Liberty's fabric business proves that pattern and color are back

0:03This is Business of Home. I'm your host, Dennis Scully. Every week I'll be speaking with leaders and innovators from all corners of the home industry. My guest this week is Genevieve Bennett, the head of design at Liberty Interiors. Founded in London in the mid-19th century, Liberty has always been known for its embrace of bold and daring style. Oscar Wilde called it the chosen resort of the artistic shopper, a reputation that stuck for nearly 200 years. Today, Liberty is one of the most visited stores in London. In recent years, the brand has been known more for fashion than home, but Genevieve was hired to revitalize the interior's fabric business, and she's been on a tear, overseeing new collections that tapped the company's incredible archive while looking ahead to the future.

0:57I spoke with Genevieve about how Liberty approaches design for different regions around the world, why they're being cautious about performance fabrics, and the good news that color and pattern are officially back.

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2:40Genevieve Bennett:And now, on with the show. Liberty is a brand that so many people love and recognize, But I think many don't know the full history and who the gentleman behind Liberty was in the very beginning. And as you reminded me recently, how connected he was to the world of design from the very beginning. Yeah, so Arthur Lazenby Liberty opened his store 150 years ago, 151 years ago, actually this year. And he was the son of a draper from Berkshire. and he had previously worked in a great cloak and shawl emporium on Regent Street. So he was in this kind of world already. And legend has it that he asked for a pay rise from his employer, didn't get the pay rise.

3:28Genevieve Bennett:So he borrowed£2 ,000 off his father-in-law. Stormed out the door. Stormed out the door with a member of his team and went around the corner and opened his own store. So that was a kind of amazing, amazing start to his business. And I think right from the get-go he was known for having this kind of very artistic approach he was actually had in the early days an in-house interior design team where you could come to liberty and commission an interior you know anything from a full scheme to fireplaces wood paneling stained glass like it was really seen as a kind of real leader in the field of interior design and and then he started to kind of mix that with amazing objects that he traded and imported from his travels to Japan, India and Persia around 1880 to 1910.

4:24Genevieve Bennett:So it was seen as this really kind of artistic and innovative interior space. And that's why there are so many chimneys in Liberty, because he built these kind of room sets around the chimney fireplaces to create this amazing kind of vision for his interior design schemes. Interesting. So people would be able to come and see various room schemes throughout the store. And that was part of what he was offering as a service. Absolutely. And some of the very first fabrics in the archive were actually furnishing fabrics. They kind of predate a lot of the decorative printed fashion fabrics even. The fashion fabrics at the time would have been plain silks, which were created, made into these beautiful dresses, which you could also commission at liberty.

5:07Genevieve Bennett:So no, it was very much a kind of whole view of lifestyle that you could come and experience at Liberty. And also amazing carpet rooms. So the carpet rooms were incredibly important. And that's why we have these amazing clamps around the edge of the atrium within the store, because all of these amazing rugs would have been hung from the balconies within the space. And so I'm curious about the early development of the textiles and all of that and sort of when that first became part of what the business was known for. Sure. So as part of his vision, he would import plain cottons from Japan and India, and then he would have them block printed in the UK.

5:51Genevieve Bennett:So some of those early fabrics in the archive are actually furnishing fabrics, and they would have been printed in the UK using traditional methods. and the fashion fabrics that evolved around the same time would have been plain silks, these amazing soft fabrics. And he was known for this very pioneering style of dress, which was a lot less formal. It was more artistic. And Arthur Liberty was also mixing with the great playwrights and painters and poets of the time, such as Oscar Wilde, Rossetti, Lord Leighton. And they had this whole world of kind of relaxed, decorative dressing with these soft silks and amazing furnishing fabrics and furniture.

6:33And what do we know about Arthur Liberty's early training or early life and how he developed this level of taste and his eye? I'm so curious.

6:45Genevieve Bennett:Well, he was the son of a draper. So he had it in his DNA, I guess. He cut his teeth working in a cloak and shawl emporium on Regent Street. So he had that kind of knowledge and obviously saw through that how he could do things differently. I think, you know, we're talking 1875. So it was the kind of later part of the Victorian era where people were kind of moving away from those traditional heavy shawls and very traditional kind of looks. And he offered something very, very new and artistic. So I think he had a traditional training, but then had the means to travel and experience the world as well and kind of brought these together in this really interesting way.

7:29Well, so I want to talk more about the history and sort of the evolution, but I don't want to get too far into the conversation without telling people just a little bit of who you are and how you came to be at Liberty and really your extensive background as well.

