Lisa King for Vogue

Contemporary textile designer Lisa King makes striking prints which are an eclectic blend of influences, from the lush plant life of her childhood in Thailand to her mother’s vibrant collection of textiles and antiquities, her background training as a dancer, and her current life in industrialised London. She says, “I draw a lot of parallels between nature and the human condition and try to convey it through my work.” Her art tells vivid, evocative stories about who she is and where she comes from, while simultaneously experimenting with daring and innovative processes of pattern making. In recent years she has moved beyond her much-coveted scarf collection into interior design, costume, and performance, working with some of the most prestigious clients in the world, including Kylie Minogue and Diane von Furstenberg.

Printed fabric scarf from Lisa King

King’s colourful childhood in Thailand remains a cornerstone of her creative practice, an eclectic blend of modern buildings set against tropical plant life, a place she describes as “a real collage of new and old culture.” Her mother’s work as a collector was also a rich treasure trove of ideas, as she notes, “My mother was a buying agent. She sourced local products and handicrafts for U.S. stores and was an avid collector of antiques and textiles. Originally from Indonesia, she lived in Bangkok for 44 years and collected Ban Chiang bronze ceramics and batik, Persian carpets, Japanese lacquerware, kimonos, Balinese paintings, and more.”

Printed fabric scarf from Lisa King

King went on to train as a textile designer in London at Central St Martins, where she soaked up a new environment of subtle, rain-soaked grey skies and stone. She says, “Studying in England, I learned to appreciate the many shades of grey, or minimalism, so to speak. Even though I’m probably a maximalist, studying at Central Saint Martins and living in London definitely taught me that less is more.” In London King also studied at the prestigious Pineapple Dance Studios, and her passion for energy and movement is evident in much of her textile design work.

Perhaps unsurprisingly King also discovered the spirited cultural environment of London to be a fertile playground of creative starting points, one which continues to inform her practice today. “If I need inspiration in London,” she notes, “I’ll go to a gallery or museum, or I’ll go for a dance with Hustling London.”

Printed fabric scarf from Lisa King

In 2013 King established her eponymous design label, launching with a collection of ‘Screwprint’ scarves, featuring abstract patterns based on the humble screw head, which she transformed into surprisingly playful, colourful motifs. Since then, the ambition and scope of her practice has diversified, drawing on the organic, sinuous nature of plants as much as the industrial world. She began working with washes of ink adorned with flowers as a cathartic means of healing following the death of her mother, a nod towards her mother’s flower arranging in the home. King observed how healing this process was: “Through repeating familiar rituals and deconstructing the act of arranging flowers I’ve found renewal, positivity, and healing at the hardest of times.”

Another unexpected pool of ideas came from the extensive textile collection that King inherited from her mother, featuring more than 500 pieces of batik fabric. While the most prized samples have since gone into museum collections and archives, in collaboration with British menswear designer New & Lingwood, King has recently gone on to produce an upcycled series of shirts, trousers and dressing gowns, lending these lavish, yet unused fabrics a much-needed new lease of life. She says, “We agreed that if they just sat in a box or in a museum, they would disappear and become a lost art only meant for people that frequent museums, really.”