Prints Charming: Our Favorite Indie Home Textile and Wallpaper Designers
For all of the pattern and color lovers out there, here are five small, California-based independent designers making the most beautiful textiles in the business.
Courtesy of Brook Perdigon
Brooke Perdigon at work on her collection of home textiles
Home sales are skyrocketing. There’s a materials and labor shortage for renovations. Supply chain interruptions are still making it next to impossible to splurge on the refrigerator of your dreams. And if you want a brand new sofa, you might just have to wait until 2022. What’s a home-owner who’s desperate for a refresh to do? Call your upholsterer, or your favorite wallpaper hanger, and order a few rolls or yardage from a local designer. An upholstery project, or a splashy new print pasted on a wall or two, is one of the quickest fixes you’ll find these days to freshen up a tired space. And if you find a pattern you love from one of these independent designers featured here, it’ll be printed here in the U.S. and you’ll be supporting a woman-owned business in the process.
Leah O’Connell: San Francisco, CA
Courtesy of Leah O’Connell
San Francisciso-based Interior designer Leah O’Connell grew up in Atherton, CA, not the English countryside, though you’d be forgiven for making that assumption after you see her new collection of feminine florals printed on oyster linen or matte paper. Once you take a closer look at her design work, you can see the way her hometown infuses it. Her grandmother grew up on the Filoli estate, and would take O’Connell to explore the gardens when she was a young girl. There’s a balance of delicate geometry and showy florals in her patterns, in a color palette that is pale and earthy with shots of blue, pink, and soft green. The look is traditional, but easy-going, unfussy, and still timeless.
Brook Perdigon: Los Angeles, CA
Courtesy of Brook Perdigon
If you’re allergic to floral prints, or searching for a flower-free pattern to balance out a floral obsession (no judgement) Brook Perdigon Textiles may be what you’re looking for. Perdigon starts the design process in her studio with paints, sketches, and cut-paper graphic designs, and finds inspiration for her earthy color palette in both the California landscape and her extensive travels. Evidence of her experience designing carpets for Tai Ping is all over her work, which is strong on linear patterns, diamonds, and re-imagined plaids.
Madison and Grow: Ojai, CA
Courtesy of Madison and Grow
Madison and Grow creator Teresa Grow is an interior designer and color consultant, meaning she’s a behind-the-scenes paint whisperer who has worked with architect Emily Farnham, jewelry designer Kathleen Whitaker, and Flamingo Estate, selecting just the right shades for interior and exterior projects. For her textile line, Madison and Grow, she’s always found inspiration for her hand-drawn botanical prints and patterns during long hikes through the trails in the Los Padres National Forest. Last year, she moved her whole operation to Ojai to be closer to her favorite hiking trails, and a new collection of custom pillows made from her designs was born. Fabric and wallpaper (hand-screened in Los Angeles) is also available by the yard, in colors and patterns inspired by Sonoma and Morro Bay.
Lake August: Los Angeles, CA
Courtesy of Lake August
Lake August founder and designer Alexis Hartman grew up in Silver Lake, CA, not far from where she lives now, and her work is infused with the creative energy of one of L.A.’s most eclectic and vibrant neighborhoods. Hartman takes classic floral and vine prints and puts a cool, contemporary spin on them, hand-painting patterns with local plants like agaves, nasturtiums, and sunflowers, or taking a twee bunny pattern and making it, improbably, chic. Hartman customizes her colors, uses water-based inks on Belgian linen wallpaper from American mills that are powered with renewable energy, and donates a portion of each sale to the Center for Biological Diversity.
Schuyler Samperton: Los Angeles, CA
Samperton’s fabric is new, but it’s designed to look like you found it at the bottom of a stack of bolts at a dusty market in Marrakech. Inspired by vintage kimonos, suzanis, and other treasures she’s picked up during her travels, Samperton takes patterns drawn from global influences and prints them in fresh and vivid color. A Parsons graduate who grew up in Washington, D.C., Samperton brought her East Coast roots with her when she moved west, and her interior design work is an appealing mashup tradition with a relaxed boho attitude.
