Summer with the Selvedge Archives: Walking on Sunshine
Summer sandals made from the cloth of the sun.
Written by Ptolemy Mann for Selvedge Issue 59, Folklore
Steeped in childhood memories from the 70s for many of us, rope-soled espadrilles personify resort wear and all things summery and bright. With this in mind it seems fitting that the name of the fabric company, Les Toiles du Soleil, founded in 1860 to make canvas for these special shoes, translates as ‘the cloth of the sun’.
Two experts in the field of weaving, Joseph Sans and Abdon Garcerie, decided to join forces and honour the Catalan tradition of braided rope-soled shoe production by setting up the company Sans et Garcerie in the little village of St Laurent de Cerdans (the Catalan part of France). By the end of the 19th century business was prospering; and by introducing the modern machinery of the age, power looms, they were able to dominate this niche area of production creating a striped fabric that “spoke to all Catalonia”.
In 1939 they expanded production to include fabric made for deckchairs, and in the mid 1950s they added table linen to their portfolio. By the 60s industry was at its peak – the factory employed 170 workers and their distinctive stripes were gracing tables throughout the region.
However, by the 90s things had taken a turn for the worse and the factory looked close to closing: until a couple, Henri and Françoise Quinta (a Catalan by birth), stepped in to revive the business. Their first decision was to rename the company giving the brand a new lease of life, but also to honour the tradition and history of the place. The original archive inherited with the factory remained central to the design aesthetic, yet innovation was essential too.
Retaining a Catalan colour palette while catering for current customer desires was a delicate balance. Henri Quinta, the director, has been designing the cloth for the last 20 years and, it is said, his joy at receiving a box of coloured pencils as a ten-year-old boy still serves as the catalyst for new designs. By making coloured pencil ‘notes’ on journeys, capturing his inspiration in hand-drawn coloured lines, he is able to feed ideas back to the factory for sampling into fabric.
In the beginning the width needed for espadrilles was a mere six inch strip of cloth to form the upper part of the shoe. The lower part of the shoe was made from a tough braided Mediterranean grass, esparto which is where the name itself comes from. As the product range widened so did the looms and the cloth – up to 220cm on some designs. Today Les Toiles du Soleil is more famous for table linen than footwear and the end use of the cloth is extremely flexible. Woven at a particularly dense setting, the cloth is tightly constructed and perfectly suited to outdoor furniture – it can take a lot of wear and tear. It also means the colour is intense and pure; saturated strips of blocked colour.
In 2000 Les Toiles opened their first shop in New York. Until this point, although popular in Europe they were relatively unknown in the USA except to a few key players (Martha Stewart was an early devotee). Jean-Luc Carrucciu, who runs the NYC store, says that for Americans the fabrics are “like candy... they start with a small taste, a cushion for example but always come back for more!” But he admits it’s been quite hard for their brand, so completely defined by colour, to conquer the American market at a time of economic crisis. People, he explains, “steer away from colour in a recession. They want things a little more modest and sober; but in general people become a little less afraid of colour the more familiar they become with the brand.” Les Toiles have occasionally played with a more sombre colour palette but in the end they come back to the brights. The fact that they have been able to seduce New Yorkers, dedicated followers of black, white and ‘taupe’, at all, let alone in recent years, is a tribute to their approach.
Their shops are indeed a riot of colour. Walls of striped cloth radiate warmth and sunshine. A sense of humour and clever syncopated rhythms make the fabrics, on closer inspection, surprising. None seem to have a symmetrical repeat. The stripes gyrate and move across their widths with irregularity. Names such as Pastequeand Figuetranslate as Watermelon and Fig, and these fabrics suddenly snap into focus as we realise they are enormous 180cm wide linear abstractions of these fruits. Perhaps the link between Les Toiles and Abstract Expressionism is stronger than we might at first think. Such large irregular bands of colour bring to mind a Barnett Newman painting rather than a Spanish sun lounger.
The fabric is sold worldwide but still made in the small town where it all began – people love the provenance. Keeping the brand current is also helped by collaborations with like-minded designers such as Cole Haan, a purveyor of quality and craftsmanship. With shops already in Japan and Australia and another coming to Moscow, Les Toiles du Soleil seem set to radiate their colourful rays across the globe.
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Further Information:
Selvedge Issue 59, Folklore is available as a digital download in our magazine shop.
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Image Credits:
Lead: Illustration: Katrin Coetzer
All further images as credited in captions.