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One of couture’s biggest names has come together with one of Britain’s boldest heritage brands to create a collection of fabrics and wallcoverings full of drama and theatricality
British fashion designer Giles Deacon is no stranger to using fabric to make stunning transformations. Usually this involves delicately manipulating it to shape a bodice, expertly gathering it at a waist or letting voluminous folds fill out a full skirt. His couture creations are feats of fantasy, unsurprisingly in high demand from celebrities and collectors across the world, but now he’s turning this mastery of materials to new ends with his first range of furnishing fabrics and wallpapers for perhaps the country’s most famous heritage textile manufacturer, Sanderson.
As with many of the group’s collections, the starting point was the brand’s extensive archives, where Deacon trawled for hours through fragments of faded documents, original artworks and notes. ‘It was absolutely extraordinary on so many levels,’ he says, still visibly enthused by the delights he found there. ‘From a visual perspective it’s fascinating, but it also reveals so much about that sense of heritage, and you can see the transition of social history as designs change. I found it thoroughly intriguing.’
Despite being given free rein to choose to work with any of the group’s brands, Deacon immediately went for Sanderson. ‘I really felt it was the natural home for me,’ he explains, ‘as there was a definite synergy. It’s quintessentially British, and there’s that sense of craftsmanship and the illustrative aspect of so much of what they do – that really spoke to me.’
For a creative used to the relentless seasonal treadmill of fashion, the lengthy timeline involved – more than two years – has resulted in a plentiful and varied collection. ‘I said to Lisa Montague, Sanderson’s CEO, if we’re going to do it, let’s really do it,’ says Deacon, and he has more than stayed true to his word. Interweaving medieval influences and Greek mythology, he has deftly reworked archive Sanderson floral designs and combined them with illustrative and utilitarian elements from his own couture collections. As he says, ‘It was very important to me for it to be a collection as a whole, to be something new. It had to have substantial elements of my world built into it.’
So there are the chintzy blooms you’d expect, such as ‘Lakeland Paradis’ and ��
