For long periods, too, she may not know whether the ceramics, paper dolls, or chair cutouts that she’s creating will turn into fabric designs—and that lack of a set “design direction” is precisely what results in genuine creative moments. “If you’re trying to see a star in the night sky,” she says, “you see it better if you look off to one side.” “It just, kind of, gathers itself,” she adds, explaining that by “gathering,” she means “continually visually recording and processing” that then turns into a “sort of story.” This is often expressed via a paper cutout (rather than a drawing) or block printing using a linocut technique. Then it’s a case of learning to “trust your first decision”—and the result might well be the recent Palmetto, Fronds, and ZigZag fabrics, which feature stylized leaf shapes, or the Roof Garden range, an homage to the succulent plants that have been able to survive—and thrive— during Cape Town’s current drought. The first Skinny laMinx range of prints produced exclusively for yardage was the Sevilla Rock collection of 2006, inspired by South Africa’s world-renowned ancient Khoisan cave paintings. Of these five designs, one— called Herds and consisting of a repeat-and-reverse pattern made up of an ultra-simple animal silhouette—is still being produced. Available in Black, Deep Red, and a chic Hide Grey, it’s a unique and elegant design. Asked about the Skinny laMinx color palette, Moore says that it “tends towards the dirtier tones, like petrol blues, olive greens, chartreuse, cocoa, and burnt orange, all of which are colors that I associate with a mid- century palette, and all of which work together in interesting ways.” She also confesses to “a deep hatred of purple,” saying that “it makes me feel revolting inside when I think about purple fabrics or products, although I do quite love it on flowers and butterflies,”
Highlights of this colorful display of pillows in the Skinny laMinx store are bright cushion covers in Woodpile in Teal (top, third from left) and Pebble in Brazil (center right), as well as a very graphic monochrome cushion cover in the Tall Protea print in charcoal (center left; skinnylaminx.com).
In short, Moore’s palette—and her overall aesthetic—very much combines a contemporary sensibility with a subtly retro, Mid-Century Modern feel. In terms of the Skinny laMinx brand, that palette has also subtly shifted over the years. “I used to have quite a lot of olive green, which no
longer features,” says Moore, “but I have been pretty consistent with colors like chartreuse and grey. Over the last few years, as Skinny laMinx has been growing more of a market with decorators, we’ve tried to fill gaps in our palette. So when we were choosing colors for our 2016 Brise Soleil collection, we focussed on blues, as we hardly had any in the color mix. We also find neutrals like charcoals and greys are popular, so we often include them as a colorway. When we launched the Roof Garden design, we took the opportunity of making our first three-color print to create some marvelously wild color mixes, which was exciting.”
92
Powered by FlippingBook