The death of iconic journalist, Andre Talley, has put the fashion world on the brain, igniting memories on how this world shaped the development of our own decorative fabrics at Wesco Fabrics. Although we sold the company in 2017 there are times when the old memory bank kicks into overdrive! The fabrics and colors of the fashion world were a big influence for us. We cast the design net far and wide and attended many retrospective museum exhibits on famous designers. Marla and I fell in love with the color and styling of the Christian Dior dress shown above from an exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. I hope you won’t mind if I travel back down this memory lane once again.

We had two different fabric lines, one was a more middle market focused group, and the other was definitely up-market. The hunt for exciting fabrics took us to many places including New York City, High Point, Frankfurt, Brussels, Paris, Italy, Sweden, Finland, India, and China. I’m on hunt for electrifying fabrics at Heimtextil, the world’s largest textile tradeshow in Frankfurt, Germany

This video is really from way back in the memory vault!

Check out these past blogs on how world of decorative fabrics:

REMEMBRANCES OF A TEXTILE JOURNEY…Part 1: https://gentryconnects.net/?p=9647

REMEMBRANCES OF A TEXTILE JOURNEY…Part 2: https://gentryconnects.net/?p=9744

The colors of haute couture were a huge inspiration!

Marla and I sourcing at the Mood Textile show in Brussels.

We created a window treatment design fashion show for our Denver showroom inspired by creative dress designs. You can see the design roots of this decorative valance.

Marla and I loved the 2008 Yves Saint Laurent exhibition at San Francisco’s De Young Museum. One of his inspiration boards is shown above.

The 2012 “Yves Saint Laurent: The Retrospective” at the Denver Art Museum was amazing!

We visited his grave at the Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech. Yves Saint Laurent and his partner, Pierre purchased the wonderful gardens in the 1980’s.

I’m working with some design samples from one of my favorite suppliers from India. We worked on colorways, repeats, pattern layouts, and the feel (“hand”) of the final product.

One of our fabrics from that trip.

I was blessed to have a partner just as energized and passionate as myself!

This was one of my favorites made with handwoven silk and appliqued with velvet and metallic yarn.

We saw most of our suppliers in Europe, but some came to show us product in Denver. Pramod always had exciting things to show us!

This is the beginning of our final selection process as well as sample book design layouts.

A few of our favorites from the past. These came from textile companies in India.

Marla is with Pramod and his assistant in Brussels.

Marla is grooving on some hippy fashion at the “Summer of Love” exhibition at the De Young Museum in San Francisco.

Marla would have worn this in a heartbeat!

It was always a thrill to use some of our unusual designer fabrics for displays in our Denver Design District showroom.

This may sound a little crazy but l occasionally have dreams at night propagated with people and elements of my time at Wesco Fabrics. Funny how this happens!

I hope you enjoyed this journey back in time as much as I have.

Photos: Dick Gentry. Not to be used without permission.