Each Album is a curated shopping experience inspired by a favorite song
Interior designer Cortney Bishop has launched Album, an e-commerce platform combining her love of music and design.
Cortney Bishop has a penchant for pushing boundaries. When the interior designer landed on the Charleston creative scene in the early aughts, her fresh design sensibility immediately set her apart from the formal, traditional Southern style that reigned across Lowcountry homes. In contrast, she channeled the life her clients wanted to live via an aesthetic at once unfussy, expressive, and a bit bohemian. By the time she launched Cortney Bishop Design in 2007, she was steadily earning a reputation for creating comfortable, contemporary spaces that were always a beat ahead.
Bishop credits her inspired design instincts to her lack of formal training. At the University of Georgia, she majored in business marketing by day, and at night scouted the live music circuit in and around Athens, eager to discover the next big act. That passion for music would earn her a short stint working in artist relations at Capricorn Records before she decided to channel her creative leanings into a career in interior design.
With the switch, she carried over a key perspective from the music industry: look forward, not back. “I don’t follow rules,” Bishop says. “I wasn’t watching what other people were doing; I thought about what could happen next. That has served me very well in establishing the design firm and my own aesthetic.”
The way Bishop sees it, great design is really about creating experiences for people—be it through the format of a private home or a commercial project. It’s an aspirational view of design and one that calls for exploring new avenues at every turn.
(Left to right) Album’s second drop in February was inspired by The Velvet Underground’s ”Rock & Roll” and featured antique Parisian stools, an original painting from artist Fiona G. Roberts, and a Hollywood Regency brass table, all of which were available for purchase for a limited time.
With her latest endeavor, Bishop is not only pushing her category’s limits, but creating a new one entirely. Last year, she debuted Album, an e-commerce platform that marries her love of interiors and music. Each Album “drop” is a curated design experience of her favorite items from around the world—handpicked furniture, art, decor, and more—all inspired by songs and available to shop for a limited time. Take February’s “drop 02,” in which the beat of The Velvet Underground’s “Rock & Roll” energized a luxe, earthen installation, fusing Hollywood Regency with effortless ’70s cool and featured goods spanning antique Parisian discotheque stools, a vintage snake table, and an original work from contemporary British artist Fiona G. Roberts. Her third drop, inspired by Miley Cyrus’s “Rainbowland,” was released in June, and a fourth album is expected by the end of the year.
Cortney Bishop mixes her passions for interior design and music through her new e-commerce platform, Album, a curated selection of products set to the beat of a favorite song. For “drop 2” released earlier this year, Bishop took inspiration from The Velvet Underground’s “Rock & Roll,” featuring earthern tones and styles that fuse ’70s cool and Hollywood Regency, such as this Versailles parquet sideboard and cubist-surrealist painting.
For Bishop and her Album collaborators—art curator Wills Baker and stylist Anna Hopkins—the project is every bit a fun, conceptual sandbox to play in and an opportunity to showcase the stories and wares of global artisans, some of whom Bishop has partnered with for decades.
It’s also a refreshing juxtaposition to the supersaturation of today’s digital marketplace. “We’re inundated with massive online catalogs,” Bishop says. “For us, Album is about telling a deeper story. We’re building something from the ground up, realizing this could change the whole model.”
BY THE NUMBERS
■ 2007: Year Cortney Bishop Design launched
■ 2022: Debut of e-commerce platform Album
■ 3: Album drops to date
■ 18-23: Typical number of handpicked items per collection
■ 3: Collaborators
