Yes, it’s possible to have both a chic interior and four-legged friends. Designers share their hard-won workarounds.
2 min
I UNDERSTAND the pet-owner’s decor dilemma. When my roommate and I fostered two kittens, a toxic cycle began. Though our new friends knocked framed posters off the wall at night, the next morning Betty and Brontë’s innocent eyes would disarm me and I’d drop kisses on their tiny foreheads. But must “fur babies” condemn a homeowner to tarp-clad sofas and plastic vases? No, say pet-owning interior designers.
New York designer Ghislaine Viñas’s tip: Roll out dark-colored rugs with intricate patterns to hide slobber, mud and piddle accidents. Jaipur Living’s Poeme design would pass Atlanta designer Cate Dunning’s “meatball test,” which asks: Would a meatball dropped on the rug disappear? If so, bring on the paws.
Thick, natural weaves like wool and seagrass weather house-training accidents well. Avoid sisal, says New York designer Bunny Williams. Though handsome and textured, it easily absorbs moisture, making spot cleaning a chore, she says. Performance materials such as polypropylene hold up well, says Keren Richter, principal designer of Manhattan firm White Arrow, but she steers clear of viscose, a delicate semi-synthetic material prone to shedding.
Pets’ claws catch easily in loose weaves like bouclé, and cats especially can’t resist them. Richter tests a textile’s suitability with a paper clip. Unfold the metal and run the jagged end against a fabric. If it snags, the material won’t survive a cat’s talons. Mohair and velvet pass this test, the designer has found.
Nicole Fuller’s two Maine Coons, Monty and Punk, besieged her herringbone linen sofa, “hanging from it by their claws,” she said. The New York designer reupholstered the couch in Dedar’s Klein blue cotton velvet—tightly woven and durable. As for leather, cats’ claws will shred it, but paw marks and the oil from dogs’ coats can be passed off as “patina.”
Viñas endorses performance fabrics for upholstery as they “ensure the highest level of durability.” Sunbrella offers solution-dyed acrylic that repels water and stains and holds up against the oil and dirt from dogs’ coats, says Richter. Fuller, who finds some performance fabrics too rough, relies on luxurious European outdoor fabric from Loro Piana and Pierre Frey .
For shedding fur, Richter suggests the ultimate camouflage: a sofa that matches your pet’s colouring. “Sometimes, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” she said.
Alternatively, Williams tucks throws into armchairs and wraps sofa cushions in blankets. After years with her cat and two terrier mixes, she’s found that faux fur blankets and cotton block-printed Indian fabrics endure, wash easily and appear intentional. “Make sure that it still looks like a chair that someone can sit in and not just the dog’s chair [or sofa],” Williams said.
Fuller collects Murano glassware and loves lit candlesticks. Uncompromising, she presses Stick-Um putty to the bottoms of both so her cats can’t topple them. Richter deploys museum gel , a special adhesive, for wobbly curios.
Plants can be hung out of reach of digging dogs and mischievous cats, says Geraldine James, author of “Cool Dogs, Cool Homes” (CICO, 2023). If you like your plants earthbound, the website Plants for Pet Parents sells plants the ASPCA deems not toxic to pets.
As for the slew of chew toys, corral them in a container that compliments your interior—whether that’s a folksy gingham-lined basket or IKEA’s mod dandelion-yellow wire bin .
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Apple’s growth engine is showing signs of slowing, as rising costs, weaker services growth and AI competition challenge its profitability. With John Ternus taking the helm, the pressure is on to reignite innovation and sustain investor confidence.
3 min
The Apple growth and profit machine is wavering, and the boost from price increases might not be enough to keep it going at historic rates. That dials up the pressure on Apple’s new chief executive, John Ternus.
The company saved the bad news for its earnings call, an hour after it posted its results for the September quarter, projecting that for the current quarter its high-margin services business will continue to slow and that its widely watched gross profit margin will continue to fall.
Apple AAPL -1.83%decrease; down pointing triangle shares had been flat in post-close trading but declined as much as 4% after the company made the projections, which fell short of Wall Street estimates.
The impact of high memory costs are weighing even more heavily on the company, Ternus and Apple Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh said on the company’s earnings call. Apple has stockpiled cheaper components purchased earlier, but those inventories are dwindling.
When Ternus took over as Apple’s third chief executive of the past 29 years on Sept. 1, he inherited sky-high expectations. The men he followed were among the most successful company leaders in American business history. Steve Jobs revolutionized consumer devices multiple times. Tim Cook expanded Jobs’s creation to spectacular heights.
The expectations are reflected in Apple’s huge valuation. Oppenheimer analyst Martin Yang noted that Apple stock trades at 36 times next year’s expected earnings, a premium to the overall market, even though its earnings are only expected to grow 1%, which is slower than its tech peers.
“We see insufficient upside to justify the premium,” Yang wrote in an investor note, adding that Apple needs to boost iPhone sales growth and turn around its slowing services business to make him more bullish.
Investors have bid up Apple shares because it has been a port in the AI storm—a reliable and capital-efficient business that stands apart from rivals which are spending hundreds of billions of dollars racing to the AI frontier.
While others invest in data centers, Apple has been pouring its own cash into buybacks and dividends. But that safety may be challenged if Ternus can’t speed up Apple’s innovation engine.
Apple’s lagging performance in AI was evident when its new “Siri AI” chatbot arrived this past quarter. Its long-maligned assistant was already stale the day it arrived, surpassed by agents such as Instinct and Muse that can complete multistep tasks for consumers, while Siri still sets kitchen timers.
Apple needs to give people reasons to buy its devices as they get more expensive. The company raised prices across the board last quarter to help offset higher costs. Without compelling new features, a big question is whether consumers will slow the frequency of iPhone upgrades.
The new iPhone Duo appears to be a bright spot. Consumers are scooping up the $1,999 foldable smartphone despite mixed reviews—so many that Apple can’t keep up with demand. Shipping dates jumped out to January soon after the device went on sale, a disappointment for the normally reliable Apple supply chain.
Apple said its revenue grew 12% in the September quarter, slightly ahead of Wall Street’s expectations. Its widely tracked gross profit margin, at 47.9%, also came in just ahead of analyst estimates.
Apple will need to find new growth avenues because a reliable engine during the Cook era—the services business—is slowing. Courts and regulators worldwide have limited Apple’s ability to charge developers big fees to distribute apps through its App Store, the biggest component of the company’s services segment.
One of its most lucrative App Store fee generators has been the ChatGPT app from OpenAI. Around the time Apple accused OpenAI of trade-secret theft this past summer, OpenAI began redirecting potential subscribers to pay via its website instead of the App Store, skirting Apple’s tollbooth.
Apple’s valuation has bumped up against a ceiling in recent weeks. Six times it traded above a $5 trillion market capitalization intraday before finally closing above the threshold, which it has already fallen back below.
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