Wearbest Sil Tex Mills Revamps Design Team

By Gary Evans -- Home Textiles Today, 3/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

Garfield, N.J. —

Fabric source Wearbest Sil Tex Mills said it has restructured its residential and contract design teams to elevate the design, color and value of its product offerings.

Designers for the company now include Thomas Glabman, Paulina Muzekari, Elizabeth Whelan and Krista Stack.

Wearbest said Glabman and his partner, Muzekari, will create a new direction for the residential side of the business, a line to be called Wearbest Reserve. They are working on three collections that involve new novelty yarns and have an updated color story, said company president Irwin Gasner.

“This focused point of view will definitely separate Wearbest from all other weavers, both domestic and offshore, with an exciting new aesthetic,” said Gasner.

The collections will be previewed to a select group of customers in April, with the balance of the accounts seeing the collection in June, the company said.

Glabman and Muzekari have been designing textiles since 1983 and are known for color-driven collections using multilayer constructions. Their work has been featured on the cover of catalogs ranging from Neiman Marcus to Bloomingdale's and in the collections of Barbara Barry and Lillian August, among others.

Whelan will create a range of woven wall coverings, a first for Wearbest.

Stack will design for Wearbest's contract side.

Wearbest also announced earlier that Irwin Gasner's son, Ari Gasner, has joined the company as brand manager for the Bella-Dura performance fabric line. Ari represents the fourth generation to work at the family-owned mill.