LIFE IN COLOUR
How textile designer Bernat Klein put the Borders front and centre on the fashion stage
When you see the words ‘haute couture’, what do you think of? For me, those two words conjure up visions of Glenn Close in a pair of toe-pinching Devil Wears Prada Louboutins. I see Karl Lagerfeld drifting down the Champs-Élysées, eclipsed by oversized sunglasses. Shamefully, though, my mind doesn’t naturally gravitate to the Scottish Borders – and it should. Bernat Klein, a visionary artist, colourist and textile designer whose Galashiels business was internationally revered, has every right to sit amongst the fashionista stars.
Bolstering the Borders’ booming textiles industry in the 1960s, Klein introduced some of the globe’s best-known fashion houses to brightly-coloured tweeds and wools that were as much inspired by the Scottish landscape as they were by modernist and impressionist artists. Klein lived a life that was infused with colour – with dazzling yellows, oranges and greens fronting many of his iconic designs – and his belief that ‘words cannot do what colour will’ was at the fore of his Borders-based textiles business and mill.
Klein was born in 1922 in Senta, near former Yugoslavia’s border with Hungary. He studied at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in
Jerusalem before relocating to the UK in 1945 to study textiles technology at the University of Leeds. It was here that Cupid’s arrow struck and he met his future wife Margaret (Peggy) Soper. By the 1950s the couple had embarked on a Scottish escapade, moving to Edinburgh and then Galashiels where Klein was to make his name.
Of course, the Borders was already a hub of textiles activity, but the tonal greens and browns of traditional tartan failed to inspire Klein. Biting the bullet in 1952, he established his own business, Colourcraft, allowing his bold aesthetic vision to take flight. He began by crafting colourful lambswool scarves for the likes of Woolworths and Marks & Spencer, interweaving colours that would shine and move with the light. Soon after, he purchased Netherdale Mill so he could craft his very own tweeds and fabrics, including his signature mohair with velvet ribbon woven through – the very same fabric that caught Coco Chanel’s eye and appeared in her collections.
In the wake of Chanel’s endorsement in the early 1960s, Klein became a magnet for Europe’s couture market, with
Christian Dior, Pierre Cardin, Louis Féraud, Hardy Amies, Guy Laroche, Nina Ricci and Yves Saint Laurent – to name a few – flocking to place orders with him.
Impressionist artists like Paul Klee and Georges Seurat, whose pointillist technique inspired Klein to dip-dye wool to give dots of colour, influenced the Borders weaver greatly, as did Mother Nature. Indeed, it was because of nature’s palette that Klein invented a colour chart based on a person’s eye colour, revolutionising the way 20th-century women consumed fashion.
‘He always used to say, “You don’t see an animal’s fur clashing with their eye colour”,’ explains Shelley Klein, Bernat Klein’s daughter who is an established writer. ‘Nature doesn’t get it wrong. He felt a lot of people wore the wrong colours for their hair, eye and skin colour.’
It was, however, the Borders’ landscape – including the chaotic nature of leaves on trees – that influenced Klein the most. ‘In the Borders, he never stopped enjoying the colour of the Scottish landscape,’ says Shelley. ‘It was just joyful to him. We were very lucky that
“Klein introduced some of the globe’s best-known fashion houses to tweed
our house was positioned with extraordinary views right across the Ettrick and Tweed Valleys, and out towards the Eildons. It was an unbroken, unspoiled view.’
The Kleins’ house was no ordinary home. High Sunderland, which is based in Selkirk and was built in collaboration with esteemed architect Peter Womersley, is a paragon of mid-century design, and to this day is considered one of Klein’s greatest creative successes. Rectangular in shape and divided into modules with a courtyard and carport, its simple exterior frames an extraordinarily light, transparent interior – within which Klein’s textiles took centre stage. It was a fusion of art, architecture and immaculate design.
‘At one point in the house you can see right through to the other side,’ explains Shelley. ‘I think the house was his antidote to the darkness he’d had to live through. My father’s mother and father – my grandparents – were in Auschwitz. That legacy weighed heavily on him. This light, open-plan house was a reply to that, and a way of moving forward out of that darkness.’
Though her father’s love of sleek, unimpeded design did not factor in Shelley’s Starsky & Hutch posters, nor her demands for a bedroom door, Klein House was a joyful place in which to grow up.
‘I recall some of the fashion shows in the house where all the London fashion designers and models would be flown up to Edinburgh and then bussed down to the house in the Borders,’ she says. ‘We would have models walking around the house in beautiful clothing. We would even have fashion shoots in the garden, using the house as a background.’
The Bernat Klein Foundation, which seeks to develop Klein’s creative and cultural legacy, has launched an exhibition of his work in collaboration with the Borders Textiles Towerhouse. It features some of his original pieces, as well as works by others that were inspired by Klein’s vibrant textiles and artwork, and is ongoing at the Towerhouse until 24 December.
‘I think he’d be very touched that anyone would be inspired by him, or even remember him,’ says Shelley. ‘Although in his own work he was demanding and exacting, he was also a very modest man.’
Far away from the buzz of Paris and Milan’s A-list catwalks, a small weaving mill was churning out the next season’s trends. Pretty extraordinary, don’t you think?