NEW YORK, N.Y.—Can colors and patterns have universal, timeless appeal? Artist and designer Alisa Benfey has pondered this question throughout her creative practice and most recently in Slow Color, her new collection for Designtex, the leading designer and manufacturer of applied materials for the built environment.
“I grew up in Japan where celebrating the seasons is embedded in the culture,” says Benfey. “That is a big part of how I design things. It shaped me and my color sensibility. I appreciate nature and want to bring it into the built environment.”
Slow Color offers access to the nuance and irregularity that make a space feel emotionally resonant. “The Slow Color collection responds to larger trends of making things yourself or by hand—from baking bread to mending clothes, making kombucha, tending botanical dye gardens, and knitting,” says Catherine Stowell, VP of Design at Designtex.
Using the techniques of Kusaki-zome, or the Japanese art of seasonal botanical dyeing, Benfey created motifs and hues that are true to nature and inspired by the organic environment of Los Angeles, where she lives and works. After collecting flowers, kitchen scraps, tree leaves, and vegetables from her neighborhood, Benfey used hands-on techniques including Shibori, steam dyeing, and pounding plants directly onto fabric to develop distinctive patterns and hues.
The resulting fabrics capture the ephemeral beauty of plants and the qualities of handmade materials, which Designtex translates into high-performance, print-on-demand wallcoverings and textiles through the Slow Color collection, all printed at Designtex’s factory in Portland, Maine.
“Digital printing is able to reproduce nuanced color gradations and a wide spectrum of hues,” says Karen Gelardi, Principal Designer, Designtex. “This process allows us to honor the beautiful aspects of natural dye work—the hues, the form, the texture, and even the subtleties of the original silk and linen Alisa used in the dye process—and faithfully bring them to the world of high-performance materials.”
The Collection
The Slow Color collection introduces Kusaki, a high-performance upholstery textile; Kusaki Wall, a coordinating large-scale wallcovering; and Sora, a textile resulting from Shibori, a traditional tie-dye technique. Four additional patterns—Kage, Kiku, Tsuki and Kuwa—are available through Designtex Digital Studio for customization across textile, wallcovering and multiuse substrates.
Design Details
Kusaki + Kusaki Wall: Nature’s Kaleidoscope
To create the layered and prismatic motif of Kusaki, artist Alisa Benfey sprinkled botanicals on fabric—including chrysanthemum petals, onion skins, and madder root—bundled it together, and steam dyed it. The pattern was then adapted into a durable, high-performance textile that honors the ephemeral, delicate beauty of nature and a handmade aesthetic.
Benfey scaled up Kusaki’s kaleidoscopic motif to create a wallcovering that brings the beauty of the natural world indoors. From afar, its soft colors create an atmospheric effect, while up close the enlarged pattern reveals greater texture and detail.
Kusaki & Kusaki Wall are offered in four colorways, each reflecting the botanical materials used to create Benfey’s original fabrics such as black beans, onion skins, logwood, marigold, rose, madder root, hibiscus and chrysanthemum.
Sora: Bathed in Botanicals
Sora, the Japanese word for “sky,” results from Shibori, a traditional tie-dye technique. The cloud-like motif comes from scrunching the fabric, then immersing it in dyes made from avocado pits, indigo, oak bark, and other botanicals. The process produces a softly shifting botanical gradient.
Designtex Digital Studio Designs—The Itajime Series
Kage, Kiku, and Tsuki form the three-pattern Itajime series. Itajime refers to a Japanese block-resist dyeing technique that is a variant of Shibori. The process involves carefully folding a textile, placing it between tightly clamped wooden blocks, and then bathing it in dye.
To achieve the layered colors, Benfey repeated the process on a single textile using natural dyes she made from indigo, cutch, marigold, and more—a reference to the blend of hues she recognizes in nature and the “in-betweenness” of her Japanese-American heritage.
- Kage: Translating to “shadow,” Kage began as an experiment in creating a softer geometric pattern. The blurred edges soften its square forms, while the overlapping colors within the large-scale motif invite contemplation and close observation.
- Kiku: The Japanese word for “chrysanthemum,” Kiku is an inventive and artful floral. Benfey used logwood to create the purple dye and marigold for yellow, rotating flower-shaped wooden blocks she found at an art store to create the overlapping pattern.
- Tsuki: The circular pattern of Tsuki, or “moon” in Japanese, evokes the waxing and waning of the celestial body and the gradual passage of time.
Kuwa: A New Leaf
Kuwa’s fig leaf pattern comes from pounding plants directly onto fabric, a natural dyeing technique called Tatakizome. No two leaves are the same, and the technique faithfully preserves their distinct anatomy, color, and beauty.
“The Slow Color collection is a reminder of the power of plants and natural colors. By sharing the process of botanical dyeing, I hope to remind people of the importance of crafts and natural materials,” Benfey says.
Kuwa: Biobased Performance
Producing environmentally responsible products that meet the demands of daily use is one of the greatest design challenges of our time.
Slow Color’s wallcovering designs are available on DNA Non-Vinyl, Designtex’s biobased substrate that meets full WA W-102 criteria for Type II performance in high-traffic contract, healthcare, and hospitality environments while reducing reliance on fossil fuel-derived materials.
To view the Slow Color collection and learn more, visit designtex.com.
