Altuzarra Teams With Kravet Couture
New York luxury designer Joseph Altuzarra has teamed with home furnishings brand Kravet Couture on a collection of exclusive home textiles and wall coverings.
Noting that interiors have always been an important source of inspiration, Altuzarra told WWD that two years ago, the partnership started very organically.
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“As the brand has grown and expanded, we’ve really extended our language outside of our core products. First, obviously into things like bags and shoes and accessories but as we started thinking bigger and more about what Altuzarra as a lifestyle looks like, home was something that I was really interested in,” he said. “It’s something that I’m passionate about personally.”
Simultaneously, and coincidentally, Altuzarra had purchased a new home while the collection was being developed. He said it was nice to be able to view the designs through not only his creative fashion designer standpoint, but also through a personal lens.
“Thinking, ‘Would I use this? Where would I use this?'” he recalled. “Hopefully it responds more with what a customer would want,” noting that a few initial ideas he loved on paper — as an artwork or colorway — but they didn’t necessarily translate into something he would desire within his own home as an allover wallpaper.
The final result includes nine wallpaper and fabric styles, each with an array of colorway offerings, inspired by Altuzarra’s library of artworks, crafted in collaboration with Kravet Couture’s craftsmanship and expertise as a fifth-generation family trade business established in 1918. The line features jewel-toned and earthy prints, weaves and wall coverings, reimagined from Altuzarra’s fashions (inspired by Greek mythology and nature) for the home.
“What was so exciting was that the team at Kravet really responded to the idea of bringing our print archive and our best-known artworks to life through their expertise and knowledge and craftsmanship. That was something that was also exciting to me, because I didn’t necessarily want to reprint things as they had existed in garments,” Altuzarra said, noting he appreciated Kravet design team’s knowledge about jacquards, weaves and new ways of creating texture.
“[Kravet] has an incredible wealth of knowledge about home, textile and wall coverings in general. Every time that we’ve done something outside of our scope, it’s always been really important for us to work with people who are really passionate, but also who are really leaders within their industry,” Altuzarra said.
Highlights of the collection include the Moth Weave woven jacquard fabric; the Kasos fabric and the Izumo velvet fabric and woven fine sisal wallpaper featuring small gold flecks (both inspired by Altuzarra’s signature silk spun shibori prints), and the Caspia linen satin fabric and sisal wallpaper, derived from one of Altuzarra’s signature prints, to name a few.
In addition, the collection’s Akasania style, featuring a pattern inspired by the Rorschach inkblot print, was rendered using the same Italian mill’s Suri alpaca fibers that Altuzarra originally worked with for his fall 2023 collection’s lofty coat (which served as inspiration for the home style).
“Interestingly, some of the mills that we ended up working with for the [collaboration’s] fabrics, we ended up loving so much that we ended up working with them [at Altuzarra],” he added.
The Kravet Couture x Altuzarra styles are sold by the yard with prices to the trade, available in Kravet showrooms nationwide.
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