The Women of Kvadrat
THE WOMEN OF KVADRAT
The women behind the brand lift the curtain on the magic behind the Danish textile house.
Courtesy of Kvadrat
By Bonnie Langedijk
A master of color and textile, Danish company Kvadrat has fundamentally changed the business of design. Through seamlessly combining innovation and design, their products – including textiles, rugs, window covering and acoustic solutions – continuously raise the bar for both commercial and residential interiors. Its textiles can be found anywhere from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to Saint Laurent in Paris to your neighbor’s living room.
Since its founding in 1968, the company has become one of the many reasons Scandinavian design has flourished. From the start, Kvadrat understood the importance of well-made and functional products, while inserting themselves into the center of the cultural conversation. The company has collaborated with numerous world-class designers, architects and artists. From designers Peter Saville, Patricia Urquiola and Nanna Ditzel to architect David Adjaye and artist Olafur Eliasson. But it doesn’t stop there. Over the years, Kvadrat has added eight brands to its portfolio, including luxury bedwear brand Magniberg, a collection with designer Raf Simons and sustainable innovation company Really.
What has made Kvadrat one of the success stories of our time, while remaining a family business? And how have they been able to pair a sustainability-first approach with global growth? To find out, we asked the women of Kvadrat to lift the curtain on the magic behind the Danish textile house.
Stine Find Osther
VP of Design
Since 2007, Stine Find Osther has been an integral part of product development at Kvadrat. As the brand’s VP of Design, she is responsible for the creative side of the business. Overseeing the creative direction across brands under the Kvadrat umbrella, Find Osther defines what the brand looks like. Navigating the development of the design world at large, and liaising with the brand’s creative collaborators and production units.
On the Design Process
We work together with around 25 external designers. Some don’t know anything about textiles, others are textile geeks, in the positive sense of the word. They all help us by constantly pushing the boundaries for what’s possible inside textile design. We work together with young talents and world famous designers – they all bring a unique energy to our collections. The diversity of our group of external designers is very important for us and the collections. We’re not working with trend-material, we see our external designers as our trend-material. They come to us with their unique look at the world. This, together with the Kvadrat DNA, is how we develop products that are long lasting and contemporary.
On Color
We take colors very seriously – we take a lot of time to develop colors – it is not unusual for us to have more than 1000 colors to choose from for just one collection. It is difficult to explain how we pick exactly the right colors for a specific collection – it is a dialog between the color and the material, a dialog between how the world looks today and how we believe it will look tomorrow and in the end - a good portion of gut feeling.
“There’s a constant balance between our heritage and our presence in the contemporary-creative community. A stubbornness that only the absolute best is good enough and a curiosity for the new.”
On the Process of Making a Textile
There are more than 100 steps to go through and decisions to make before an idea becomes a textile.
On Her Favorite Kvadrat Piece
My favorite Kvadrat piece keeps changing. Right now I’m in love with an exciting curtain made in collaboration with the artist Danh Vo. Another ongoing favorite is our product development with Giulio Ridolfo (Steelcut family is a good example). The journey of development often influences what becomes my ‘favorites’. The journeys create beautiful memories.
Textiles by Kvadrat. Courtesy of Kvadrat.
On the future
The journey we have in front of us. How we with creative power can challenge and change the status quo in our business, with the aim to create a more sustainable and circular textile industry.
Njusja de Gier
SVP of Marketing & Digital
“We’re passionate about innovation, design, creativity, quality, and contemporary culture. We create products that help people to realize their design vision and dreams, to create the space where you feel at home or public or commercial spaces where people feel well and thrive,” de Gier told HURS. Describing herself as a creative strategist and curator, de Gier develops marketing and brand strategies and leads the majority of Kvadrat’s creative and brand projects including publications, art and design projects and brand campaigns.
On the Vision for Kvadrat
When I joined the company there were 160 people, and we were a supplier that made beautiful high-quality textiles with the best colors. Anders and Mette had big ambitions: To become the most desired design textile brand and to become one of the 5 design brands that architects and designers always wanted to work with. At the time, we already connected with some – now very renowned – designers when they were young including Bouroullec’s, Alfredo Häberli and Tord Boontje, as well as artists like Olafur Eliasson and Thomas Demand. They grew with us and we with them. What bounded us was our focus on high quality, contemporary design, creative freedom, and innovation. A lot of our brand strategy is built on creative freedom, inspiration, collaboration, innovation, and the desire to be a sincere cultural contributor. Not just empty marketing words. We collaborate with people for creativity, innovation, and culture, not just for the money.
Danh Vo installation, made in collaboration with Kvadrat. Courtesy of Kvadrat.
On Collaboration
We’re absolute masters of color, and we deliver the best quality. There is no one in our industry who can match us. The passion of our people and the creative freedom we give to our collaborators is what makes people want to work with us. They know we’ll go the extra mile because we love what we do.For a collaboration to work, there needs to be chemistry as well as a shared appreciation for design, craftsmanship, quality, and openness for experimentation. But also feedback. We love it when our collaborators push us out of our comfort zone and bring us somewhere new. At the same time, we inspire them to get out of their comfort zone too.
“PASSION brings you far. Dare to experiment, failure is an option but learn from your mistakes and do it better the next time.”
On What Makes Kvadrat Kvadrat
It’s our design culture and our interest and contribution to contemporary culture. We are (textile) nerds and we love to collaborate. Kvadrat is a family: our employees, the designers and artists we collaborate with, our production partners. We inspire each other to innovate and experiment. We push the boundaries of both textile design and production through our desire to continuously reinvent ourselves.
On the Future of Kvadrat
How far are we looking ahead? We never stand still. We aim to be the partner of choice for the architecture and design industry, but also for you as a consumer when you want to create your dream interior. I don’t know if it is too far reaching but, ideally, we would like to have people say: “We only want Kvadrat,” when they choose a textile for their sofa, chair, curtains or rug.
Wickie Meier Engström
Founder and Partner of Kvadrat Really
Wickie Meier Engström is revolutionizing the way we look at sustainability. As the co-founder and Partner of Kvadrat Really, she’s building a new blueprint for circularity at scale. Kvadrat Really upcycles end-of-life textiles into premium-quality materials suitable for interior and industrial-scale projects. “We turn textile waste into new composite products, which means that we turn the fibers of the textile into products.” Engström explained. Through three product categories Textile Tabletop™, Textile Board and Textile Felt, Really offers a high quality, timeless blank canvas for brands, designers and architects to make their own.
About Sustainability at Scale
Everything can happen in a laboratory. The thing is you have to develop much bigger volume processes. The product needs to have a price level that fits the markets and it needs to have the same capabilities and characteristics demanded from the market. The circularity that we are talking about in Really isn’t something you can do on your own. It's a big undertaking to get a more steady supply stream. There's waste all around but if you want to know what your product contains, you also need to know what the waste is. What characterizes waste is that basically nobody knows what's in there. You need to have the recyclers to sort out in qualities and maybe even in colors which is maybe not what they're used to and you need the facilitator and the production equipment that make sure your product is stable.
On Bread and Butter Products
To have access to some of the world's best architects, interior designers and furniture producers out there has helped us to sharpen the sword. It has allowed us to deliver the best possible offering for the agenda that we’re driving. We want to eliminate textile waste, so we need to identify what can be the bread and butter products for that process. We can always add on artistic collaboration, but that's not what's going to move the needle.
“Everything Kvadrat does resonates with something that's a little bit on a higher level. It’s not only focused on the current trend, it's more artistically driven. There's also this linkage to nature always in the way they do presentations and a lot of their colors are close to a natural color palette. It's always been part of their DNA.”
On the Textile Table Top
In 2000 we introduced a textile tabletop. It's quite a simple product. It's a tabletop that can go on all existing tables. It's a plug and play concept. The good thing about it is, it's a product that we know exactly what it is, we could take it back. It's easy for the clients to buy into it. It's maybe not super funky and super sexy or so, but it really just fits the purpose. It's going to be something you can have on inventory. You can pre-produce it, you could have it in different sizes, and you can code it so everybody knows it's a circular product.
On Longevity
Kvadrat is a curious company. They want to expand, but not to only expand by selling more of the same, but by entering different areas of the business scene they're a part of. And I like that. Longevity is a key parameter in sustainability. Circularity is not going to change that, so it's important that stuff lasts. If you buy something for nothing, it's not meant to last because it has no value.
