British fashion designer Paul Smith and textile company Maharam have worked together for 20 years, giving the industry a key example of longstanding interdisciplinary design exchange.
Maharam and Paul Smith first met in 2002, when Maharam reissued Gio Ponti’s 1930 textile I Morosi alla Finestra (The Lovers at the Window) textile for a retrospective on the Italian designer at London’s Design Museum. Taken by the romantic design, Smith requested to use the silk window covering fabric for jacket linings. This conversation expanded the potential of Maharam’s archival textiles and led to Smith crafting his own work for the company. The first upholstery fabric of the collaboration, Bespoke Stripe, was released in 2003 – seven decades after Ponti’s original.
The 20th anniversary of Maharam and Paul Smith’s collaboration will be celebrated throughout the end of 2023, with the release of a Maharam Media book on Smith’s designs that have followed Bespoke Stripe, and various events in Australia. ‘Maharam has been a real pioneer in its field for over 100 years – and I consider it a privilege to have spent the last twenty of them working with their dedicated team,’ says Smith. ‘There’s an art to creative collaboration, and their endless energy and enthusiasm have undoubtedly made this one a success.’
Paul Smith and Maharam have conceived more than 40 designs together. Pictured from top to bottom are Sequential Stripe, Perspective, Dots and Carl Hansen & Søn chair CH445 in Big Stripe.
Spanning more than 40 designs for upholstery and wallcoverings, Smith and Maharam’s textiles are characterized by the reinterpretation of classic motifs through idiosyncratic applications of pattern, colour and scale. Further partnerships have ensued: in 2014, Smith and the company joined forces with Carl Hansen & Søn on a limited-edition collection commemorating the 100th anniversary of Danish designer Hans J Wegner’s birth. Similarly, 2018 saw designs in the Herman Miller Collection revitalized in the artistic, whimsical fabrics.
The iconic design relationship is testament to the power of close dialogue and exchange between interdisciplinary creatives. ‘Paul and the entire team possess boundless passion, curiosity, and creative spirit,’ shares Mary Murphy, Maharam’s senior vice president of design. ‘I deeply value our friendship, which is grounded in mutual trust and commitment to exploration that can only come with time.’
