MY NEW FAVOURITE FABRIC

Just as in fashion, the interior design world of textiles has a couple of seasons, where the new collections are launched and showed off at various industry events. It’s always very exciting to see the new products and when I had my shop, I was very lucky that the companies’ agents would visit me with all the new swatch books and show me their latest collections. It was one of my favourite parts of my job at the shop, and I would find it very hard not to buy every single book I was showed (yep, the fabric books cost a lot of money folks) as it’s easy to get very carried away and spend too much money.

So it was a good thing that I had my wonderful colleague Luise, who I instructed to play ‘bad cop’ to my over-enthusiastic cop, and discourage me from buying anything unless I absolutely loved it. She was very good in her role, but sometimes a new fabric or wallpaper would come along, which would make me so absolutely giddy with love and excitement that I would actually do my Happy Dance in front of the agent, and start squealing about it being My New Favourite. At that point Luise would know it was a lost cause and that a new book would be coming to live in the library. And the agents were always kind and pretended they didn’t mind the slightly embarrassing Happy Dance.

That’s how fabrics are with me; and wallpapers. I fall very much in love. And over the five years of having a shop, I was forever declaring that a delicious new fabric design or other was now officially My New Favourite Fabric. I know how it sounds. It makes me sound incredibly fickle and lacking in commitment. But I can assure you I’m not. Because once I’m in love, I do tend to stay in love for a long, long time. And we’re not talking men here for God’s sake, my husband’s the love of my life and the only man for me! But fabrics are different. I refuse to be tied down to one fabric for the rest of my life, when other new and exciting ones come along to tempt me to cover my chair in them and make curtains out of them!

This love at first sight happened when I first saw the Geisha wallpaper I used in my bedroom, and the Jungle Palm paper for my living room, I knew I had to use them in my own home, I loved them that much. And it happened again recently when I visited Liberty in London and discovered they’d launched a new collection called ‘The Chesham Cabinet’, and that within it was the most gorgeous fabric design called ‘Lady Kristina’. Although my lack of acquaintance with the girls working at Liberty did rather curtail my Happy Dance (I don’t do it in front of strangers, are you mad?), I felt an instant excitement at seeing something so beautiful. And it’s always accompanied by a kind of longing, a longing that I have to have this beautiful thing in my life to look at every day, to make me happy with just how gorgeous it is to behold. And so, whatever plans I had for our living room scheme have now been completely scrapped. And Lady Kristina will be appearing instead. More on that next week.

None of you who know me will be surprised to see that the design has birds in it. And none of you who know me, will be surprised that my favourite colourway is the turquoise one. Turquoise. And birds. TURQUOISE. AND BIRDS?! How can a fabric reach such perfection. However, they have produced this fabric in other stunning colourways which work just as well. And quite honestly, they are all My New Favourite Fabrics!

Have you ever fallen hard for a fabric or wallpaper design and just knew immediately that you wanted it in your home? Please tell me about it and share the love! x