Margrethe Odgaard
Collaborator
Danish textile and color designer Margrethe Odgaard is one of Kvadrat’s key collaborators. “I made a wish list of companies I was interested in working with and Kvadrat was at the very top of my list. As a textile designer in Denmark, Kvadrat gives pride to our professionalism. They’re an incredibly strong company within the two things I’m most passionate about, textiles and colors. I patiently honed my skills hoping that I could one day work with Kvadrat. They finally called me 7 years ago,” Odgaard shared on how she ended up at the Danish textile house. Her belief that products made with the intention of nourishing the body and mind will have a positive impact on the viewer, continuously pushes her to craft new ways to apply color and pattern.
On Creating a New Textile
The context is always important. Simple questions like who is it for? Where and how will it be used? How will the colors thrive on the surface? I believe that it’s important to have a clear intention in terms of what the new textile should achieve in order to create something relevant.
“When I think of Kvadrat, I think of Hallingdal by Nanna Dietzel, one of Kvadrat’s most ICONIC textiles. Hallingdal is so simple, yet so distinct and useful. And it has proven to survive all sorts of trends. It’s a high-quality everyday textile that both goes the distance and has an attitude. It’s very representative of Kvadrat as a company, I think.”
On Her Self-Developed Color System
Colors are a powerful language, and there are an infinite number of shades. In a way, they’re the love child between light and material. It’s the refraction of the light on the surface that defines the color, and therefore the colors also change with each light source or material. I have developed several color systems based on each of their contexts. One of them is the Popsicle Index, which consists of 520 hand mixed colors developed to be appealing to the sense of taste. I wanted to work with colors that appealed to the senses and used as a hypothesis the question: What if I want to taste the color? And will it affect its attractiveness? Another color system is Shades of Light, which consists of 274 colors especially developed to compliment the slow and hesitant light of the North.
On the Global Success of Scandinavian Design
There are many reasons for the success of Scandinavian design. But one of the elements might be that we design with a desire to create relevant products, rather than with a desire to entertain. The love of simple, beautiful and functional things is deeply rooted in our culture and it has proven to be a good foundation for our designers.
Stinne Knudsen
Product Development for Kvadrat/Raf Simons accessories
With a background in furniture and interior design, Stinne Knudsen joined the Danish textile company a few years ago. “I‘ve always admired the way Kvadrat approaches design projects and design. The fact that they were doing accessories was exciting to me because I’m not a textile designer. It’s where I felt I could bring something to the company. I’m always drawn by the idea of building something new,” she shared. Within her role, Knudsen oversees all home and fashion accessories for the renowned Kvadrat/Raf Simons line merging the worlds of art, design and fashion through the Kvadrat lens.
On the Brand’s Attitude
What I really like about Kvadrat is their uncompromising approach to projects and new development. They really let the designers play. There’s an understanding that development takes time, which is rare these days. The way we approach projects is a little different. We sometimes collaborate with artists for their collections and so on.
Kvadrat Raf Simons accessories. Courtesy of Kvadrat.
On Raf Simons
Raf has been working for Kvadrat since 2014, so he knows the company very well. It all happened quite organically. He has a deep understanding of brands. He went into the archive and the signature label that we used for some of the project was his way of honoring the Kvadrat story. And then Raf's vision about The Shaker System and the way you keep order in your house, that was a different way of approaching it all. The project isn’t just about buying a new throw for your home. It offers a new way of using accessories where everything belongs to a bigger system. And of course, you can also use them on their own. The main concept for this collection is that everything belongs to the system. You can hang your things and combine them in different ways.
On Translating the DNA of a Textile Company Into Accessories
Before they even started, Kvadrat and Raf Simons had many conversations about the project, and what they wanted to achieve. My job was to understand the vision and concept behind this project and stay true to it. We try to make the perfect mix of the two words. We try to keep the accessories close to textile, to Kvadrat's DNA. It’s also a way to honor the Vidar textile, a Kvadrat Raf Simons classic.
On Merging Fashion, Art, Design
Kvadrat has a very long tradition of textiles, and deep technical knowledge. Art comes and adds something different from Simon’s work within fashion. It’s that meeting between two worlds that makes it interesting and that creates something new within textiles.