Alternative Flooring x Margo Selby student design collaboration

Alternative Flooring and Margo Selby both collaborated on a design brief for a student to design a coordinating interior fabric and carpet runner.

Huddersfield University student Louisa Knapp was selected by both brands for her Stay At Home concept and mood board.

The FIBONACCI design is available from Alternative Flooring as a made to order carpet runner, and from Margo Selby and Louisa Knapp as a limited edition interior fabric and cushions.

This project celebrates, British design and will support the wool industry.

Winning designs will be produced as limited editions into carpet and fabric with UK/Ireland mills and sold through Alternative Flooring, Margo Selby and Louisa Knapp websites.

The brief was to design a co-ordinating carpet and fabric which will be produced and sold to promote British Wool as part of the Campaign for Wool 10 year celebrations.

Alternative Flooring’s award winning Quirky collection of patterned runners and broadloom are designed and made in Britain using British Wool, and woven at Wilton.

The ethos of the Margo Selby Studio is ‘Art into Industry’ – woven textiles with a distinctive graphic style. The fabric will be jacquard woven by Botany Weaving for Margo Selby and embraces the Margo Selby Brand style whilst also complementing and co-ordinating with the carpet.

“New design talent is the lifeblood of any innovative company. Fresh and new ways of looking, interpreting, and crafting energises in such a positive way. Good design can lift a company, not only economically in terms of sales or brand awareness but culturally too. The feeling of being part of something exciting, clever and dynamic is where many of us want to be. This particular CFW project has been fascinating. Many of the students entering had experienced a very difficult year with interrupted studies due to the pandemic; however the results of a commercial design brief were outstanding. The students made the brief come alive with ideas and excellent execution and we are extremely proud to be involved in this project”. Lorna Haigh, Creative & Marketing Director, Alternative Flooring

I have loved being part of this competition – it has been an absolute pleasure to work with the Campaign for Wool, Alternative Flooring, Botany Weaving Mill and of course Louisa Knapp herself, the winning designer of the beautiful FIBONACCI fabric.

During lockdown it was such a joy to see the wonderful creativity of all the student submissions – and to be thinking about weaving in terms of sustainability and innovation for the future. FIBONACCI is a beautiful cloth – the colour palette and rhythmic organic design is a complimentary addition to my collection and I am pleased to be supporting Louisa with a launchpad to introduce her to the textile design world.” Margo Selby

“Perhaps the most satisfying part of winning, has meant that I am able to champion British design. I am standing up to represent textile student who, like me, are proud to work with wool; who seek ways of using wool to innovate, who see it as a contemporary resource and aim to educate people about its current and future benefits as well as its heritage. Winning this competition has been a wonderful opportunity to springboard my designs into the commercial arena and showcase my professional philosophies alongside other talented young students.

For me, wool means a sustainable and fruitful future career. With this and all future designs I aim to see wool get the recognition it deserves on the contemporary fashion and interiors markets. I can’t imagine a better fibre to take centre stage in the increasing demand for a more renewable, greener and sustainable world we want for future generations. Fittingly, it was the reputation of the worsted wool industry in Huddersfield that brought me North to study in Yorkshire. I hope in the near future, as I complete my studies at the University of Huddersfield, that the booming abundance of mills and design studios will keep me employed within Yorkshire.

For me, weave is the perfect balance between art and science. At home, my family is an even split between the creative and the mathematical, the experimental and the accurate. This has without doubt, impacted on the kind of designer I have become and shows how apparently diverse schools of thought can forge innovative ways of approaching woven textile design.” Louisa Knapp, Winning Student