7:44Genevieve Bennett:Yes. So I trained as a textile designer. I graduated from the Glasgow School of Art and then went to the Royal College of Art where I finished my master's 26 years ago. So I've been working in the industry since then. I've had a really lovely mix of experiences working mostly in homeware. So working for brands like Wedgwood, who have an amazing historical archive, and working on their textile collections for the Asian market in Japan, working to bring together the pattern styles across Fine Bone China collections and through textiles. I've also worked with brands such as Heels and Habitat back in the day and kind of have a really broad experience across all ranges of homeware from wallpapers, furnishing fabrics, finished home accessories, rugs, real kind of wide scope.

8:41Genevieve Bennett:And then in 2012, I set up my own company and I've been working producing larger scale pieces for architects and interior designers using wool, silk, leather, metal, and glass. So kind of one-off bespoke items. And I was invited, I've always done a lot of consultancy alongside all my other activities. And I was invited by Liberty to come and explore how they might relaunch their furnishing fabrics business in 2019. Because it had been wound down over a period of years just prior to that. So it was really about making recommendations about how they could explore new base cloths, new pattern scales, how collections might be structured.

9:25Genevieve Bennett:really looking at the strategy of how the collection could be kind of relaunched. And then I was lucky enough to be asked to be head of design in 2020 for interiors and homes. So I then took the job as head of design, kind of did my career backwards, so was always self-employed and then had the joy of working with this amazing brand, amazing team since 2020. So you've been brought in to relaunch the brand in many ways, it sounds like. And tell me why or how it had been wound down, because it played such a huge role throughout history. Yeah, well, just to be clear, it was just the furnishing fabrics part of the business.

10:09Genevieve Bennett:So there is a huge, successful, amazing, which we'll talk about, the fashion fabrics part of the business. I think we had a new CEO, new managing director, new design director that came on board a few years before that. And I think there was this sense of this has huge potential. It had always existed, but I think in a way the fashion business took over and interiors just got, for one reason or another, got a little bit left behind. And so my design director, Marianne Dunkley, decided to bring someone in who had experience in furnishing fabrics specifically because the business before that had been focused very much on fashion fabric designers doing the interior collection.

10:55Genevieve Bennett:So that was a shift. And now we have built a team of four designers on interiors, but we have another 35 designers on fashion fabric. So we are very small, but very mighty within this incredible team. Well, and that's what I'm so curious to learn about is how you went about thinking about how to relaunch all of this and how to lean into, I assume, so much of the – so as you said, people are so familiar with the fashion side of the business. Many people, whenever they would come to London, would want to be sure to buy a new Liberty tie or a new scarf. Liberty always seemed to play a huge role in what was happening in the world of fashion.

11:45How did you think about where to start to fire up the engines again of the design side?

11:52Genevieve Bennett:It's a really great question. I think one of the really interesting things about Liberty, which I hadn't quite realized when I started, is that where some brands are known for their florals or their geometrics or their botanicals, Liberty, probably due to its longevity of being around for 150 years, really do genuinely have every different pattern style under the sun. You know, we have the Art Nouveau classics, we have the small florals, we have abstracts, geometrics, arts and crafts, paisley. And when you speak to people, often people have a very different idea in their head about what Liberty is based on that fact.

12:28Genevieve Bennett:So it can be a huge opportunity, but it can also, when you come to create furnishing fabric and homeware collections, can actually be quite challenging because it has to be super livable and not an overwhelming amount of crazy pattern mixes. So the way I approached it was through colour. And to me, colour is really the key to making it work. I also knew that there was an ambition to open up a global distribution throughout all of our markets. So again, that gave a good strategy for how to handle different light conditions, different homes, different appetites for color. So we created six palettes, which are based on objects, people, place and materials and patterns in the archive.

13:13Genevieve Bennett:and they range all the way from a neutrals palette based on pewter wear through blue and white palettes naturals all the way to the kind of richer end of the spectrum and so we curate all color and develop all our collections according to color um to these six palettes and that makes the whole thing work incredibly well so we've now got 11 collections and you can layer and mix all these beautiful, diverse, eclectic pattern styles, textures and techniques through these palettes. So that was one key aspect. The other key aspect was looking at fabric bases. There was a huge scope for creating something much more natural, much more versatile.

