This February, Maharam introduces Nova by Sander Lak, the newest textile in the design studio’s collaboration with the Dutch fashion designer exploring his instinct for color in a dynamic largescale pattern.
Expanding on Lak’s exploration of color across a comprehensive series of wool textiles—Gemma, Gemma Multi, and Terra (2021)—the design studio invited Lak to interpret his omnivorous color vocabulary in a pattern.
“For me, everything starts with color,” explains Lak. “After using color to celebrate material through the wools, I wanted to develop a pattern that captures our experience of color in a space and how color flows, grows, and moves—like starting to mix a pot of paint.”
Known for ethereal subversions of proportion and material through his work with Balmain, Dries Van Noten, and his own label Sies Marjan, Lak selects palettes that draw on architecture, material culture, and ephemera ranging from ceramics, vintage cars, confections, and electrical cables to digital icons, corporate logos, and office supplies. Lak’s designs extract each color from its original context to explore carefully calibrated interactions between tone and texture.
Nova expands on the concept of Gemma Multi’s unexpected color mixing with a painterly blend of five tones handpicked by Lak. The distinctive color combinations appear to dissolve into one another on an exaggerated scale, creating a sense of momentum across the full-width repeat. “I wanted to create color groupings that embrace our emotional and psychological connections to color without any specific imagery,” says Lak.
Lak and the design studio worked closely to develop custom yarns dyed to precise hues specified by Lak. Four distinct colors in the weft—such as coral, lemon, cerise, and electric blue or dusty rose, navy, pale gray, and forest—are woven with a fifth hue in the warp to achieve each of the nine evocative colorways.
About Sander Lak
Sander Lak is a fashion designer and creative director who grew up between Malaysia, Gabon, Scotland and the Netherlands and now lives and works between New York and Los Angeles. His work emphasizes ethereal subversions of proportion and material brought to life through color. Lak received a MA from Central Saint Martins and has worked for Balmain, Dries Van Noten, Phillip Lim and most recently his own label Sies Marjan. In 2018 Lak was named the Emerging Designer of the Year by the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA).
About Maharam
Founded in 1902 in New York, Maharam is a leading creator of textiles for commercial and residential interiors. Recognized for its rigorous and holistic commitment to design, Maharam embraces a range of disciplines from product, graphic, and digital design to art and architecture. Maharam textiles are included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Stedelijk Museum, among others. Maharam is the recipient of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Design Patron Award for its longstanding support of art and design.
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