Downtown in December: Introducing Joana Avillez for Paperless Post
Born and raised in New York City, Joana Avillez has been drawing for as long as she can remember. Inspired by her observations of the city’s ever-hectic happenings and quirky characters, her metropolitan upbringing has informed her work as an illustrator, writer, and cartoonist known for her unique sense of wit, charm, and intricate details. Joana also grew up drawing alongside her father, a talented cartoonist and New York Times contributor, who inspired and encouraged Joana to hone her skillset from an early age.
Having left New York City briefly to attend the Rhode Island School of Design, where she received her BFA in painting, Joana returned to her hometown to continue her studies in illustration at the School of Visual Arts, where she received her MFA. She now combines her love of both drawing and writing alike to create artwork and visual essays with a captivating sense of storytelling. Making a name for herself in the illustration and design world, Joana now regularly contributes to the New Yorker and Vogue, and has even illustrated several books, including Lena Dunham’s “Not That Kind of Girl.” Her illustrated edition of Joseph Mitchell’s “The Bottom of The Harbor” will be published by Modern Library/Penguin Random House in Spring 2025.
And now, as our design partner, Joana is bringing her unique illustrative style and clever visuals to an exclusive new collection of invitations for Paperless Post. Perfectly timed for the holiday season, Joana has crafted a range of festive designs for holiday invitations that evoke her playful sensibility, characterized by intricate, colorful line drawings of celebratory scenes. The invitations exude a comforting feeling of friendly gatherings, like family-style dinners and intimate apartment cocktail parties with towers of delicious cookies and guests’ shoes piled up at the door as they get cozy inside.
What consistently shines through in Joana’s work is her exuberant personality and sense of style, but also—especially in this collection—her fondness of great holiday parties (both hosting and, of course, attending!). The small but important details that make up any party are reflected in all the detailed illustrations that make this collection stand out. Her designs speak to her belief that it’s important for partygoers to feel at home, but also that there’s nothing better than when guests are expected to dress to the nines. For Joana, holiday parties are the perfect opportunity to blend the comfort of a welcoming, intimate gathering with the exciting formality of getting dolled up for a seasonal soirée.
We spent the day with Joana Avillez as she prepared to host a holiday party, from stopping by the bakery to pick up her favorite crowd-pleasing treats to setting the perfect mood and learning how she really feels about Christmas music. We also learned more about the inspirations behind her new collection of invitations, the types of events she hopes to inspire, and some of the core childhood memories that continue to inform her artistic work.
For your Paperless Post collection, what are you most excited about?
Everything! Getting to do this is such a dream for me. I have been sending invites with Paperless Post forever.
What were your design influences for the invitations in this collection?
I am a huge fan of Edward Gorey. I have “His Book Cover Art & Design” and it’s so great to look through. He is somehow a master of both crosshatching and composition. His scratchy, confident, and wayward lines are the bones of his work.
This was subliminally in my mind for the dragons.
For better or worse, I’ve been looking at images of old New York City clubs. The Stork Club, for example. The ephemera that went with those places is amazing.
Here’s a photo of my grandparents there.
And in the opposite direction, I’ve been looking at so many images of old New York, especially of the Fulton Fish Market (where I grew up) and this now-shuttered fisherman’s slop joint, Sloppy Louie’s. I love how the special is written inside this fish, and taped to the mirror.
How do you stay inspired?
When you’re making illustrations, you get to cull from everything in your life. The ballet, but also the people attending the ballet. I always have my neck twisted in the wrong direction, looking at the audience. When I see an incredible character, I feel exactly as Princess Mononoke does when she sees the Forest Spirit across the lake in the Studio Ghibli film. I love seeing people being very much themselves, and coming out onto the street or into the world to do so.
And as much as I am inspired by that sort of eccentric, outward-facing self, I also really value the more intimate, private scale of people. What someone writes in the margins, the ephemera they save. I love old letters, handwriting, letterheads, correspondence. Somehow I am the keeper of a lot of my father’s, grandmother’s, and great-grandmother’s letters. I treasure these things, although they make me sad, too. Letters between people who were so close. I still feel the urgency through what is just ink and paper, and somehow I want those relationships to live forever.
How has living in New York informed your work?
Probably in every single way. I’ve spent my life so far roaming the streets and staring at people. I remember being in a stroller and looking at women on the subway who were wearing big chunky white sneakers and socks, getting off at Wall Street, and knowing they would change into heels at work. I made a drawing about it. This probably seems incredibly tragic, but I think New York taught me so much about looking and noticing and imagining the inner worlds of people. Maybe something healthier would have been to be playing in a yard and recording the habits of birds. But I love shoes! And actually, it is interesting that men didn’t change shoes when they got to work.
How does hosting and attending parties inform your work?
For better or worse, most of the parties I’m at these days are for the under-four-year-old crowd and run from 3 to 6 p.m., so I really know the do’s and don’ts of that. And now, there is nothing like attending an epic soirée! As a reformed night owl, it’s so fun to go to parties and really savor it, and then run home to my Real Housewives and Schostal pajamas.
Some of my favorite parties are actually intimate dinners at the home of Sadie and Lorin Stein, where I leave with a renewed zest for life, three to five friends for life, a buzz and a belly, buoyed by a sense of mischief, of fun. Sadie Stein is the best host in New York. She has reels of cocktail napkins. She makes obscure sauces from scratch. And she tells stories with a twinkle in her eye that somehow sparkles straight through fogged glasses. She alights, in a caftan, possessing all the stories you want to know, and makes you feel like you did her a favor by coming over.
