Colour Blur
Maharam’s new textile collection by fashion designer Sander Lak features a mirage-like blurs of colour (image: Logan Jackson, courtesy of R & Company).
“For me, the first collaboration was about colour as a solid thing,” says fashion designer Sander Lak. “With this second one, it was about, 'OK, how can we take that one step further? How can we bring several colours into one textile without it becoming an image?’”
In 2021, Lak created a trio of wool textiles for US manufacturer Maharam, which all played with bold block colours – a natural commission given that Lak had built his reputation with Sies Marjan, his New York-based fashion label that became known for its work with colour and interest in its impact on the wearer. His first three textiles for Maharam – Gemma, Gemma Multi and Terra – are all weaves that delight in the emotive and sensory impact of colour tones, yet his new fabric, launched this month, progresses the work in a more complex direction.
Nova is a family of polyester textiles executed in shiftingly chromatic tones. Four different coloured weft threads wind through a fifth colour in the warp, giving rise to blushes of coral and lemon, which swiftly cede ground to blue and cerise, as they dive back down into the weave. The effect is mirage-like, with different shades spliced into one another to create complex profusions of ever-changing colour. “We created this to really be like a blur of colour,” Lak explains. The commission developed after Lak was invited by Maharam to create a patterned fabric, but he wished to avoid the regular geometries and clearly defined forms that are typically associated with such textiles. “A lot of times colour is put within imagery of literal things such as flowers or trees, or else in little [abstract] patterns,” he explains. “But we wanted this sensory experience of colour without an image. We wanted something that flows from one to the next naturally.”
Chairs upholstered with fabric from Lak’s Nova collection (image: Logan Jackson, courtesy of R & Company).
Each colour variant within the Nova family is named using terminology taken from the world of physics and subatomic particles – quantum, pulsar, quasar – which hints towards Lak and Maharam’s approach. The colours woven into Lak’s textile seem on the verge of combining into recognisable shapes, but resist taking the final step into figuration – elemental tones that could coalesce into concrete form, but which remain, as of yet, energetic and slippery. It is an effect that Lak and Maharam needed to work hard to achieve. “If we saw certain colours become too dominant in sections,” he says, “we had to replace them so that they wouldn’t overtake it. It’s about calculating the experience of the colour, rather than searching for imagery.”
This interest in the sensory impact of colour is typical of Lak’s work, with the designer having previously experimented with colour combinations drawn from the world of corporate America. During Sies Marjan’s existence between 2016 and 2020, Lak executed garments in the red and yellow of McDonald’s, and the raspberry and orange of Dunkin’ Donuts – vibrantly recognisable colour branding, divorced from its original context. “We would have a dress that was completely in the colours of Dunkin’ Donuts, and when people saw it in the showroom they would suddenly want something sweet,” Lak recalls. “We have these [cultural] associations with colours, and you can play with those.”
In Nova, Lak and Maharam have continued this play with colour and its associations in a new form. The different coloured threads weave around one another, surfacing tones that resist easy categorisation. Instead, they offer momentary hints and connotations. “It’s something that makes you pay attention, and where you're questioning, maybe just for a second, ’Is it an image?’” Lak explains. “And even just that question makes you experience that surface a little bit deeper than anything else around you.”
Words Oli Stratford