Shirley & Garland
Mario Sirtori - 2023
Wavy weaves.
Shirley and Garland are two fire-retardant Trevira CS colored fabrics designed for the furniture industry. The use of bouclé yarns gives the weave a three-dimensional look and great softness. The curl of the bouclé yarn is prominent and recognizable in the Shirley fabric. While in the Garland it gives a minimal undulating movement to the warp thread. In both cases, the chromatic contrast between warp and weft enhances the depth of the texture.
Designed by our former studio CMP,
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Not by chance.
The yarns we use for Shirley and Garland underwent a texturing process through which tufts are randomly positioned on the base filament. This process allows the synthetic thread to look similar to that of natural fiber, as the light is refracted in an irregular way, generating a hazy glow around the base filament. That is why the two fabrics’ appearance is very different from the usual fire-retardant fabrics. The latter are generally deliberately technical, stiff to the touch and plasticky. Shirley and Garland combine certified performance, natural softness and a handcrafted fabric look, with microscopic random irregularities.
The Shirley fabric looks so good that many chairs wear it with pleasure. The Lamorisse Wood, designed for Pedrali, is one of them.
Wysiwyg.
After designing a weave and setting up the loom, we created a color palette, which guided the choice of colors for the basic yarns. Subsequently, the yarns of each chosen color were arranged in the weft and in the warp to obtain a checkered fabric, with all possible color combinations. From this sort of chromatic matrix we selected the fabric variants for the mass-production. It might seem that such a selection is the result of a mathematical procedure, but in truth it is an alchemical procedure, as the result of the combination of colors is something extremely unpredictable, which necessarily requires empirical tests to be carried out on a loom.
WANDERLUST
Curls and dimples.
If you are a movie star and you are reading this paragraph, you too have probably heard about the new fabrics designed by CMP. There isn't a hair stylist who doesn't talk about it from morning to evening. It may seem absurd, but if you want to be an actress you have to know everything about fabric trends, nowadays!
Judy Garland and Shirley Temple, unaware of the worldwide fame that their curls and dimples would rise to, and of the strange connections between these and the bouclé fabrics designed by CMP.