"SMW Home's Victoria Botanical - Inspiration . . . "

Greetings,

People often ask where I find my inspirations.  Frankly, one is always influenced by any number of images, locations, and moments - and personally, I frequently find film costumes fire my imagination.  So let's play a little inspiration game . . . we're going to start at the end - and work backwards.  

So first, the final design.   

SMW Home's

Victoria Botanical - in Marigold.

We debuted SMW Home's Victoria Botanical (in Marigold) at the Dallas Showcase House this last summer - using almost 50 yards to tent a small hallway outside the main floor powder room.  Most everyone commented on the saturated colours in the palette and the dramatic pattern.  

The inspiration for the pattern was an antique Edwardian textile that I purchased at a show over a year ago - and one of my favourite aspects of the design was the more open pattern on the ground - lots of vines and tons of flowers and buds.  But, we wanted to really punch up the colours . . . 

So I went back to one of my favourite films . . . "The Young Victoria" staring Emily Blunt. 

This is a close-up of Emily's costume for the Coronation Ball sequence when she dances with Prince Albert.  It is amazingly romantic and the colours simply leap off the screen. But, getting the colour for the textile perfect was a bit of a task.  We must have gone back and forth with colour samples for almost a month.  Getting the perfect marigold background.  Getting the perfect shade of red.  Finding the perfect purple and blue to make the pattern vibrant and exciting.

And . . . vibrant and exciting it IS!  "Victoria" was a huge hit in Dallas - and was the perfect partner for our SMW Home Tartan Wallpapers from England. And now we have a huge statement of Victoria here in the shop in San Francisco.  
 

SMW Home in San Francisco

Stay tuned - we have new colourways launching very soon!

Cheers,
Scot