I’m going to do is travel. I’ll also go to a concert, I miss it so much. I used to hate concerts because of the amount of people in there and the kind of pressure you have but to just be there now would be the most extreme counterbalance to lockdown.
HB: Favourite place to eat in NYC?
JW: Cheers Thai - it’s a very small business, like an authentic Thai place in Brooklyn. It’s walking distance and we would have that like every single day during the pandemic, it’s just the best food ever.
HB: Favourite bar/club to go to for a drink?
JW: I don’t go to clubs. I don’t go to any clubs, really. For some reason, I don’t know, it’s just not the vibe when I go. If I had to say, the one that I’ve got to the most is called No Bar – they have really good drag shows there.
HB: What’s your best piece of advice for anyone moving to New York for the first time?
JW: Get on the train and just go everywhere. Purposely get lost because you’re gonna understand things so much more. I’m from Long Island which is not too far from New York City, so when I was like 16-years-old and going into city, I’d have to get the train by myself – I couldn’t even tell where I was but getting lost is what made me comfortable navigating in the future.