Makrosha's new textile showroom is a magical cabinet of a curiosities

There was a point, not too long ago, when designer Esha Ahmed was running her textile business out of the trunk of her Volvo and her apartment in Queens, New York. But as her brand, Makrosha, grew from a side hustle into an in-demand source for top interior designers, it was clear she needed to level up.

So when the opportunity to lease a space in a Gilded Age building on the southwest corner of Union Square in 2022, Ahmed leapt at the opportunity. Makrosha only continued to grow, evolving from a core group of fabrics to a full spectrum of textiles, accessories and rugs.

Makrosha comes from the Bangla word for spider, a reflection of Ahmed’s Bangladeshi heritage and her propensity to weave history and narratives into her vivid fabrics. It’s a sensibility that’s been years in the making, starting with when she was a little girl visiting sari shops with her mom, and continuing through stints at the Costume Institute, Peter Marino’s studio, and graduate school at FIT. Pick up any Makrosha fabric and you’ll find inspiration as varied as 17th-century French silk, Art Nouveau, flowers scattered across a Yorkshire moor and her mother’s closet.

Compared to her joyous fabrics – with names like Whirly Girly and Goosey Gold – her small showroom left something to be desired, in both style and square footage. ‘Any time a client came, we’d go into panic mode because we had fabric swatches everywhere,’ Ahmed jokes. Luckily, a studio next door became available, so Ahmed opted to expand into that space and tap her friend, interior designer Tara McCauley, to create something that felt uniquely hers. ‘I wanted it to feel discovered,’ Ahmed says.

As with her fabrics, Ahmed and McCauley looked to both past in designing the space, specifically an elegant 19th-century atelier. Guests step into a cosy vestibule, cloaked in Makrosha’s Meena fabric, an opulent stripe woven in India. The space also features a vintage Murano chandelier and an antique wood cabinet, displaying Makrosha pillows and throws. ‘The aesthetic is rooted in history,’ Ahmed explains.

Visitors are then ushered into a light-filled room where they can browse Makrosha’s fabric collection, displayed on gold metal rods against walls painted in a soft lilac limewash. ‘This colour shows up in the collection a lot – it’s not neutral but it’s not going to fight with what we’re showing,’ McCauley explains.

‘I am always drawn to Aesthetic Movement colours, where it’s muddy with a neon pop,’ Ahmed adds.

From there, visitors enter the atelier’s heart, a cosy double-height room, painted in a darker shade of lilac, that hosts client meetings and creative sessions. With its antique furniture, including a towering 1890s cabinet, and lively mix of patterns and colours emanating from soft furnishings, fabric samples and a mauve floral rug underfoot, the space feels like entering a secret wunderkammer that floats above Union Square.

There are more spaces to discover, like an upper-level nook atop a set of carpeted stairs, where customers can catch up on email or relax; or a sample room downstairs, where Ahmed’s three-person staff works. Unlike the soft-coloured walls upstairs, this space is clad in a softly-gleaming metallic wallpaper, ‘Andy Warhol’s Factory was a few doors up the street, but silver walls felt a bit too on the nose,’ McCauley explains. ‘This wallcovering with the woven overlay tells that story in a more relevant way.’

An antique wall hanging from the 1920s depicting the ruins of ancient Carthage adds a touch of more distant history.

The new showroom marks an important moment in Ahmed’s business; the opening coincides with the launch of a new made-to-order rug collection, called Shinki and inspired by the East-meets-West aesthetics of early 20th-century Japan. The designer’s also developing a collection of solids (‘because you can’t have flowers on everything’ she jokes) and continuing to deepen her relationships with weavers in Italy, Scotland, Nepal and upstate New York.

But for Ahmed, it marks something more personal: ‘I had never seen my fabrics all hung up together because I never had space to show the full collection,’ she says. ‘It made me a little emotional!’

Makrosha is located at 1 Union Square W, New York, NY 10003. Visits are available by appointment.