13:57Genevieve Bennett:So we introduced 100 % linen bases. We also spent a lot of time, particularly in the last three years, designing our own proprietary bases. We have a technical team based on our own mill in Lake Como in Italy, who have done huge, great work on really working right down to the fiber level on incredible new innovations, which means that nobody can have quite the same base or quite the same fabric that we've got in our collections, which has been a great factor. And I want to learn more about that because if I recall, you own your own mill and I wonder how that has served you i know that people are just coming back in fact from proposed and all right and many of them met with uh with a lot of the jobbers there to to talk about what they're working on for the coming season so so we um we bought a mill in in lake como just just south of the lake um and it's now become the kind of beating heart of our business it's where we produce all of our fashion fabrics all our Tana lawn.

15:02Genevieve Bennett:And it's a state-of-the-art printing mill. Absolutely incredible. It's one of the most wonderful places, so inspiring to visit. All of our production team are based there. So on interiors, we do use other partners within the region for printing because we often use very heavy linen, which can't be processed in the same way that some of the cottons can in our own mill. And then we look to other regions and parts of the world for other techniques. So particularly things like embroidery or the cut pile velvet. So we work with different partners throughout Europe for those aspects too. But yes, it's the most wonderful place and very inspiring to visit.

15:44Help me understand before we talk more about all the details of making this work, who's the client base for this? So who's coming to Liberty? And help me understand a little bit about your distribution, if you will?

15:57Genevieve Bennett:So Liberty's, obviously we have our amazing store in Regent Street where everything is there. That's the kind of beating heart of the business. And then separate to that, we have the fabrics wholesale business, which is all of the fashion fabrics that's distributed all over the world and is a huge, huge part of the business. With Furnishing Fabrics, we began our new journey in 2020. So we set up our distribution globally through a mixture of large distributors. So, for example, in America, we're with Fabricut, who have over 50 showrooms throughout the US, as I'm sure you know. And then throughout Europe, we have a mixture of small showrooms, agents, distributors, all the way through to Japan, Australia, New Zealand.

16:46Genevieve Bennett:So we're kind of, South Africa, we're really set up to be a very robust operation, both servicing retail and trade globally, which is just such a wonderful place to be. And actually now we're starting to see some really fantastic growth. For example, in America, our sales were at 46 % last year. So we have got some real traction going now. And it's very rewarding because we can see what's selling and where the opportunities are. Sure. Well, that's good for you, 46%. So tell me what is selling and what you have learned. Yeah, we've learned loads. It's been great so we've learned that people come to liberty they don't come for neutrals anything obviously obviously very gray things don't sell but i don't know anything selling in that field at all anymore anyway um but we've learned that people love very special uh multi-colored design multi-colored and but not necessarily bright it can be quite soft color um but it's always a multi-colored pattern We've learned that people come to us for scenics, so landscapes, and these kind of, it's a real growth area for us.

17:56Genevieve Bennett:We're also doing really well, surprisingly, with coordinating fabrics. So we were quite nervous about going into this area because it's obviously such a saturated market. You know, you've got people, the likes of incredible competitors doing the most amazing coordinating planes and semi-planes. So we kind of dived in with some really wonderful, what I call characterful coordinates. So they're quite bold. They have a lot of geometrics, a lot of stripes, and they're inspired by our sartorial past. So lots of old archival references for ties and silk pocket squares and these geometrics, which have actually become, are actually one of the most exciting parts of our archive, which you would never really know about.

18:40Genevieve Bennett:So we've seen some great sales through these coordinating fabrics, repolstery, which has been really wonderful to see.

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19:43What I'm always curious about and the challenge that heritage brands like Liberty have, and I never know how much the history resonates with people or if that part of the story matters to them or doesn't. But how do you reinterpret, reinvigorate, sort of reinvent yourself, particularly with a company that played such an integral and dynamic role throughout history in the fashion world? How do you walk that line of sort of reintroducing it?

20:21Genevieve Bennett:I think the ongoing tension between heritage and contemporary is something that Liberty does really, really well. and striking that balance keeps us creatively alive. And I think that longevity ultimately really comes from the evolution and not getting stuck. So treating the history as a foundation for reinvention rather than preservation is a really big part of that. And I think working with the archive has a real skill to it. We don't just take pattern and blow up the scale and recolor it. We spend a huge amount of time developing new motifs, blending really strange aspects that no one else has noticed before, finding the thread of like an amazing story, really going quite deep with the research.

