Kvadrat x Raf Simons 2016 Textile Collection

Renowned fashion designer Raf Simons recently premiered his latest collaboration with Danish textile manufacture Kvadrat. Taking its inspiration from Modernist furniture, pop and contemporary art, fashion textiles, and music. Simons' third collection for Kvadrat features blended wool textiles and explores the stripe in varying degrees of graphic boldness. For the launch Kvadrat were granted exclusive permission by Fondazione Franco Albini to reproduce Albini’s rare 1940’s chair 'Poltrona Seggiovia' and upholster it in the new textiles.

The stripe theme of the new collection is deployed across three new textile designs through the use of textured yarns and subtly fragmented colour. The strikingly modern nautical upholstery of Franco Albini’s suspended Poltrona Seggiovia (Chairlift Chair) of 1940 inspired Simons to explore the stripe in upholstery textile. The resulting designs - Reflex, Pulsar and Fuse - were named in reference to the musical world that is an important source of inspiration to the designer.

While feeling fresh and contemporary, the palette - which includes cobalt blue and fiery red, sharp lemon yellow and powder pink as well as a range of greys and neutral tones - finds echoes in key colours of the earlier collections. As a result, designs from all three Kvadrat/Raf Simons collections can be used alongside one another to produce richly nuanced combinations of colour, texture and pattern within an interior scheme.

Each of the three textile designs are deployed in a handful of colour ways across three sizes of cushions. These cushions allow different designs within the Kvadrat/Raf Simons collections to be used together. In addition, the new textile and cushion collection is complemented by a pure camel wool throw.