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Selvedge Magazine: The fabric of your life: texile in Fashion, Fine Art, Interiors, Travel and Shopping.

CODE RED: Cochineal’s enduring legacyWe are all familiar with cochineal, whether ingested in the form of food dye in a r...
08/01/2026

CODE RED: Cochineal’s enduring legacy

We are all familiar with cochineal, whether ingested in the form of food dye in a red sweet treat or applied to our bodies to brighten lips or cheeks in the form of crimson lipstick or pink blush. Textile enthusiasts,
however, recognised it as a natural dye. For designer Benedicte Lux of Supernaturae, it is one of her favourite dyes, providing a jewel-toned pink for her silk dresses.

However, the long and complex history of cochineal is relatively unknown...

In CODE RED, featured in Selvedge Issue 128, Liz Kueneke investigates cochineal — the tiny insect behind history’s most powerful reds — tracing its journey from Indigenous cultivation and spiritual practice in Mesoamerica to colonial exploitation, global trade and artistic exchange.

Revered for its brilliance, permanence and versatility, cochineal once rivalled silver in value, colouring everything from sacred ritual and luxury textiles to military uniforms and masterpieces of European art.

Today, its legacy endures through Indigenous knowledge, contemporary artists and textile practitioners who use cochineal to explore identity, memory and resistance, revealing a pigment that is not only colour, but history, politics and cultural survival woven into red.

Read on in our current issue, 'Routes', available now at selvedge.org.

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kueneke

Image Credits:

1. Tania Candiani, Nocheztli, from the series Crómatica (Chromatic), 2015.
2. Supernaturae Serafina dress dyed with cochineal.
3. Porifio Gutierrez, Transmigration, from the Diaspora series. Over dyed wool canvas and needle felting.
4. Tania Candiani, detail of Molienda (Grinding), from the series Crómatica (Chromatic), 2015.
5. Raphael, Portrait of a Cardinal, 1510. Oil on wood, 79 x 61 cm.
6. John Hoppner, painting of a British Officer, probably of 11th (North Devonshire) Regiment of Foot, ca. 1800. Oil on canvas.
7. Porfirio Gutierrez, The Tree of Life installation, 2025.
8. Sarah Roselena, Eight Pointed Star, 2023. Hand-dyed cochineal wool and cotton, 84 x 104 cm.

We’re delighted to announce that applications for London Textile Month 2026 are now open. In 2025, our inaugural celebra...
06/01/2026

We’re delighted to announce that applications for London Textile Month 2026 are now open.

In 2025, our inaugural celebration brought together over 90 events, more than 50 host partners, and welcomed over 1,700 attendees to explore the very best in textile craft, culture, and creativity. From intimate workshops and studio visits to exhibitions, gallery shows, and hands-on experiences, the city came alive with threads, fibres, and stories.

London Textile Month is your opportunity to be part of this vibrant tapestry. Whether you run a gallery, studio, workshop, or shop, your event can become a destination for makers, collectors, and curious visitors alike. The month-long celebration offers a chance to share your creativity, showcase your craft, and connect with a community that celebrates textiles in all their forms.

All applicants select one of our Host packages—Cotton, Linen, or Silk—which provide support and visibility through Selvedge magazine, our website, newsletters, and social media channels. From on-the-day assistance to professional documentation and extended storytelling, the packages help your event reach a wider audience while keeping the focus firmly on your craft.

We invite all textile-focused events to apply. To find out more, tap on our link in bio or head to selvedge.org > Events > London Textile Month

We look forward to hearing from you and bringing London Textile Month to life once again.

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A BREATH OF FRESH AIR: Althea McNish, 1924 – 2020Althea McNish was regarded as the first designer of African Caribbean h...
04/01/2026

A BREATH OF FRESH AIR: Althea McNish, 1924 – 2020

Althea McNish was regarded as the first designer of African Caribbean heritage to achieve international prominence in textiles. Her vibrant designs for fashion, interiors, and public spaces revitalised the British fashion and textiles industry as it emerged from postwar austerity.

She propelled Britain to the forefront of textile innovation with her bold use of colour, form, and technique. Her vivid colours and dynamic brushwork defined modernism in textiles during this era and are evident in some of the most iconic 20th-century designs...

Read more about Althea McNish — from her vibrant designs for Liberty to her bold approach to colour and experimentation, and her work across fashion, interiors and public spaces — in an edited extract by Christine Checinska, Selvedge Issue 128, Routes.

Head to selvedge.org or tap on our link in bio to purchase your copy.

