Our CEO will be moderating “A Grand Tour of Textiles: Past, Present and Future,” a panel discussion during Dallas Design Week at the Dallas Market Center, which will take place on Friday, June 22, at 2 p.m. If you are planning to be at Market, we hope you’ll stop by because the panelists will be sharing inspiring experiences they’ve had as they’ve actualized themselves in the textile industry. Seeing the images everyone has sent for the slideshow, we can say the lush photos will illustrate the discussion beautifully.
A Grand Tour of Textiles at Dallas Market Center
We will be exploring the past with Scott Kravet, who travels the world building the company’s massive archives. As the creative director of Kravet, Inc., he oversees all aspects of product development for the brand. In the image above, he’s showing off new textiles during a reveal to designers at Sea Island several years ago. This is when we first learned of his extensive knowledge, which is described by those who know him as a near encyclopedic knowledge of textiles.
Among the questions we’ll be asking him are: what are the most exciting collections he’s ever sourced, what priceless treasures he’s unearthed and whether he’s come across any royalty in his sourcing of historical collections.
Aviva Stanoff will help us understand the thing that she does so brilliantly—living in the present while dynamically cutting a swath into the future. Her Zen-like ability to create enlightened textiles stems in part from her practice of living in-the-moment, which was honed during childhood summers spent around her grandfather’s Buddhist temple in Japan.
Aviva will share with us from where she draws her inspiration for her elemental products, how she’s made the leap from dreaming artisan to successful product designer, how she grew into such an experimental designer, and what advice she would have for designers hoping to follow in her footsteps to create their own licensing deals. Here is what she says about the one thing she feels has shaped her design sensibilities: “Growing up in a multi-cultural environment where art was celebrated daily, always surrounded by beautiful things and nature. Summering in Japan in my grandfather’s Buddhist temple my whole life made me sensitive to the beauty of negative space early on—there is truly something to that life of mindfulness.”
Tamara Matthews-Stephenson will show us a bit of the future given she and Susan Young, her partner in Root Cellar Designs, have digital printing in the mix of their offerings of textiles and wallpapers. As well as being a product designer, Tamara is a New York City-based interior designer and design journalist. She gathers ideas for the historical motifs to which she and Susan bring a fresh point of view during global jaunts to leading design shows.
We will be asking Tamara to share how she came to be so actualized in so many disciplines, what type of impact the duo sees on their textiles given Susan has a fashion background and she has an interiors point of view, what her favorite sources of inspiration are, and the advice she would give to designers hoping to create careers as dynamic as hers.
We can’t wait to hear what everyone has to say about their love of textiles and their plans for moving the industry into new territory in the future.