What do these fabrics say about me?
“My designs say I’m a perfectionist. The colour has to be exactly right. My favourite colours are orange and pink – but in very specific shades.”
And what they really say
There was a time, not so long ago (the 90s), when prints were frowned upon. Unless you were sporting
a camouflage jacket or army shorts, clothes were resolutely plain. If you rocked a multicoloured pair of trousers, someone would sniff and wonder where the curtains for their granny’s caravan had gone.
That has changed over the past few years as wallpaper has made a comeback and women have remembered that they like wearing madly patterned dresses – particularly leopard-print ones, or ones with huge flowers. Even sportswear is affected: today’s trainers and running gear are neon, flash, with colours and designs that would have seemed outrageous only a few years back. Everyone’s wearing bright these days.
Which brings me to Rhianna. Her prints are entirely contemporary: nothing too itsy-bitsy or too delicately tea-time. Rhianna creates zingy, beautiful designs of fruit and flowers, given a graphic twist. She deals in modern desires: health (through eating and sport), nature (ripe), travel (cities, countryside, nothing in between), a search for an authentic, full experience. No twee.
Her colours are interesting. They are hot and strong. The kind of colours that you want to paint your house after a holiday in Goa or Brazil. They are not British, really – not even her pale blue (a very English colour). They are worldly, knowing. Rhianna herself is a strongly graphic person with her dark hair and pale skin; her detailed, dark tattoos.
Anyone who works in design knows that it’s the details that matter. When we look at Rhianna’s creations, they are pleasing to the eye, and that’s because she’s spent a long time getting them to look like that. She has picked out what inspires her, from apples to the Eiffel Tower, and then she’s transformed them into something more. More rhythmic, more precise, more inspiring. More.
If you would like Miranda to cast an eye over your favourite possession, email a photograph to magazine@observer.co.uk
