There are a few things which have been constants in my life, and which I feel define my childhood and adulthood. One of those is the presence of Liberty Print fabrics. As a child I had a room full of cushions and doll clothes as well as my own clothes which were made from various Tana Lawn floral and paisley patterns. My dolls house had Liberty print curtains and wee little bedspreads of fine cottons covered in miniscule floral patterning.

As an adult I have loved shopping at Liberty – the constant changing displays and the desire to forge ahead and showcase up and coming designers, as well as more established ones, always with a slightly less mass market direction than some of the other department stores. Something about the big imposing history stained wood décor inside makes the contrast between old and new that more defined.

Liberty’s fabric department has long held my attention. The floor which is devoted to their in-house fabrics always draws me in, and everytime I am in London now I spend up big on the new collections. There’s something about the intense use of saturated colour which really interests me. They have such a deep relationship with colours which go together so well, that each piece of fabric has a definite life to it. There are few other fabrics which achieve such richness and quality to their designs. What always intrigues me is that the fabrics translate so well into any number of different uses.

The resurgence of ‘handmade’ has really given Liberty fabric a perfect new contemporary market, particularly in children’s clothes. Walk into any designer children’s boutique in London – and I’m thinking particularly of Elias and Grace in Primrose Hill and Caramel in Sloane Square, and Liberty print fabrics are being translated into beautiful smock tops, pants and skirts to coordinate with fine Italian wool jumpers and cashmere socks (yeah I buy a lot of that too when I’m overseas). It seems to once again be defining a generation of children.

The same inspirations can be found amongst craft bloggers currently. Through Stitchounette, there are beautiful children’s clothes being made using Liberty print as trim and as main feature pieces. The smock tops of Rouge Nahsam are divine and she has a whole blog devoted to them. Turn to any Japanese book of Zakka handmade items and there is sure to be a fair smattering of Liberty print in them. The ultra fine cotton works well against linen and knit textures. This is another appeal of the fabrics for me – by themselves they can be delicate, soft, caressing, but against a rough 8ply wool, they can be strong determined prints.

This can be highlighted again in the new furniture collection Liberty is producing in conjunction with Squint, covering striking modern chairs in a patchwork of frayed and rough liberty print fabrics. I think these really typify what Liberty is about - strong, bold, contemporary, and constantly evolving.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 15th, 2006 at 4:22 pm and is filed under creativity+community. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.