“The ability to merge fashion and hospitality is such an exciting thing”

Inspired by a long editorial career, most recently as Editor-in-Chief at Elle Décor, Whitney Robinson is now working with the brightest minds in fashion, design and architecture to develop hospitality and café venues straight out of a magazine spread. By Tobias Pearce

As a child growing up in New York, Whitney Robinson would savour a fudge sundae treat at Rumpelmayer’s, a now shuttered coffee shop and dessert parlour brimming with ostentatious Egyptian revival interiors, gleaming silver pots of hot chocolate and giant teddy bears.

Looking back, the former ELLE Décor Editor-in-Chief and now founder of design agency Whitney Robinson International fondly remembers those moments as key formative experiences that have shaped his 20-year career in editorial, fashion and design. “All my work is inspired in some way by New York,” he says.