What they do Cathy Villiers, textile designer: Although not long out of college, Cathy Villiers is already expanding her company to cope with demand for her felted fabrics
Interior designers talk a lot about giving texture to a room and, given that the favoured coverings for walls is still layers of muted paint, the job of adding colour and interest tends to fall to the textiles. In January at Showcase, the annual opportunity for designers to display their wares to the world's trade buyers, several Irish textile designers showed inventive use of colour and materials and Belfast-based Cathy Villiers's work stood out because of its quirkyness and sense of fun.
Only three years out of the College of Art in Edinburgh, she now sells her collection of, throws, cushions and home accessories to London stores including Liberty as well as several Irish outlets from the Kilkenny shop in Dublin to smaller craft outlets around the country. She works with felted lambswool, in bright colours, and her cushions are typically finished with contrasting coloured tufts or shaggy fringes of wool.
At the directional furniture fair in Milan last month colourful accessories were everywhere as were colourful textured upholstery fabrics, so Villiers, whose biggest inspiration is colour, is clearly moving in the right direction.
In college Villiers studied ceramics "for no reason really other than I was always interested in making 3-D things and when you start college you don't really know what you want." But she was always experimenting with textiles, as a stoney broke student she bought old woollen jumpers and blankets in charity shops, boiled them to create a thick felted effect and then made both home and fashion accessories, such as gloves and hats.
Selling into such a prestigious store as Liberty - the shops' buyers are renowned for being able to spot a trend - is a huge vote of confidence for a young designer but it does add pressure, particularly in terms of increased production, so Villiers now has extra help in her studio on the Lisburn Road.
She produces three collections a year and next week will be showing her new collection at the Pulse trade show in London. There are stripes and spots and a more subtle use of colour than previously. "I'm working with pastels, such as a more delicate pink," she says, adding that after London she hopes to show her collections in Paris. "For textiles Paris is the big marketplace," she says, "it's where the biggest buyers go and the big design houses show." Before that she is considering opening a shop in her home, a gate lodge on the Lisburn Road. "The Lisburn Road is really becoming a designer retail street," she says naming smart shops such as Beaufort Interiors, Honey, Hello Kitty and Max Mara.
It's not just her cushions that are quirky, "I hope to sell my own work but because I live beside a park maybe a range of designer dog accessories too."
Cathy Villiers, The Gate Lodge, Lisburn Road, Belfast. Tel: 04890.668373
[ www.cathyvilliersdesign.comOpens in new window ]
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