fine print
Oliveira Textiles ups the ante for their au courant patterns with a high eco quotient
Written and Produced by MEAGHAN O’NEILL
Photography by EDUA WILDE
for more details see resources
dawn oliveira (top, at left) and her
twin sister Deborah Olson discuss
upcoming designs in the studio office.
A concept board (above) features
sustainable hemp fabric samples.
Details (right) show the selvage edge
of three Oliveira Textiles patterns.
in the light-filled studio in her home
in Bristol, Rhode Island, Dawn Oliveira
works surrounded by found objects such as
seashells and the dried bud of a cotton plant. It is a
serene coastal setting that belies her background as a
die-hard veteran of New York City, where the designer
spent 22 years creating fashion and home textiles for
brands such as Liz Claiborne, Scalamandré, and Stark
Fabric. Unsurprisingly, she knows a thing or two about
the trade. But after returning to her native state a few
years ago, Oliveira found herself back at square one.
When a bout of illnesses in the family set her and
business partner Deborah Olson (who also happens to
be Oliveira’s twin) to thinking about how toxins in the
environment affect human health, the two decided
to create their own collection of eco-friendly textiles.
“We didn’t know exactly where we were heading, we
just knew we wanted it to be as healthy as possible,”
says Oliveira. So despite her extensive experience,
Oliveira underwent a re-education; she and her sister,
an educator and former tour guide on Russian excursions, studied everything from sustainable fabrics and
dyes to the health hazards of chemical fixatives.
For creative inspiration, the women turned to
nature, and the result is the abstracted marine designs
in Oliveira’s Ocean Collection, which are a tribute to
their late father, a fisherman, and to their childhood
spent by the shore. “Connecting with the ocean also
lent itself to being green,” says Olson, who helped
source fabrics made of hemp, a hearty and fast-grow-ing plant that requires few if any pesticides to produce,
and organic cotton, which is grown without using synthetic pesticides or fungicides.
Printing Oliveira’s vibrant Wavelength, Shell-game, and Anemone patterns was a bigger challenge.
Finding a mill willing to work with the uncommon
water-based pigment dyes the designers specified
proved difficult. Eventually a local facility agreed to
give it a shot. While some concessions, such as settling for a slightly darker hue of red, were necessary
the final product doesn’t suffer for them. At once playful and sophisticated, the Ocean Collection is both
stunningly gorgeous and genuinely green. That combination sits well with the sisters’ aesthetic as well as
their ethos. “I feel really proud of the fact this is still a
designer product,” says Oliveira. “It’s eco-friendly and
still beautiful.” ❧
