By All Means

Chris Plantan traded building high rises for designing three-ring binders. Surprised that she couldn’t find stylish school supplies for her daughter to use in middle school, Plantan left a lucrative career as an architect in 2003 to start russell + hazel, an office products line that changed an industry. Hers was the first brand in a commodity driven category to treat paper products and office supplies as design objects. Her patterned binders, lucite sticky note holders and gold staplers blended function and fashion, and even inspired Martha Stewart who became a big fan of the brand and helped create national demand. Plantan sold russell + hazel, which is named for her grandparents, to Gartner Studios in 2009 and stayed on for three years. Next she co-founded a company called West Emory and took a very different approach, staying behind the scenes to design products for other retail brands including Crate & Barrel, Vineyard Vines, J.Crew, Target, and Nordstrom. She left earlier this year to recharge her crea