Q&A with Prestigious Textiles’ Head Designer Marie Parry

22, Feb 2021 | Fabrics, Interview, New Collection

With over 30 years’ experience in the soft furnishings industry, Prestigious Textiles has earned an outstanding reputation for the originality and quality of its fabrics and wallpapers. Since its foundation by Trevor Helliwell in 1988, the family-run business has become an international brand, while keeping its headquarters close to home in West Yorkshire.

New collections are developed all year round, with the company’s experienced in-house design team constantly exploring fresh directions in concepts and colour to create trend-leading designs, including those from our new PT Contract ranges.

Welcoming 2021 with imaginative colour, pattern and texture, Prestigious’ latest fabrics and wallpapers have been designed to inspire. The creative team behind the new SS21 offering have worked hard to design the exciting new launch.

We caught up with Prestigious Textiles’ Head Designer Marie Parry to ask her a few questions on what its like designing collections the PT Studio.

How long have you been a designer at Prestigious Textiles?

It will be my 9-year PT anniversary this summer! I actually started as an intern in the PT Studio and I have worked my way up to Head Designer..

How many collections do you design each year?

We typically design 25 collections each year and launch our new collections every January, April and September. In the Design Team we usually work a year to 18 months in advance, so the collections we have just released for SS21 feel like a distant memory to us now.

Where do you find new inspiration?

We find inspiration from a variety of sources including trade shows, magazines, fashion and colour forecasts (as we work so far in advance!). We gain inspiration all the time just from our surroundings and are happy to get new ideas from anywhere, whether that’s nature, packaging, ceramics or stationery.

What is the first step in designing a PT collection?

The first step is making a mood board of both design and colour ideas and discussing new ideas with the team. We love to brainstorm and bounce ideas off each other!

What is your favourite part of the design process?

My favourite part is doing the colour work on the collection. We generally create 10 or more colour ideas to be selected and then narrow down the collection from that point for production. It is good to try lots of colour ideas and amazing to see the collection all coming together.

What does a typical day in the PT Design Studio look like?

Every day is different in the design studio which makes it an exciting and dynamic job. A normal day can involve anything from liaising with suppliers and artwork companies (including zoom and team meetings to view artwork) and meeting with directors to select ranges to painting and drawing, editing designs on AVA and Photoshop and designing mood and colour boards.

What is your favourite PT Collection?

My favourite collection from this launch is the children’s collection called ‘Big Adventure’…. we drew all the designs in-house and we loved working on it from start to finish. It is definitely a collection we are all proud of!

Do you have a personal highlight from your time at PT so far?

My highlight from working at PT has been all the travel opportunities and the relationships I have forged with design teams around the world.

What has it been like to see the PT portfolio expand over the years?

It is amazing to see how much the PT collection has changed over the years. We are proud to see how the collection has developed and PT has grown into a high-end editor collection.

We’ve also loved seeing PT branch out into commercial fabrics with PT Contract and have enjoyed designing collections specifically for contract interiors. We have especially loved working on our new venture PT Print Studio, an innovative design service making it possible to interpret our existing print designs, as well as our trend-led textured weaves, embroideries and jacquards into printed fabrics that meet the specific requirements of many contract projects.

What is the PT Design Team most looking forward to in the next year?

We are looking forward to launching more new collections and of course hoping that the pandemic situation improves, and that everyone is safe and healthy.