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Credits:
Article words:

Images:
1/ Althea McNish, “Painted Desert,” textile design for Hull Traders, 1961. Screen-printed cotton.
2/ Althea McNish in her studio, ca. 1970. Bill Patterson / N15 Archive
3/ Althea McNish, “Van Gogh,” textile design, 1959. Screen-printed cotton.
4/ Althea McNish, “Golden Harvest,” textile design, 1959. Screen-printed cotton.
5/ Althea McNish, “Rubra” for Hull Traders, 1961. Screen-printed cotton.
6/ Althea McNish, “Tepeaca,” textile design for Liberty of London, 1962. Screen-printed cotton.

LOOK AND LEARN: Rooted in the legacies of nomadic carpets, Danny Mehra’s collection of rugs is a journey inward, reveali...
03/01/2026

LOOK AND LEARN: Rooted in the legacies of nomadic carpets, Danny Mehra’s collection of rugs is a journey inward, revealing how a collector learns to see.

“If you ask me my favourite, the honest answer is – it keeps changing,” says Danny Mehra, easing into a question he gets often. “What I may tell you this minute may change in the next 30.” For now, his answer is a fragmented Tulu (or “hairy”) carpet, mounted on undyed, ivory- felted cloth. Hung in his Bangalore study, it glows in the diffused evening light. A few nights earlier, after a houseful of guests wandered through his rooms, four carpets had already drawn offers. One of
them – this very Tulu – is likely headed to Mumbai. Mehra admits, almost tenderly, “It’s a pang of separation.”...

From misfits and fragments to risks taken and rules undone, Danny Mehra’s carpets reveal a collector led by instinct, emotion, and a lifelong curiosity.

In a “conversation over chai, a house full of carpets, and the slow unfolding of a life lived with objects,” this feature by Niyati Hirani is a meditation on what it means to really see.

Read more in Selvedge Issue 128, Routes. Available now at selvedge.org.

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Danny Mehra
Words: Niyati Hirani
Photos: .india/. Ritesh Uttamchandani

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MOTHER AFRICA: Three brands rooted in African heritageWhat does it mean to design with place at the centre?For Louise So...
02/01/2026

MOTHER AFRICA: Three brands rooted in African heritage

What does it mean to design with place at the centre?

For Louise Sommerlatte (), Iona McCreath () and Anjali Borkhataria (), African identity is not defined by skin colour or ancestry alone, but by lived experience — by where they were raised, the landscapes that shaped them, and the communities they remain accountable to. Each has chosen to build a fashion practice in East Africa, grounding contemporary design in local knowledge, heritage and craft.

From Hamaji’s nomadic, upcycled textiles in coastal Kenya, to KikoRomeo and Kikoti’s research-driven material innovation in Nairobi, and EK-AN-TIK’s storytelling silhouettes emerging from Dar es Salaam, their work challenges dominant Western models of fashion production and consumption. Fabric becomes a language, design a form of memory, cut a carrier of meaning.

Revisiting wax prints, wraps, embroidery and familiar silhouettes is never a neutral act. It is a conversation with history that acknowledges colonial influence while reclaiming authorship and context. Through slow fashion, natural fibres and hand processes — spinning, beading, printing, painting — these designers elevate the labour and skill of women artisans, forming creative sisterhoods that sit at the heart of each brand.

This is African fashion as lived reality: elegant, political, sustainable and quietly radical. Made in Africa, for everywhere.

Read more in an article by Anne Grosfilley for Selvedge Issue 128, Routes. Visit selvedge.org to purchase your copy.

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Image Credits:
1&2: EK-AN-TIK Spring/Summer 2024 collection. Photos: Ed Suter
3&4: Kiko Romeo Spring/Summer 2024. Photos: Matthew Matete
5&6: Hamaji Spring/Summer 2025-26. Photos: JDee Allin

A Greeting for the New YearAuld Lang SyneRobert Burns (1759 –1796)Should auld acquaintance be forgot,And never brought t...
31/12/2025

A Greeting for the New Year

Auld Lang Syne

Robert Burns (1759 –1796)

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne!

Chorus:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
We’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint stowp!
And surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

Chorus

We twa hae run about the braes,
And pou’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
Sin’ auld lang syne.

Chorus

We twa hae paidl’d in the burn,
Frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin’ auld lang syne.

Chorus

And there’s a hand, my trusty fere!
And gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak a right gude-willie waught,
For auld lang syne.

Chorus

Wishing all of our readers the very best for a Happy New Year. As 2026 begins, we thank you for being part of our community, and we look forward to another year of shared stories, thoughtful making and enduring craft.

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#2026
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Image Credits:

1. Carnival Night, Memorial Park, Coventry (Detail), Walter Ashworth (1883–1952), Herbert Art Gallery & Museum.
2. Fireworks, J. S. Holmes (active 1850–1867), Hartlepool Museums and Heritage Service

2025, Wrapped: some of the moments, makers and materials that resonated most with our readers this year.As the year draw...
31/12/2025

2025, Wrapped: some of the moments, makers and materials that resonated most with our readers this year.