21:07Genevieve Bennett:And I think that's a real skill that the design team have. I think that Liberty has evolved very quickly over the past 20 years, in particular, globally, particularly within the fashion fabric, starting to look at different. So you've got obviously a huge business with the seasonal fabric collections, but then you've got capsule collections and bespoke collections for the Middle East, for Japan, for America. And there's this kind of fairly, like a very energetic pace to those designs being developed and the regional knowledge that's needed to get that right. For example, in Japan, they use a lot of softer color, softer textures.

21:51Genevieve Bennett:The Middle East is always about stronger color, more graphic lines, no animals. There will be no space in the ground of the fabrics. So there will always be a texture or a pattern in there. So I think it's that real dynamic approach to design and regional knowledge that has really allowed Liberty to really expand and grow into these regions. And we have very powerful business there quite quickly over the past 20 to 40 years, I guess. You came to the U.S. recently. I know David Claristenfeld was eager to get you out and visit some showrooms. And no doubt when you got there, you saw how much fabric and wallpaper is out there.

22:35Exactly.

22:36Genevieve Bennett:No, it's wild. Pretty competitive field. And yet every day I talk to somebody new who's introducing some fabrics or thinking about introducing some fabrics. And I wonder how you think about everything that's already out there and not only how you differentiate yourself, but even what you sort of make of the whole competitive landscape. Yeah, I think it's a really good question because we do feel intimidated by that openly. When you go to anywhere, you see so much product and it is really overwhelming. and so going forward I think there was a certain sense when we launched our collections we wanted to get the foundations in and we did do slightly larger collections now we've got some really solid data on our sales we are scaling the collections right back we're producing much smaller collections which are much more targeted and we're really trying to look at what's out there and not replicate things that already exist also things that will last a long time whether that's from a design perspective or a material perspective.

23:47Genevieve Bennett:It's really trying to get something that we think people will treasure, will collect, will have forever, and kind of get away from that endless churn of more and more and more product every single year. So yes, we launch collections yearly, but we make sure that they are hopefully different, quite unique, and much, much smaller and more targeted in a way. And I think we've talked in the past, you and I, about performance fabrics, but here in America, people love their performance fabrics. And I wonder, which is a little bit different culturally than in the UK and in Europe. And I wonder not only how you think about that, but how your thinking has evolved around what you may or may not want to offer in the States, knowing that?

24:41Genevieve Bennett:So we constantly watch and learn in this field. I feel like there was a huge explosion of outdoor qualities with solution dyed acrylic and all the polyester bases for outdoor that came out sort of around the time of COVID or a little bit before. And we've watched them really evolve over the past six years into something much more beautiful and surprising. we have one outdoor collection that we launched in 2022 and we are looking to do another one in the future however we are going to be very careful about what we use so for example we try and steer clear of finishing that's toxic so we don't use stain repellent a particular type of stain repellent finishing we've had a lot of comments from different regions some in Australia some in New Zealand, some in Japan, who have said that customers are asking to not have those finishes on our fabrics.

25:39Genevieve Bennett:So it is a difficult line to tread. And the reason for that is because of health concerns that have been proven to be severely toxic to the human body. Yeah, just some cancer concerns that some of those, yeah, that seems reasonable to try and So we've tried to have some presence without going fully into the full-blown, like we will put every finishing on this fabric for you to make it robust. Because I think one of the interesting things, obviously the world's a different place now, but when we look back in our archive, a lot of the fabrics that were in our archive 150 years ago were just very thin cottons and they would have been upholstery.

26:22Genevieve Bennett:So I think we've moved so far into this obsession with Martindale rubs and abrasion. And you want this bulletproof fabric, but you want it to look natural. And I think that it's a bit of a tricky line. And I think there is something very beautiful about the way a fabric ages because it's natural. So not if it's outside, if it's inside, yes. And if it's outside, that's a whole different story. Do you think that that's a pendulum that can somehow swing back the other way? Well, you know what? When I was in Propost a couple of weeks ago, I did see some incredibly beautiful outdoor fabrics made with hemp.

26:57Genevieve Bennett:And when you think back to the history of hemp and rope making and the UV stability of that material now and the strength, and it has a really gorgeous handle and feel and isn't damaging to the world. So I think there is perhaps more awareness coming in, but I think we need to all ask more questions and push our suppliers to be trying more innovative solutions, which are planet friendly as well. Well, and what I'm curious about with Liberty, so again, the store itself seems like such a powerful association that people have. Is that a helpful sales tool for you? Do you try and get as many people as you can to come and visit and really understand the history of it all?