Gardens Inspire Frette's 150th Birthday Collections

-- Home Textiles Today, 4/26/2010 12:00:00 AM

New York —

Frettte's fall/winter 2010-2011 couture collection works with designs that reflect motifs from some of the world's most illustrious parks and gardens.

Extraordinaire evokes by Art Deco garden designs. The icy waters of frozen fountains flow across Monceau, on jacquards and the lace-edged and embroidered borders of pillows and terry towels. A second Art Deco motif appears in Luxembourg, with scallop shapes recalling the shell-studded grottoes popular in gardens of the time. Complementing both is Galuchat, a simple shagreen, whose irregular dots resemble dew-drops. Colors statements include ivory, parchment, pale gold, platinum and coffee-tinted mauve.

Paradis, the second couture group pulls ideas from Arabian gardens. Aranjuez features an enlarged Moorish garden design with a single, blown-up motif “placed” on duvet covers, comforters and quilts. Exotic plumes swirl across a second design called Majorelle. The ornate Jewels line plays with the flower-like forms of traditional Persian jewellery. Aranjuez's architectonic theme reappears in macramé lace trims, while Jewels recurs on borders embellished with embroidery. Colors include Persian gold, henna, sky and midnight blue.

The understated Serene range completes the Couture collection, taking the harmonious lines of Japanese gardens as its theme. Designs include Battersea, with kimono-inspired knots on jacquards and lace inserts; Kyoto featuring grass stems and giant peonies, and Chiswick, with the silhouettes of maple leaves. A final pattern, Kew, combines all these motifs in a complex, yet balanced all-over design. Colors include porcelain rose, ginkgo green, and rich marron glacè.

In the 18-month-old Edmond Frette collection, which targets a younger customer by offering mix and match prints, the theme for fall/winter pulls from Rome as well as Italy's Amalfi coast.

In a departure from the main collection, Edmond mixes colorful poplin prints with jacquards. Praiano takes the interlocking geometric motifs from Amalfi floor tiles and reproduces them in edgy colorways like wine and petrol blue.

Colors include turquoise, olive, wine and bottle green.