As the year draws to a close, we’re looking back at the social media stories you loved most in 2025 — posts that invited closer looking and celebrated textiles shaped by hand, memory and care.

From the enduring traditions of Finnish folk weaving to contemporary design revealed during London Textile Month, these ten posts reflect a shared fascination with heritage, sustainability and thoughtful making.

Highlights included the Selvedge Indian Designer Showroom at Asia House, featuring Ka-Sha, slower practices coming to the fore through Paul Bailie’s hypnotic bargello embroidery, Megan Ivy Griffiths’ stitched folklore figures, and Miesje Chafer’s joyful, colour-filled approach to making.

Reuse and repair took centre stage with Hannah Refaat’s boro and sashiko work, while questions of ancestry and belonging surfaced in Tia Keobounpheng’s geometric thread-based practice.

We also looked back to the Index of American Design and travelled to rural Portugal with Nuno Henriques of Toino Abel, where basketmaking continues through care, community and tradition.

As we welcome a new year, we wish all our readers a very happy New Year. Thank you for reading and sharing — we can’t wait to share more stories with you in the year ahead.

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Image Credits:
1. Raanupirtti Oy / Sameli Saanio
2. (see below)
3.
4.
5.
6. , , - Photo: Milo Hutchings
7. (see below)
8.
9. Coverlet, drawn by Howard Iams, 1937
10. - Nuno Henriques / Dinis Santos, Annie Waterman

Ka Sha Photoshoot:
Creative Direction & Styling: Vinita Makhija
Photos: Hunar Daga .daga
Model: Dhyany at Feat Models .vyas
Hair & make-up: Chriselle Baptista
Earrings: .in
Shoes:

During the golden age of American whaling, each whaleship carried upwards of 10,000 feet of rope. When extrapolated to t...
30/12/2025

During the golden age of American whaling, each whaleship carried upwards of 10,000 feet of rope. When extrapolated to the size of the whaling fleet
in 1846, the result is a prodigious tangle of rope. And that doesn’t account for the rope needed for the whaleship’s standing or running rigging. The demand for working rope, particularly from the maritime industry during the Age of Sail and the Industrial Revolution, was at an all time high.

By 1810 there were 173 ropewalks of various lengths in operation throughout the United States to satisfy this need. Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow captured some of the mesmerising drone of a ropewalk’s relentless spinning machinery in the first two stanzas of his 1858 poem, “The Ropewalk”:

In that building, long and low,
With its windows all a-row,
Like the port-holes of a hulk,
Human spiders spin and spin,
Backward down their threads so thin
Dropping, each a hempen bulk.

At the end, an open door;
Squares of sunshine on the floor
Light the long and dusky lane;
And the whirring of a wheel,
Dull and drowsy, makes me feel
All its spokes are in my brain

(An edited excerpt from Rope: How a Bundle of Twisted
Fibres Became the Backbone of Civilisation, by Tim Queeney.)

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Image Credits:
Guthrie James, The Ropewalk, British School, 19th century.

Last chance to see:PAUL POIRET: Fashion is a Feast, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, until 11 January 2026.Hailed as th...
29/12/2025

Last chance to see:

PAUL POIRET: Fashion is a Feast, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, until 11 January 2026.

Hailed as the designer who freed women from corsets, Paul Poiret (1879-1944) designed his garments to be worn with comfort and style. His home was in Paris, where his father was a draper – the ideal profession for raising a future couturier, who used draping to create his imaginative garments.

At Paul Poiret: Fashion is a Feast, visitors see moving images of Poiret drafting garments on his model and looking at the viewer, bridging his era and ours. “Whatever the field, I put my temperament and sensitivity into all I did,” Poiret wrote in his 1930 memoir, En Habillant l’époque (On Dressing This Age). The exhibit highlights Poiret’s life and work. Creative and versatile, he drew, painted, designed fabrics, created perfumes, befriended artists, and collected modern art. The 550 items on display reveal Poiret’s wide
influence on French style, an influence still felt today...

Read more about the show in an article by René Shoemaker, Selvedge Issue 128, Routes.

And for those in Paris in the new year, this is an exhibition well worth a visit.

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Image Credits:

1/ George Barbier, cover of Les Modes magazine, April 1912. © Les Arts Décoratifs,
2/ Paul Poiret, evening coat, 1907-10.
3/ Paul Poiret “Joséphine” evening gown, 1907-10.
4/ Paul Poiret “Mosaïque” evening gown, 1907-10.
5/ Paul Poiret evening gown, 1907-10.

