Meet the Female Founder Incubating Design’s Next Big Names
Above: Jean Lin in a sweater by Akris.
Altruism is a daily practice, a muscle waiting to be tensed and strengthened. For Jean Lin, the founder of the New York City showroom and design co-op Colony, it’s a muscle she has dedicated her career to exercising.
Colony launched in 2014 with a collective business model that eschews industry standards in favor of minimal commissions and a monthly membership fee; Lin is now expanding the scope of her mission with the debut of a residency program for emerging talent. For its inaugural exhibition, the Colony residency will launch two design studios, Marmar Studio and Alexis & Ginger. Their first collections are on view now through May 5, after which both studios will be added to Colony’s permanent roster of independent American design talents.
During their eight-month tenure, residents partake in a multipronged curriculum focused on product development and design entrepreneurship, crafted by Lin and Colony art director Madeleine Parsons, both of whom have spent time as professors at Parsons and Rhode Island School of Design. In addition to the learning program, the incubator pays for residents’ studio spaces while offering real-time feedback on works in progress and part-time duties on the showroom floor. It’s a pressure cooker, but “pressure creates the best work,” says Lin, whose own career path was far from straightforward.
Lin studied psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, later working in social services and then in fashion—her first paying job was for J.Lo’s now defunct clothing line. A pivot to editorial work scratched her itch for creative expression, but it wasn’t until Reclaim NYC, a charity furniture auction she cofounded in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, that the idea for Colony really took shape: a perfect marriage of her artistic drive and philanthropic leanings.
The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, Lin was raised in a predominantly white town in Massachusetts and has always seen herself as an underdog. But reinvention takes a self-described “wiring for risk-taking” that has allowed her to grow Colony from a cash-strapped business into one that now offers interior design services and consulting; it is also often credited with nurturing the success of studios like Allied Maker and Egg Collective, both among Colony’s founding group of artists. “Maybe that’s why we’ve been in the game for so long,” Lin says. “I keep pushing. I don’t sit back and say, ‘I did it.’ ”
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