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GM taps designers from fashion, home goods to create car interiors

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GM taps designers from fashion, home goods to create car interiors

Consider this: Next time you toss a newspaper in the recycle bin, you might see it again if you purchase a 2025 all-electric Cadillac Optiq SUV.

The veneer that frames the interior upper console cupholders is made of what Cadillac designers call PaperWood. It is equal parts recycled tulipwood and recycled newspapers, pressed under a high-gloss finish. If you look closely, you can read the newspaper print in the veneer of your cupholder.

“It’s a new technology and this is the first use of it we’ve done — with this vehicle,” said Mara Kapsis, design manager of colors, materials, finish advanced and global exterior color. “What you see in the pale area (of the PaperWood veneer) is what we call the cathedrals … you’ll actually notice, that’s recycled newsprint. It’s a nice touch and just another example of surprise and delight.”

This novel design and other touches are the creations of General Motor’s design team of five women, led by two who came to GM with unconventional backgrounds. Kapsis, who grew up in Australia, has a history of designing homeware — furniture, linens, utensils and decorative items in a home.

The other, Laetitia Lopez, came out of Paris’ renowned fashion houses with a talent for designing purses, luggage, jewelry and furniture. She is also an artist whose artwork hangs in GM’s buildings.

Kapsis and Lopez said the design team they led sought to deliver a strikingly different look for the Optiq’s interior and exterior by using distinctive materials and dramatic colors. They wanted to be environmentally conscious, yet move the design in a “fashion-forward way.” It is an aesthetic goal that’s fitting for Cadillac, GM’s luxury brand. And the Optiq, which goes on sale by year-end, will start at $52,895 — a price tag that draws in customers likely to be interested in style.

Inspiration in everything

One look at Kapsis and Lopez and it’s obvious they have an eye for design and a taste for statement.

On a Wednesday in October, the two sat chatting in the library inside GM’s Saarinen Design Center located at the company’s Global Technical Center in Warren. Lopez was in a stylish black blazer and matching skirt with black tights. A classic business look minus the classic pump heels usually worn to complete such attire. Instead, Lopez sported daring black military-style ankle boots with thick rubber soles, a nod to bold fashion-forward businesswear.

Kapsis put her twist on the pantsuit. She donned a pantsuit topped with a pale aqua vest rather than a traditional long-sleeved blazer in a conservative color. But the two would rather talk about how they dressed the Optiq than their own fashion choices.

“We take inspiration from any and all sorts of sources (for the car), whether that’s fashion, interiors, architecture — we’re in a beautiful architectural example right now,” Kapsis said, gesturing to the high ceilings in the neo-futuristic style of architect Eero Saarinen. “And, of course, our brand is really important. So with Cadillac, we’re also looking at what are the brand’s statements? What are the heritage cues?”

Kapsis, 37, grew up in Melbourne, Australia, and has a bachelor’s degree in textile design from RMIT University there, which is known for its technology and design curriculum. Kapsis said the typical career path for such a degree would have been to go into fashion design or designing fabrics for homeware items.

While in school, Kapsis said she interned at Linen House, which designs and manufactures bed linens in Australia. But it wasn’t quite her calling.

“When I was at school, we did an industry project with General Motors, and that’s what opened my eyes to automotive color, materials and finish design,” Kapsis said. “It is everything you can see (on a vehicle). Everything you see has a CMF (color, material, finish) designer’s input into it. Interior and exterior.”

Kapsis was in a student co-op program for GM Holden in Australia from 2009 to 2012. She then ran a small business called The Aram Theory for two years where she made screen-printed textiles for table linens, placemats, table runners and even gift wrap. She still has that business on the side, but has had little time recently to promote it.

She also worked for a florist called Wunderplant in Australia until 2015, when she moved to Michigan to join GM North America to work on color, materials and finish design for vehicles.

According to Strate School of Design, CMF is “an industrial design discipline that focuses on the chromatic, tactile and decorative character of goods and settings.” In other words, it is applying the right colors, feel and texture of materials to a designed item — in this case, a vehicle — to highlight its beauty and evoke an emotional response from a consumer.

A fashion designer for a car

Lopez, 35, is color, materials, finish design manager for global Cadillac. She grew up in Hyeres, France, which is between Marseilles and Nice on the Mediterranean Sea. At 18, Lopez headed to Paris to study at top design school, Creapole. Lopez went there initially wanting to design for the auto industry. But she quickly changed her mind.

“It’s too big,” Lopez said of designing automobiles. “What you learn in the design school is you have to comfortable with the scale of the object.”

She chose to focus on shoes, handbags, luxury furniture and lamps over the next five years in school. She did internships at high-end retailer Hermes, where she organized events. Then, at luxury Paris retailer Jack Russell Malletier, where she designed luggage and handbags, then at fine jeweler Mauboussin, where she designed jewelry and finally at architectural studio Andree Putman, where she designed furniture.

But right before graduation, in 2012, an automotive supplier came to the school and presented what was then a new area of study: Color, materials, finish for vehicles. The school did not offer that curriculum when Lopez had started, but now more design schools are offering it, she said.

