On the 16th of March the new Kvadrat/Raf Simons collection will be launched with a special exhibition at Galerie Thomas Schulte in Berlin. Taking its inspiration from Modernist furniture, pop and contemporary art, fashion textiles, and music, the third collection by Raf Simons features blended wool textiles and explores the stripe in varying degrees of graphic boldness. For the occasion Kvadrat has been granted exclusive permission by Fondazione Franco Albini to reproduce Albini’s rare 1940’s chair Poltrona Seggiovia and upholster it in the new textiles. In the two years since it first launched, the Kvadrat/Raf Simons collection has set new standards for inventively designed upholstery textiles combining Kvadrat’s high production standards with Raf Simons’ instinctive flair for combining colours. The stripe theme of the 2016 collection is deployed across three new textile designs through the use of textured yarns and subtly fragmented colour. The strikingly modern nautical upholstery of Franco Albini’s suspended Poltrona Seggiovia (Chairlift Chair) of 1940 inspired Simons to explore the stripe in upholstery textile. The resulting designs—Reflex, Pulsar and Fuse—were named in reference to the musical world that is an important source of inspiration to the designer. The intervals of the stripes and the melding of colours in the three designs can be seen as a reflection of rhythm and harmony, and are also drawing inspiration from the use of similar graphic patterns in fashion. While feeling fresh and contemporary, the palette—which includes cobalt blue and fiery red, sharp lemon yellow and powder pink as well as a range of greys and neutral tones —finds echoes in key colours of the earlier collections. As a result, designs from all three Kvadrat/Raf Simons collections can be used alongside one another to produce richly nuanced combinations of colour, texture and pattern within an interior scheme. Each of the three textile designs—Reflex, Pulsar and Fuse—is deployed in a handful of colourways across three sizes of cushions. These cushions allow different designs within the Kvadrat/Raf Simons collections to be used together. In addition, the new textile and cushion collection is complemented by a particularly soft throw made from pure camel wool.
