bloom

Bloom is a luscious magazine published out of Holland.  More than that, it’s a changemaker that predicts design trends beginning with its “horti-cultural view”.  That may sound quirky but Bloom is considered a bible among fashion insiders, starting with thread designers.     Thread designers read it to help project new colours and textures for the future.  Their output of thread influences fabric designers who, in turn, catalyze new fashion trends.  One season after the release of Bloom, the vision of the magazine turns up on the walkways of the world’s most illustrious fashion shows.

Bloom’s feature on the British wallpaper designer, Marthe Armitage, describes how her intense, lushly coloured designs were an attempt to bring the plant life of the outdoors inside, to clamber up the walls of her friends.  She’s been making her lino-print papers for more than fifty years and only works with two or three colours at a time: like this one, “bushes” (1992) in which she layers turquoise with aqua blues and steely greys.

I admired the subtlety of her designs, but was reluctant to put wallpaper up on our walls.  Instead, I asked a painter to create three stencils of florals and layer various colours of blue over the wall in our Canadiana room. At a quick glance, the wall looks intensely blue – eventually, though, you can begin to make out the leaves and petals painted there.

My friend, Olivier Beriot, is an amazing costume designer based in Paris and he’s the one who gave me several issues of Bloom.  He designed the costumes for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, that masterful film by Julian Schnabel that shifts between the unthinkable and sublime fantasy.  Whenever I gaze at the mesmerizing plants and foliage in Bloom, I think of the blooming of Olivier’s creations, and the promise of thread design.