“I just fell in love with that idea to become a fashion designer for a car,” Lopez said. “If you are a fashion designer, you have a model. What clothes are fitting that person the best to reveal her appearance, spirit or soul? It’s the same way with a vehicle to me. We have a vehicle in a specific shape and what is the best way to dress the vehicle in and out?”

She interned with that supplier, then GM hired her in 2013 to do design on its Opel cars in Germany. In 2016, she joined Cadillac and has never looked back.

“The first designers doing our job were actually women. General Motors was the first to bring women into design,” Lopez said. “Colors are so emotional and so important. We don’t buy a bag because of the shape. We buy the bag because we love the color.”

Breaking the rules

With the idea of being “fashion forward” Lopez and Kapsis set out to “break the traditional automotive codes,” Lopez said.

It started with the Cadillac Celestiq, an uber-luxury all-electric car built by hand and starting at $340,000. It is meant to be the halo vehicle for Cadillac. A halo vehicle is a statement car that shines a light on the brand to draw customers to the lineup. The Corvette, for example, is Chevrolet’s halo car.

“In the past, the colorful areas were mostly the seats and armrests,” Lopez said. “I proposed to have a fashion-forward approach with colors placed on the floor or headliner. One of my inspirations was the ‘quiet luxury,’ like a suit jacket with a traditional fabric and color and a bright color silk on the reverse side.”

So the designers wrapped the map pocket, bins and glove box inside the Celestiq in colorful synthetic suede, “as we used to wrap jewelry boxes in red velvet,” Lopez said.

“Celestiq has many colors available, but the vision model has the Santorini blue as the main color accent across the interior,” Lopez said. “For Optiq, the same approach has been used. One of the offerings has the Santorini blue color in the map pocket, glove box and bins creating a common thread through colors, materials and finishes for our lineup.”

The designers also gave Optiq patterned accent fabric along the top of the door, flowing into the instrument panel upper corner, midsection and console sides. It is woven from yarn made from 100% recycled materials, Lopez said.

Wood from Europe, newspapers from Spain

Then there is the PaperWood. That veneer is made with recycled newspaper and recycled tulipwood from Europe and the East Coast of the United States. According to American Hardwood, the tulip trees that make up the light, soft wood with streaks of color known as tulipwood, are grown exclusively in North America, including in Michigan.

GM spokeswoman Whitney Lewis said GM’s supplier for the recycled newspapers sources its supply from Spanish kiosks that sell all of Spain’s newspapers plus foreign newspapers from Germany, England, France and the United States. Unsold or uncirculated newspapers are piled at the end of every day in every kiosk in every city there, picked up and returned to a recycling hub where it is taken directly to the paper recycling and pulp processing centers.

The chemicals and energy used to recycle the newspapers have “a negative environmental impact,” Lewis said. “We take pallets of this paper and mix with our wood to later build a one-of-a-kind decorative surface and most sustainable veneer.”

Earrings and art from leather car seats

Like Kapsis, Lopez has her own business on the side using her design skills. She uses discarded leather, some of it from auto suppliers, to make art and jewelry.

Lopez started her business, called LMNTArt, when she first started working in the auto industry about a decade ago. The car interiors used a lot of leather and she quickly learned that a small amount of leather is frequently wasted as the pattern is cut to specifically fit a seat or instrument panel. Then there were “off cuts” of the leather that could not be used because it was scratched or had a flaw that was often tossed out, she said.

“I am in love with materials. I love the colors, I love the texture, I love the softness,” Lopez said. “So I was saving them, saving some of the materials we were losing. I was taking away some stuff that was valuable to me. I didn’t do anything with it for years.”

Then she got the idea to cut tiny pieces of the leather and assemble them to create earrings, bracelets, necklaces and even artwork. Most of her jewelry designs, sold on Etsy, range from $20 to $75.

“I was just doing jewelry for fun, just for myself, until some people asked me if I could make some, and little by little … I started LMNTArt” in January 2020, Lopez said of her online shop.

An extension of home

Kapsis said the designers focused on color pairing in the Optiq to evoke an emotional response from a driver. For example, they paired a sort of tannish orange leather, called Autumn Canyon, throughout the vehicle, with a lighter cinder gray with white accents on the wood.

“It’s all about the combination. What we’re looking for in an interior is a balance,” Kapsis said. “It brings in this white accent into the fabric and you can see the gray continue on to the seats. The combination is all around creating that balance, finding that harmony and then creating variation.”

Navy blue leather pairs with a blue version of the textile fabric, as another example. All of this, Kapsis insists, is “critical” to a customer, even though most customers don’t know it.

“Our role is to create something where people feel invited into their space and that they have a sense of personality in their space,” Kapsis said. “It’s an emotional response. They may not know to pick that exact detail out, but because it is in harmony, that’s what gives you that sense of calm in that space.”

Lopez said color, materials, finish will be applied to GM’s other brands using the materials and colors that match the demographics of the customers for those brands would respond to.

“Our goal is to do everything we can so they (the customer) can feel like it’s an extension of their house,” Lopez said.

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Contact Jamie L. LaReau: jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.

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