Meet the Maker Creating Bold Furniture Inspired by Fashion
Following a career at brands like Rag & Bone and Free People, Sam Klemick discovered woodworking and now designs voluminous furnishings from her studio in Los Angeles
Sam Klemick didn’t set out to make furniture. For 15 years, she worked in fashion, designing for brands including Rag & Bone and Free People, until the pace and realities of the industry started to catch up with her. “You learn about the factory conditions, you see the amount of waste—wasted product, wasted samples, wasted ideas. I slowly realized I didn’t want to do this anymore.”
Now based in Los Angeles, Klemick makes sculptural furniture that often nods to her background in clothing. The connection shows up more in how she thinks about form and surface, and in an ongoing interest in making rigid materials feel softer than they are. “I loved working with my hands again,” she says of discovering woodworking. “But I never thought it would turn into a career.”
Growing up in Miami, she remembers being fashion-focused from a very young age. “We would be watching movies and I’d be obsessed with what someone was wearing,” recalls Klemick. “I would pause the video so my mom could make a drawing for me of the character and their outfit.”
A self-described “troubled youth” who attended three high schools over five years, she initially skipped college, instead moving to St. Louis with a friend. Watching the newly introduced reality series Project Runway opened Klemick’s eyes to possibilities. “I don’t think I knew I could go to fashion school, but I learned what it was from Project Runway.” She enrolled in a two-year associate’s degree program at the now-defunct Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles, went straight into the industry after graduation, and stayed for more than a decade until The True Cost, a documentary about garment production, inspired her to change directions.
She signed up for a class at LA Woodshop in 2019. “I honestly fell in love with it,” says Klemick, whose grandfathers were both carpenters. “Not just the medium, but I felt like I found my people.” For several years, she kept her job in fashion while experimenting with woodworking at night and on weekends until May, 2024, when she committed to furniture making full time.
Today her process combines digital tools with extensive handwork. She often starts with red oak or salvaged Douglas fir; after machining, she refines each piece with hand tools. The process, she notes, is “slow and intentional.”
One of her earliest breaks came through designer Lauren Piscione, who commissioned a console table and later purchased one of Klemick’s Bell chairs, a wide seat on thick, conical legs with upholstery inspired by Maison Margiela’s 1999 Duvet coat. Her “sweater chair” began with a knit she designed while working at Paige. “I draped it on a chair and 3D scanned it,” says the artisan, who also counts designers Kelly Behun and Jake Arnold as clients. A similar approach informed a four-piece collection sold through Kelly Wearstler’s Side Hustle Gallery; the pieces translate one of Wearstler’s gowns into carved wood, miraculously maintaining a sense of movement.
This year, Klemick is looking to expand her range. “I’m working on my first-ever full living room collection,” she says, which will include a new coffee table designed to sit alongside existing pieces. She keeps a foothold in fashion, but furniture is now her primary focus. “It took years to feel like this, but I can now finally admit that yes, I own a business.”