I also love parties at the homes of my parents’ friends. I never like just talking to people my own age; it puts such a damper to only exist within my own perspective of time! Sometimes it’s worth eating at Omen on Thompson Street, just to see a sea of gray-and-white-haired people who you wished you knew.
As an illustrator, how have your interests, inspirations, and subjects of your work changed over the years?
I realize as I get older, and now have a child myself, how so much of what I was interested in as a kid has remained the same. When I’m drawing and coming up with ideas, I really tap into my nine-year-old self. She is my guide. Whatever she thought was cool is still what I think is cool. The focus I had as a kid to just be in my room, drawing or making something, it’s the purest form of creation! And I’m talking about making, for example, a miniature backpack out of tape for a stuffed animal. I can already see it with my son when he’s playing alone and unbothered, making sounds, imagining, creating—it’s the most incredible thing we have.
What is the earliest thing you can remember drawing?
The first thing I can remember drawing was a woman with red nails and heels in preschool. My dad was an exceptional illustrator, draftsman, and cartoonist. I grew up drawing with him constantly; he could draw anything. He was truly gifted, in a technical, brilliant way. He did illustrations for the New York Times and other places, but it wasn’t as completely fulfilling for him as it is for me. He had other more intellectual pursuits that won out!
Describe your dream holiday event or reason for bringing people together.
Holiday themes can often feel corny and oppressive—until it’s subzero and pitch dark every day at 4 p.m. Then, a holiday party suddenly feels like a little gleaming jewel twirling in the distance!
I keep thinking of William Steig’s “Brave Irene” when Irene finally delivers the dress through the snowstorm, arriving at a party full of lights and dancing and warmth!
What is the backdrop?
The house in “Brave Irene” or the party in Tomi Ungerer’s “Moon Man.”
Who’s got a seat at the table?
Everyone. It’s the kind of dinner party where you have to turn a trashcan over because there are no more chairs. Or maybe there’s no table to begin with?
How do you create the perfect mood?
Dim lighting. Edibles? I would not claim to know, but the best mood is when people aren’t feeling any obligations past the exact minute they are living in. And I love it when you’re expected to dress to the nines—that is true excitement to me.
And I stand with Lauren Santo Domingo, let’s please keep our shoes on at the party. Some of us speak mostly through shoes. But somehow, conversely, I love clocking who’s inside a party by the piles of footwear outside the door. Platforms and stilettos and sneakers and opera shoes and galoshes and clogs, the hooves of people so happy to be out of the house.
Best holiday party refreshments?
For parties, I always love to get the chocolate leaf cookies from Duane Park Patisserie in Tribeca. I bring a ribboned box of them to most dinner parties and people always ask, “What on Earth is this heaven through a mouthful?” My best friend Isabel turned me on to them. I send her pounds of them every time she has a baby.
I also always order a Bûche de Noël because my mom tells me to. No one eats it usually.
When I was a kid, I loved “Alice in Wonderland” so much, especially the tiny box of cookies she opens. The ‘drink me’ or ‘eat me’, the swig or bite of a cookie or mushroom that changes everything again and again! Maybe that’s the promise or luster of eating a giant Castelvetrano olive at a party…who knows what will happen now?
My dad even made this mural of me running with Alice. I remember stopping and starting the VHS player so he could paint it simultaneously, butcher paper pinned casually to the wall. It’s one of my most prized possessions.
What activities would take place?
A dramatic reading of David Sedaris’ “Holidays on Ice.” Someone’s dad (or Stanley Tucci) is on hand making expert cocktails. Gingerbread house decorating. My best friend Pippa lived next door to me growing up—yes, we attached a pulley system with string to deliver notes and items from our fire escapes—and every year, her mom would bring out these heavy, cast iron, antique gingerbread house molds, and we’d each make one. It was such an event! I would break off pieces for weeks until one year I noticed someone else was partaking, someone with a perturbing gnawing technique.
And if you want to play a game, make it Jenga.
If you were to give three pieces of advice to a host who wants to throw a holiday event that evokes the same flair as your invitations, what would they be?
Install a fireplace, if you don’t already have one.
Please, absolutely no Christmas music.
Consult Deeda Blair’s book, “Food, Flowers, & Fantasy” and just do everything she says!
If you were to give 3 pieces of advice to a guest attending a party this holiday season, what would they be?
- Put hairspray on the bottom of your heels so you don’t slip on ice on the way over! I just saw Melissa Gorga do this on Real Housewives of New Jersey, and it was a revelation.
- Speaking of Real Housewives: don’t be a lush but be utterly lush?
- Treat wrapping presents as an expression of your worldview. Save things all year in a drawer or box to use as wrapping material: fruit nets, obscure ribbons, a dried branch, anime stickers, or fake flowers. Also, secure a gold pen to write on dark tissue paper. It makes even your most rote ‘to/from’ feel ornate.
Is there a narrative that you would say exists throughout this collection?
A loopy, curious, flirtatious line ties the collection together. A line that is intimate yet exuberant.
What feelings do you hope hosts and guests will have when they use or receive your designs?
Like someone just told them an amazing secret—not a burdensome one! Or like your crush just wrote their phone number on a napkin and gave it to you. Or like someone sprayed the card with perfume before putting it in the envelope. Or that a certain detail of one illustration may speak to the level of intimacy, care, and exuberance that you hope your guests will have when together.
Now that you’ve gotten to know the inspiration, ephemera, and Real Housewives-inspired party tips of illustrator, writer, and cartoonist Joana Avillez, browse the full collection of Joana Avillez for Paperless Post holiday invitations.
