Bright ideas in textiles.
Textiles get woven to wear.
Why frame art when you can wear it? Increasingly, collaborative-minded fashion designers are working with painters and illustrators on vibrant textiles that double as collectible prints. Locally, the movement is led by Gravel & Gold and Nooworks, well-known Mission boutiques rounding out their eye-catching in-house collections with partnerships between the owners and artists they admire. Their graphically rich textiles become flattering silhouettes — including leggings, dresses, jumpsuits and quilted jackets — that interweave San Francisco’s fashion and art scenes.
“We can’t all buy art, so to be able to support an artist and a small business with a $100 purchase makes people really happy and it’s good for the community,” says Nooworks owner Jennifer D’Angelo, who released limited-edition lines with multidisciplinary artist Jenny Sharaf, folk artist Spirit Speak Tarot, and Magic Maker Dreamweaver (a.k.a. watercolorist Shannon Taylor). “Having the limited-edition component makes it special,” says D’Angelo. “It’s more like a piece of art.”
Nooworks, which opened on Valencia Street in 2009, specializes in wild rock ’n’ roll prints. Gravel & Gold, launched one year earlier, has become a hub for whimsical designs as well as a holistic haven for a variety of small-batch products. Both shops set bold fashion standards in San Francisco and beyond, selling their popular designs in-house and through wholesalers.
Although Gravel & Gold owners Holly Samuelsen and Tomra Palmer focus on modern silhouettes, their textile designs are influenced by 20th century Vienna collective Wiener Werkstätte and the British Omega Workshops, along with midcentury Finnish textile design. “We’re always looking back, particularly at the last century moving toward modernism,” Samuelsen says.
Gravel & Gold recently collaborated with Portland, Ore., painter Rainen Knecht on Night Landscape, a line of abstract shapes in rich blues and gold that launched in the fall. Knecht says Night Landscape started as a gouache painting of an obscured cabin on a lake. “I like the idea of the print seeming very graphic and turning out to be a place that has a feeling,” she says.
While the fashion industry has a long history of treating textiles like canvases, the trend has bloomed in the past few years. It spans national names such as Dusen Dusen and Rachel Comey and local labels, including Nooworks collaborator Rainbow Kimono, Maker & Mineral, FluffyCo, and See Sun. Most of these Bay Area designers, including Gravel & Gold, show at West Coast Craft. Paulina Nassar, creative director of the craft fair, says the recent surge in imaginative textiles comes from a strong interest in clothing that’s thoughtfully “designed, dyed, painted or produced.”
“We’re absolutely seeing a growing number of clothing designers creating their own textiles,” she says, “both in the West Coast and beyond.” Gravel & Gold’s Boobs print is a ubiquitous marker of this local trend, having been featured in Refinery29 and Design Sponge and turned into everything from T-shirts to pillowcases, greeting cards and a reusable Baggu bag.
San Francisco’s Zoo-Ink has been producing handscreened fabrics for a national clientele since 1972. Founder Alan Grinberg says he’s seen a bump in limited-run, handprinted textiles in recent years, which he attributes to the DIY and Made in America movements and the popularity of digital printing. Although Zoo-Ink doesn’t do digital printing, Grinberg says that “some companies who start with this technique will come to us for a higher-quality product. It has encouraged small businesses to design their own fabric.”
The cost of DIY textiles isn’t cheap, especially since both Nooworks and Gravel & Gold hire local sewing factories where workers are paid a living wage. D’Angelo says she has to order a minimum of 1,000 yards and pay for each color when working with her Los Angeles printer. “You have to really like the design,” she says. The financial risk comes with great reward, though, for customers who crave one-ofa-kind looks and for the designers fostering these creative collectives.
“I want to make the stuff that’s almost too weird to make,” D’Angelo says, “but we’re a small company, so we can make it.”
“We’re absolutely seeing a growing number of clothing designers creating their own textiles, both in the West Coast and beyond.” Paulina Nassar, West Coast Craft creative director