STUDIO MESSINA MARKS 25TH ANNIVERSARY

摘要

As the designer trade grows, Studio Messina is tapping into its quarter-century experience and library of 500,000 fabric swatches to offer inspiration to the trade. Located at 411 Fifth Avenue off of 37th Street within New York City's home textiles hub, Studio Messina is home to a well-stocked library of antique and vintage - and some more current - fabric swatches available to the design and home furnishings industries. "For over 25 years now, I have been amassing an archive of antique textiles and swatches from around the world with the sole purpose of building a beautiful and unique design reference library for my clients," founder and president Alicia Messina told HTT. "What we do here is provide valuable tools for textiles designers in fashion and home to become inspired and create new collections." Swatches date from the early 19th to the late 20th centuries, and many are European - mostly French, she noted. "France is a big resource of antique textiles," she added. But there are also ample domestically made textiles fabric samples, Messina stressed. "I have some American bandanas and American shirting and plaids from the 1950s, which people come in and use all the time," she said. Studio Messina's offering also includes fabric sample books from former textiles mills, including one dated 1810. "Many mills used to create books to keep track of what they were producing, and some of them can contain thousands of swatches," she said. Messina said not only depth but quality makes her curated collection unique in the scope of the textiles industry.