If you grew up with floral and stripe mix-and-match wallpaper and bedding amped up with a dash of something ethnic, you can thank legendary designer Sister Parish. The interior decorator, who rose to fame with her curated contrasts for the private quarters of the Kennedy-era White House, was no doubt an inspiration that shaped future generations of American creatives like Ralph Lauren and Aerin Lauder.

Aside from her affinity for floral chintz and maximal pairings, Sister Parish, born Dorothy May Kinnicutt in 1910 and nicknamed Sister by her brothers, was also known as a female trailblazer at a time when women couldn’t even open a bank account without their husband’s signature. Raised in the patrician circles of New York, Sister Parish opened her firm, in 1933 after her family’s fortunes declined following the 1929 market crash.

Known as the ultimate arbiter of American design and the pioneer of American Country endeared by clients and friends who are members of the families of the Gilded Age, she ushered in a new phase of design with Albert Hadley in 1962. At its peak, Parish Hadley’s clients included society and industry’s biggest names including philanthropists Brooke Astor and Enid Annenberg Haupt, William Paley, chairman of CBS, and members of the Bronfman, Getty, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and Whitney families.

To her credit, Parish, who died in 1994, also mentored a legion of interior designers like Bunny Williams, David Kleinberg, David Easton, Mark Hampton, Brian McCarthy and Mariette Himes Gomez.

Today, her descendants are propelling her legacy into a digital era, building the online presence with an eye on hospitality and fashion partnerships to grow the brand and impact future generations with Parish’s story. They continue to grow steadily while positioning the brand as “the ultimate edit of American fabric and wallpaper.”

Her granddaughter Susan Crater, a Georgetown Law School graduate and former lawyer, picked up the baton, brought the archives to the marketplace and started textiles and wall covering firm Sister Parish Designs in 2000. She serves as chief executive officer and Sister’s great-granddaughter Eliza Crater Harris serves as creative director whose aim is to imbue Sister Parish’s aesthetic into contemporary lifestyles. Parish’s most beloved patterns like Dolly, Sunswick, Albert and the check they call Mahalo still endure as bestsellers. “We don’t introduce anything that she wouldn’t use all of the time. She was drawn toward flowers and garden-inspired colorways like the raffia collection,” Crater says.

Sister Parish Designs mainly caters to the interior design community but their social media page is full of practical tips for consumers like how to recover an old sofa or match paint with wallpaper. “No need to stress about paint because I know we all do,” points out Crater Harris, driving the design curious to the website to shop the latest arrivals. What would Sister, who lunched with the Astors and Whitneys, have thought of posting?

“Honestly I don’t think she would have been very good at it as she had no patience and was easily frustrated by people wanting what she called luxury that shouted, but she was also a businesswoman and she knew the power of the press was important,” Crater reflects.

Crater Harris, on the other hand, disagrees with the notion that her great-grandmother would have been social media-averse.

“I think she would have embraced it as a powerful tool.…Travel and books would have remained central to her creative process,” Crater Harris remarks.

Crater and her mother Apple Bartlett chronicled the matriarch’s life in a book published in 2000 that created a realistic picture of Sister Parish, a quick-witted, sharp-tongued businesswoman. Crater recalls, she once asked Imelda Marcos why she had so many shoes and deemed Andy Warhol as “no fun,” — a condemnation that excluded him from future soirés at her New York City home after an anti-social display at one of her parties.

“She had a great sense of humor and always had a dry comment to start off any social interaction that sort of put everyone at ease, but could, at the same time, be disarming,” Crater comments, recognizing that her life would make the ultimate Netflix series.

The book also chronicles correspondence and interactions with Jackie Kennedy and recounts their so-called falling out over someone alleging that Sister had kicked Caroline under the table, something both Susan and her mother have dismissed.

The mother-daughter duo is also actively pursuing collaborations that place the brand in close proximity with the worlds of fashion and hospitality. The brand has collaborated with fashion and hospitality leaders, including Uniqlo, Moda Operandi and Six Bells Inn.

“We’ve collaborated with brands in the past to bring the spirit of Sister Parish to a wider audience. My dream is to explore a more couture-focused partnership — one that expresses our history through a fashion lens while honoring our deep appreciation for craftsmanship,” Crater Harris adds. Sister Parish Designs still produces most of its products in the U.S. and has maintained its ties with the makers in artisan heartlands that span from Pennsylvania to North Carolina.

While Crater Harris, a graduate of University of St Andrews in Scotland didn’t benefit from her great-grandmother’s tutelage, she pursued a career in the decorative arts in New York City and later worked in set design and on projects for interior designer Markham Roberts, experiences which involved “schlepping” furniture around and gaining a deep understanding of how a traditional design office operates.

Despite the near-century that has passed since the firm’s initial founding, Sister Parish’s core design values have stayed intact, and the aesthetic revolves around the last remaining family home in Dark Harbor Maine, where much of Sister Parish’s signature flair came to life around the verdant seashore. Throughout her career, she explored and celebrated American craftspeople and their creativity, using it to enliven and create an aesthetic around a live-in home, filled with familial conviviality, laughter and joy.

Perhaps it was art historian and Pablo Picasso biographer John Richardson who summed up her legacy best. “No one else in America does a room with such patrician aplomb, such life-enhancing charm, such as lack of gimmickry or trendiness.”

The key to the charm she purveyed is authenticity, concludes Crater.

“Sister said that tradition was the lucky part of her life,” Crater muses. “What she meant was that her parents and grandparents had instilled a sense of home and permanence in all of their houses and she was very grateful for that. She remembered being tucked into the same quilt and canopy beds she tucked her children into and that Eliza tucks her kids into today. I believe that when families really pass on a sense of home, traditions and a joy in domesticity — from the simplest dinner to the most grand — it inevitably carries on and touches each generation.”