Reesie Duncan of Shaw Contract Wins HiP Award for Creative Director Role

Reesie Duncan, the 2020 HiP Winner for Creative Director in the Manufacturing category, has spent her entire professional career at flooring solutions manufacturer Shaw Contract. And 25 years later, she’s still having fun. “It’s amazing how fast time goes when you’re doing what you love,” Duncan shares.

As Duncan grew into her leadership and senior ranking positions at Shaw, she began traveling often to learn more about textile production and weaving. A life changing trip to Thailand enabled Duncan to deepen her love of the craft, especially the tactility of handmade production, witnessing the traditional production of silk. Seeing firsthand the process of silk being, “passed between communities for fiber development, then weaving, then dying,” while also being welcomed into villagers’ homes, inspired Duncan to help create Shaw’s Silk line, a moment that she considers “a real turning point for the brand.”

Duncan’s adventures have also taken her to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco to learn from a women’s artisan cooperative, and to the jungles of Cambodia where women gather around a single loom, each putting their individual effort into the creation of a final, whole piece. In her role directing the Workplace, Community, Lifestyle, and Global design studios at Shaw, Duncan aims to create flooring solutions and designs that encourage the same notion—bringing people, and communities, together.