Sheer Love
DURUP’S MOST REQUESTED FABRIC IS SURPRISINGLY ALSO ITS MOST NUANCED
“I love all my children equally,” jokes Nicoline Durup as she drops several heavy books of fabric swatches on the table in front of her. Durup’s signature luxury fabrics - cashmere and silk jacquards, patterned wools and cottons - spill across the table in beautiful flashes of color and texture. “But sheer curtains are by far our most requested fabric. And guess what? Not all sheer curtains are created equal.”
Look closely and quickly you realize: sheer is actually a lot of things. A sheer drape made from a natural yarn like linen can beautifully filter the light, creating whimsical fragments and shadows. A weighty polyester sheer provides the stately structure perfect for large windows. Beautiful sheer cashmere - historically, not a material associated with sheer curtains! - results in a luxurious, cloudlike ambiance. Cotton, wool, silk, and everything in between: there’s no such thing as a simple sheer.
In one of our most recent projects, we sourced more than two dozen sheer fabrics from suppliers all over the world to find the exact right one we needed. Our client - the globally-celebrated architect Danielle Siggerud - is known for her excellent taste and carefully considered eye. She asked us to help her create bespoke roman blinds with a nod to both Japanese and Scandinavian aesthetics, or our new favorite word: “Japandi.”
To achieve the desired effect, we wound up choosing a light polyester sheer made by Spanish artisans with such precision as to be completely uniform in weave. The textile was sheer enough to create a soft filter for the dramatic Nordic light but still provided the structure we needed for the custom horizontal bamboo slats we wove into the fabric as a way of bringing in the Japanese element. The end result was a gorgeous, one-of-a-kind sheer Japandi blind that dressed every window in Danielle’s new family home.
But perhaps our most unexpected - and sustainable - use of sheer were the drapes we hung in the beautiful home of founder and digital creator Jeanette Madsen. For that, we worked with a special textile created from upcycled plastic carefully collected from the ocean’s beaches by impassioned volunteers. It was the perfect solution for our sustainability-minded client: a modern and beautiful textile to drape the floor-to-ceiling windows with an air of structured sophistication.
In a way, sheer drapes have been the “gateway drape” for many of our first-time clients. Perhaps because it’s a neutral, go-with-everything fabric, and as such easy to imagine how it will work in any given space (or at least easier than, say, a silk jacquard print woven in vibrant colors!). Though often, once those sheer drapes are hung, and time passes, our clients will return to us with an emboldened request to level up.
“Recently, a client whose home I had draped in one of my all-time favorite sheers - a gorgeous fabric from a contemporary Danish textile supplier - called me up and said, no more sheer. I can’t take any more sheer. Let’s pull it down. I’m ready for pattern and color!” recalled Nicoline Durup. “And that’s the wonderful thing about textiles - it’s such an easy way to instantly change up a room, whether by switching out the cushions or hanging new drapes. You get a completely different feeling and you never have to be bored or dissatisfied with how you have invested in your space. Just like you might change up the clothes in your closet, there is a season for everything.”
