- How To: With Fabric House Elliott Clarke

How to Design a Fabric Collection for Elliott Clarke

After the recent release of the delectable Oscar fabric collection from Elliott Clarke, we asked the designer Sebastian Nash to give us the low down on the processes involved, the inspiration and how the designs were brought to life.

What was your inspiration when you were designing this range for Elliott Clarke?

The main design brief from Managing Director, Nerida Brydon was to produce a collection that was classic yet contemporary. I can’t say one thing inspired the Oscar collection. It was more about looking at the strengths of the Elliott Clarke brand and taking it to the next stage. With the Oscar collection we included modern plains, interesting stripes, a very usable small scale, a dramatic flame stitch and an Ikat damask. Colourways include the forever popular naturals to the more fashion forward colours. The quality and handle of the fabric was very important for us, so we developed product with some of the best European mills, mainly Italian.

What was the process from designing the collection to manufacture?

Once we established who our target market was we started meeting with mills to look for product that would work for them. I then worked closely with the mills to produce the qualities, colours and designs we were looking for. This process can take many months to get the fabric just right. Once the collection was 90% finished we reviewed each design, sampled formats and looked at the costings. There was then further development and editing which is not unusual at this point. Once we were 100% in agreement, Nerida signed off on the collection and orders were placed with the mills.

Why did you choose these Coco Republic products to showcase your fabrics?

It was great working with Coco Republic as the product range is very large and allows us to show two very different personalities with the Oscar collection. The Essex chair and Ottoman gave us a classic understated look and great to show off larger designs such as our design Beardsley; a wonderful large scale flame stitch. On the sides of the chair and base of the ottoman is Oscar. The Ottoman top and the scatter cushion are in Melmoth Stripe, the curtain in Salome.

For a more fun feel, we choose the Cabot Bay Wingback in the Douglas Stripe in colour Jack. I love the whole fabric combination, the colours and chair against the classic bookcase give the feeling of a funky gentlemen’s club.