Sheila Bridges’s New Walmart Collection Is a Love Letter to Philly

Sheila Bridges with her new Walmart collection / Photography courtesy of Walmart

This summer, as the country heads toward its 250th birthday, Sheila Bridges is giving the backyard barbecue a distinctly Philly twist.

On June 1st, the acclaimed Philadelphia-born, Harlem-based interior designer launches the Philadelphia Collection, a 14-piece outdoor entertaining line available online through Walmart. The limited-edition collection includes cake stands, pitchers, serving trays and platters, tumblers, and ice buckets — all bright with landmarks (like the Liberty Bell), founding-era references, and Bridges’s signature mix of wit, history, and pattern.

“Walmart wanted to celebrate American design, and I’m an American designer,” Bridges says of the collaboration timed to the country’s semiquincentennial. “I was just so excited that I can finally do something about this city that I love, that I grew up in.”

Bridges has spent decades designing some of the country’s most stylish rooms. She founded Sheila Bridges Design in 1994, and became widely known for Harlem Toile de Jouy — her subversive riff on traditional French toile that centers Black life. The pattern has since appeared on wallpaper, textiles, clothing, and fine bone china for Wedgwood; it is also represented in major museum collections, including the Brooklyn Museum and the Cooper Hewitt in New York, the National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C., and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Now, her work is coming to Walmart at her most accessible price point yet, with every piece under $20. For Bridges, whose Harlem Toile wallpaper sells for $350 per roll and whose past collaborations have included Williams Sonoma Home, the collection brings her layered designs to a wider audience. But the Philadelphia Collection is more than a patriotic summer line — for Bridges, it’s personal.

Though she’s often associated with New York, where she has lived for decades, Bridges says Philadelphia has always been foundational to her work and identity. “Everybody associates me with New York and Harlem Toile, which is iconic, I get that,” she says. “But I’ve always been very, very connected to Philadelphia.”

That connection runs through the collection in obvious and more subtle ways. Bridges grew up in West Philly, in a family home her parents kept for more than 50 years. July, she says, was the social center of the year, with Fourth of July cookouts and a string of family birthdays. “The month of July was just a very important month in our household,” she says. “I feel like I was always outdoors and my parents were always entertaining.”

That nostalgia became the starting point for the Walmart line. “Those are the best memories — from the fireworks to the cookouts,” Bridges says. “Gathering with friends, family, and neighbors truly was the whole inspiration.”

The collection is playful, with Benjamin Franklin on a cake stand wearing a party hat beside the phrase “Have your cake and eat it too.”

The Liberty Bell plate reads, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of hot dogs and hamburgers.”

Also making an appearance is Independence Hall, the Ben Franklin Bridge, and the Art Museum, alongside some smaller design winks. On one dinner plate, Betsy Ross sits holding a flag; but look closer, Bridges says, and you’ll see she’s seated in a Philadelphia Windsor chair.

Bridges’s work often rewards a second look, and the Philadelphia Collection is no exception. The dinner plates can be layered with salad plates printed with text from the Declaration of Independence, a choice that lets Bridges nod to 1776 while also acknowledging the contradictions embedded in the country’s founding.

It’s a reminder, she says, of one of the founding principles of democracy: “that all men are created equal, even though at that time, in 1776, my ancestors were not acknowledged as being equal.”

Her Harlem Toile scenes appear alongside Philadelphia landmarks and founding-era imagery. Bridges also points to the PMA, whose façade was shaped in part by Julian Abele, the first Black graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s architecture program, as another example of the city’s deeper design legacy.

The result is a collection made for Fourth of July, but also Juneteenth, birthdays, pool days, Labor Day — and any other reason to gather around a table this summer.

“The collection is kind of like a visual memory remix — memories and recollections of my childhood from Philadelphia,” she says. “At the end of the day, I just want for it to make people happy, and for it to be joyful.”