The White Company: Tranquil Hues

The White Company x PURIST luncheon

Cristina Cuomo: Congratulations on the company’s 25th anniversary. Tell me how it all began.
Chrissie Rucker: I left school when I was 16. And I went to do fashion design at college; I studied couture. Then I left there and spent the next six or seven years working in magazines. When I was at college doing couture I learned a lot about detail that makes or breaks a product. It’s real attention to the finite detail that is so important.

CC: I agree.
CR: Working on magazines was the most fantastic opportunity. My first job was at GQ, and then I went to Brides, then House & Garden, a stint at Vogue, and my last job was at Harper’s Bazaar. I think what I really learned there was how to research an article, how to pull together a shoot, how to style a picture. My biggest take from that time was ‘less is more.’ I learned that often when you look through a lens, and you look at what’s in front of you by taking things away, it’s actually much more beautiful than when you layer too much in. I then met my husband Nick Wheeler, who just started his own business and I loved seeing the passion and the energy that he had for it. Every day he’d get up and he’d go to work, and he just couldn’t wait to get in, he couldn’t wait to see what happened. He worked in the most hideous, dingy, little office you’ve ever seen in your life, but he had this extraordinary passion for what he was doing. I didn’t have that feeling. And I wanted to feel like that. So the White Company basically started when he moved into his first home. He was busy setting up his business. When he got his first home he said, ‘Could you help me with it?’ Having been a stylist and a journalist I thought, Well, how hard could this be? This has got to be really easy to do. I went off to try and buy the basics, and was completely overwhelmed by the amount of choices in pattern and color and really didn’t know where to start. The whole thing was a disaster. I came back and thought, OK, just keep it simple.

CC: So it was decorating his home, which became your home, which inspired the whole concept of the White Company. Love that.
CR: I love white, so I decided I would do white china, white bed linen, white tiles, white bathrobes.

CC: Is your favorite color white?
CR: I think it’s very calm, it’s very quiet. I always think white is a little bit like the black dress—effortlessly stylish and always works in some way, shape or form. Whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever your style, white works in some way.

CC: Is that how you came up with the name?
CR: We had breakfast with my sister-in-law, who had just been through exactly the same process of trying to buy things for her new house. We had this conversation which ended up with, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if there was a company that sold just beautifully made things?’ Back then, you had designer and department stores—beautifully designed, very expensive. Or you had high street, which was poor quality, lacked design, but much more affordable. The minute I knew I could do this was when I discovered my first factories, which were supplying many of the designer brands, and that I could bring them into the U.K. and sell the same quality for a much lower price by selling it directly to the customer. That really is our goal. We aim to be fantastic quality, but at a very affordable price.