tribute to Anni Albers

To start this new decade, Patric Hollington decided to pay tribute to a woman, Anni Albers, a famous textile designer and art theorist. Their deep desire was the same: that the textile material be considered as an artistic medium in its own right. After much research and development of fabrics with his friend Stefano, Patric has thus created a capsule collection.

To begin this new decade, Patric Hollington decided to pay tribute to a woman, Anni Albers. This German-born artist was successively celebrated as a textile designer, lithographer, and art theorist. If Patric admired her work and her life, it is because the connections between them are numerous, from the aesthetic sensibility to the very approach of the textile as raw material, because they shared the love of fibre.

Coming from a wealthy family (her grandfather is the founder of the Ullstein publishing house), Anni Albers is immersed in a very cosmopolitan environment. As a teenager, she follows the private teaching of impressionist painter Martin Brandenburg. She then enters the School of Applied Art in Hamburg where she discovers the work of fabric, unfortunately in its ornamental form only. In 1922 Anni joins the Bauhaus School - one of Patric Hollington's favourite sources of inspiration.

Under the eye and influence of her teachers, she begins shaping raw materials. Like Patric, she will later say that it is the fabric material that has chosen her as a medium rather than the opposite.

For Anni Albers textile is a living material. She strives to tame and develop this raw fibre throughout her experiments. With Muche, she learns to master its forms; with Itten, she studies the chromatic circle; with Stotzl, she tames dyeing and drawing on fabric. Another of his mentors is Klee, who will help her shape her artistic spirit.

Anni Albers is sensitive to every possibility of materials. She likes to work with solid fabrics, alternating reliefs and flat area. Just as Patric Hollington diverts furnishing fabrics into costumes and jackets, she makes objects out of them. She is at the same time manual, tactile, exploratory and sensitive and finally manages to imagine a quality industrial production.

For Patric Hollington as for Anni Albers, fibre must be useful, beautiful and accessible. They see their industry as a craft where the colours of the prints are both functional and aesthetic. Both inspired by their travels abroad and by the arts, their desires are common: they aim at the reconsideration of the textile material as an artistic medium in its own right.

This summer, hollington develops beautiful linen and cotton jacquards in tribute to Anni Albers. After extensive research and development of fabrics with his friend Stefano, Patric created a capsule collection inspired by the work of the designer. Added to this is a large selection of textured linen fabrics and summer cottons borrowing the colours of the Bauhaus movement: a new range of light and washable fabrics, very easy to maintain for the summer!