FLOTS and a Bladderwrack Seaweed Story
Cushions dyed with avocado skins. Sculptural forms, their tints born of seaweed pulled from the shore at low tide. FLOTS, the homewares studio founded by Sophie Van Winden, an interior designer and founder of Owl Design, and Josie Mond-James, a weaver and natural dyer, has built its work around wave-inspired forms and turned what most of us discard (kitchen scraps, foraged botanicals, the contents of a well-stocked freezer) into colour of startling, fugitive beauty. The pair found an immediate connection in their surroundings, their materials, and their shared sensibility toward textiles.
Photo: Chris James
Their shapes echo the sea's endless variation: rounded, tumbling, never quite symmetrical. But it's the dyes that tell the more particular story here. Bladderwrack seaweed, abundant along the coastline, yields a pale shell-pink that the pair describe as foundational to the whole project. Red cabbage transforms into an unexpected lilac. Avocado stones, frozen and hoarded by friends and family over several months, eventually produce a perfect, not-quite-bubblegum pink—a colour that took an entire season's patience to earn.
Photo: Chris James
At the heart of FLOTS lies a refusal of permanence. Each seasonal "drop" offers a limited palette that may never return; some shades are one-off treasures, dependent on whatever happened to be foraged, frozen, or composted that month. It's a model that asks customers to think like collectors of natural moments rather than buyers of matching sets—each piece a small record of a particular place and time.
In our latest interview, Deborah Eydmann sits down with Sophie and Josie to discuss the slow, unpredictable craft of natural dyeing, the philosophy behind designing with reverence for the sea, and why uncertainty might be their most valuable creative tool. Read on for a conversation as textured and surprising as their work.
FLOTS
Left to Right: Josie Mond-James and Sophie Van Winden, founders of FLOTS
Flots grew out of a friendship that began in 2023, rooted in a shared love of Margate's beaches and a fascination with what the sea leaves behind. The idea for Flots evolved slowly and organically from there. We bonded over Margate's beaches and the interesting things that wash up on them; there's something endlessly inspiring about what the sea deposits at your feet.
Photo: Veerle Evens
Flots' aesthetic is pastel, playful and pleasing on the eye, simple, sustainable and sculptural too. Why did you decide to base your sea-inspired home textile range around the 'humble' cushion?
The cushion was Sophie's starting point. She had been searching for cushions that were genuinely playful and impactful, but also made thoughtfully, with a light environmental footprint. They were surprisingly hard to find.
Cushions are one of the simplest ways to transform a space: accessible, immediate and endlessly versatile, but we felt there was room to elevate them into something more. What we've created sits somewhere between a home textile and an objet d'art. We don't really think of them as just cushions. We wanted something playful and beautiful but made with real intention, something that could transform a room but tread lightly on the world.
You create your colours using a variety of natural plant dyes, ranging from seasonal seaweeds and botanicals to food waste. Can you tell me about your bladderwrack-based dyes? Do you enjoy working with this type of seaweed, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of using this natural marine material for dyeing textiles?
Bladderwrack is at the heart of our natural dye palette, and it's a material that feels completely of this place. During the summer months Margate's beaches are awash with it, and even in winter there's no shortage; it's an incredibly abundant local resource, and one that costs nothing but the time it takes to gather.
The colours it produces are extraordinary: shell pinks, clays and terracottas that shift depending on the season, the batch, the day. There's a beautiful unpredictability to it that we've come to love.
Margate has a whole community of artists and makers drawn to seaweed in various ways, but we believe we are the first to use it as a dye, which feels special. It's hard to live here and not become a little obsessed with it. Those shell pinks and terracottas feel completely of this place.
The one disadvantage? Boiling it to extract the dye is, frankly, quite pungent. But that feels like a very small price to pay.
Photo: Chris James
What kind of response have you received to Flots, and to your use of natural dyes, including seaweed, in particular?
The response to Flots has been really positive. Part of what we're proud of is that it doesn't announce itself as a sustainable business; it leads with being sculptural, stylish, playful and impactful. The environmental consciousness is there, woven through everything we do, every decision we make, but it's not the headline.
The seaweed dye story tends to land as a wonderful added layer, something that deepens people's connection to the work once they discover it. As consumer awareness around materials and provenance continues to grow, we think that story will only become more resonant. Flots doesn't look like a sustainable business; it looks like something beautiful. The fact that it's also environmentally conscious feels incredibly important to us, and like the future of how people will want to buy.
Do you think people's attitude to seaweed is changing in general?
There's definitely a shift happening. In the art, design and craft world, seaweed is appearing more and more; we recently came across an exhibition where every work was made using an ink derived from seaweed, which felt like a real marker of where things are heading.
But perhaps more significantly, the conversation is moving beyond the creative world. David Attenborough's recent ocean documentary made a compelling case for kelp forests as a vital tool in protecting coral reefs from the effects of global warming, and when a message like that reaches that kind of audience, you hope it starts to filter through in a meaningful way.
Seaweed is an extraordinary natural resource: abundant, sustainable and deeply undervalued. We'd love to think that what we're doing with Flots, in our own small way, is part of that growing conversation.
Photo: Chris James
Have you experimented with any other species of algae?
We have experimented a little with sea lettuce and had some beautiful results, though only in very small quantities. For us, responsible harvesting is non-negotiable; we only work with what is genuinely abundant, and in our area bladderwrack is the only native seaweed plentiful enough to harvest without consequence. It has to be without consequence.
However, there is an invasive species that is increasingly overwhelming parts of the local landscape, and that's something we're very curious about. Harvesting it carefully could actually be beneficial, a small act of ecological restoration as well as a dye source. That feels like a very natural next step for us.
Interview by Deborah Eydmann
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Further Information:
Read more about seaweed and textiles in Selvedge Issue 131, Flow
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Image Credits:
Lead: FLOTS naturally dyed cushions. Photo: Chris James
All further images as credited in captions.