European Textile Mills — The Houses I Trust
Why a small set of family-run mills in Belgium, Italy, and France quietly produce most of the fabric I specify.
There are perhaps a dozen mills in Europe whose fabric I will specify without a second sample. They are family-run, three to five generations deep, and operate at a scale that allows them to weave for drapery weight, hand, and fold rather than for catalog volume.
Belgium is the center of the linen world. The mills around Kortrijk weave flax that has been pre-shrunk, calibrated for drapery, and finished with a hand that no industrial-scale converter has matched. When I specify a Belgian linen, I am specifying a textile that will fold correctly the day it is hung and ten years later.
Northern Italy — Como and the surrounding lake region — is where the technical performance fabrics, the engineered sheers, and the most refined wools are made. The Italian mills are conservative about innovation in a way I respect: they will not release a fabric until they have woven a thousand yards of it themselves and watched it age.
Lyon remains the seat of the French silk and complex weave tradition. I specify it sparingly — only for projects where the fabric will be seen as art — but when the room asks for it, nothing else will do.
Olga Rechdouni is the principal designer of House of Drapery and a consulting specialist on custom drapery for the residential interiors of Los Angeles. She is a member of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) and works privately with homeowners, interior designers, and architects.