Sample 'Frappe of hand-woven furnishing fabric, designed by Dorothy Liebes for Charles Bloom Inc., New York, ca. 1965

Sample of hand-woven furnishing fabric of pink and orange orlon.

Given by Miss Dorothy Liebes

[These four textiles CIRC.268 to 271-1965] "...are 100% Orlon casement fabrics which I designed for Charles Bloom Inc., one of my accounts. They are mass-produced cloths sold in American department stores at a modest price and I included them to show that good design and taste can be designed into mass produced items. The plaids are a new process of Orlon dyeing called cross-dyes. The fibers in the ground sections are different chemically from the fibers used in the plaid bar areas, and the woven fabric is dyed first to pick up only one colour, then re-emersed in the second dye bath, which is absorbed by the second fiber. This is a new and exciting process (also known as Duo-Dye) for mass-production fabrics and is just now becoming widely used here."

(From a letter from Dorothy Liebes to Barbara J Morris, Assistant Keeper of Circulation, dated 21 May 1965)

CIRC.271-1965