SAILORS’ DELIGHT: Nautical woolwork"At sea, sailors have always endured long stretches of idle time. To fill these hours...
28/12/2025

SAILORS’ DELIGHT: Nautical woolwork

"At sea, sailors have always endured long stretches of idle time. To fill these hours, it became customary for
them to make all manner of things, perhaps for personal use on board ship, but more often to take home as keepsakes for loved ones. During the early 19th century, scrimshaw – images and stories etched onto the teeth or jawbones of s***m whales – was the most prevalent form of this maritime folk art. But by the mid-1800s, a new form emerged: sailors’ woolwork"...

In our latest issue, Graham Walpole explores the rise of sailor-made “Woolies” embroidery in the mid-19th century, a distinctive form of maritime folk art that emerged as the whaling industry declined.

Crafted by sailors using simple, readily available materials, these woolwork pictures — often detailed portraits of ships — were designed and stitched from memory rather than patterns. Rich in technical accuracy and personal storytelling, Woolies capture a moment of profound change at sea, reflecting shifts in naval power, ship design, and global travel during a rapidly evolving maritime age.

Find out more in Issue 128, Routes. Available now at selvedge.org.

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Credits:

Words: Graham Walpole

Images:
1. Detail of framed silk Woolie of a Royal Navy ship. Displayed in a Chinese Chippendale carved and lacquered frame.
2. Framed woolwork of a steam-assisted third-rate ship of the line; Full Steam Ahead, 1860.
3. Framed woolwork of HMS Nile, England, circa 1860.

All images courtesy of

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What do Phyllis Barron & Dorothy Larcher, Peggy Angus, Arne Jacobsen, Duncan Grant and Frank Lloyd Wright all have in co...
27/12/2025

What do Phyllis Barron & Dorothy Larcher, Peggy Angus, Arne Jacobsen, Duncan Grant and Frank Lloyd Wright all have in common?

They’re all featured in the Selvedge Wall Calendar 2026.

This time of year often brings a familiar urge to get organised — to clear space, take stock, and think about how we want the year ahead to feel. Small rituals begin to matter more: what we hang on our walls, what we return to each morning, what quietly shapes our days. The Selvedge 2026 calendar was created with this in mind.

Bringing together twelve well known textile patterns spanning modernism, folk tradition, abstraction and nature, and printed on generous matt card, it's designed to be lived with, month by month. A year guided by pattern, colour and craft.

Read more about the calendar and featured designers in the Selvedge Shop. Head to selvedge.org > Shop > Selvedge Goods.

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Image Credits:

1. “Hyacinter” (Hyacinths), 1948, designed by Arne Jacobsen, screenprint.
2. “Feather Design,” c.1930, designed by Phyllis Barron (1890–1964) and Dorothy Larcher (1884–1952).
3. From the “Taliesin Line” of fabrics and wallpapers designed in 1955. Created by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959).
4. “Ararat,” 1937, designed by Ashley Havinden (1903–1973).
5. “Jagafalke” (Hunting Falcon), 1913, designed by Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956) and printed by the Wiener Werkstätte (designers’ collective).
6. “Pink Grapes,” 1932, designed by Duncan Grant (1885–1978), for Allan Walton Textiles.
7. “Harlekin” (Harlequin), 1949, designed by Helga Foght (1902–1974).
8. “Black Goose,” 1938, designed by E. Q. Nicholson (1908–1992).
9. “Finnish Hop,” 1994, designed by Virginia Lee Demetrios (née Burton).
10. The cover of the Selvedge Calendar, featuring “La Foret” (The Forest), c. 1920, designed by Raoul Duffy (1877–1953), which also appears on the month of October.

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The Selvedge Boxing Day Crossword is now available on Selvedge Stories.Today, while the house is quieter and time feels ...
26/12/2025

The Selvedge Boxing Day Crossword is now available on Selvedge Stories.

Today, while the house is quieter and time feels momentarily unspooled, why not try unravelling Polly's crossword?

Created for the stretch between Christmas and the New Year, it’s a puzzle to return to between cups of tea, winter walks, and long afternoons indoors. Whether tackled in one sitting or dipped into over several days, it offers the simple pleasure of words, woven with the spirit of textiles.

Head to selvedge.org > Stories to find the grid and full list of clues, and check back on Selvedge Stories on New Year’s Day, when the answers will be revealed.

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At the heart of the Selvedge story is a cerebral and sensual addiction to cloth and with that an appreciation of the beautifully made and carefully considered. Exploring and understanding the history, future, politics and aesthetics of textiles with its own distinct voice. Much more than a magazine; a valuable source of inspiration for designers and devotees alike. We acknowledge the significance of textiles as a part of everyone’s story. We are surrounded by cloth from the cradle to the grave and by exploring our universal emotional connection to fibre we share the stories and values that mean the most to us. Join us and make our stories part of your story.www.selvedge.org