A real hero of mine in the 1960s because of his beautiful woollen cloth, soft, high quality & available in an entirely new & exciting range of co-ordinating colours. Affordable even for a teenaged home dress maker. I particularly remember a turquoise blue which I used to make a smart skirt suit, & a wonderful clear red which I chose for my first (& only) foray into haute couture – a Dior pattern from the Vogue Designer range, a simple, waistless shift dress in the latest figure-skimming fashion. Should be an easy project for a beginner, I thought.
Well I certainly learned to respect the amount of workmanship involved – there were darts & tucks everywhere to make sure it fitted just so, around the neck, shoulders, even the elbows to make the sleeves work well (all of course needing to be adapted to my own unique form).
I believe that Bernat Klein was also responsible, as design consultant, for the new range of office furniture for the civil service which was introduced in the 1970s – filing cabinets in a choice of avocado, mustard, tomato or blue made a change from battleship grey. Less popular were the removable washable chair covers, in jungle-print combinations of two of the colours (mustard + blue, avocado+ tomato) which, to those in the know, enabled you to spot a government building anywhere you went. I have not, however been able to find any confirmation of this.
Even stranger, I do not think I ever knew that Bernat Klein had set up his business in the Scottish borders after studying textile technology at the University of Leeds. We all firmly believed that he was French (he is Serbian by birth), presumably because he first came to our attention after his textiles were taken up by Coco Chanel, Dior, Balenciaga, Pierre Cardin and Saint Laurent. I think we thought that nobody British could be that clever with colour, & even felt slightly guilty about not supporting home industry.
Links
Related post
