A collaboration that fills a genuine gap. Michael S. Smith — the celebrated American interior designer whose work includes the White House during the Obama administration — has long been frustrated by the absence of truly beautiful outdoor fabric: designs with the patina, character and vintage quality of great indoor cloth, but built to last. This collection with Zoffany is his answer to that.
Working directly from Zoffany's historic archives, Michael hand-selected original documents as blueprints — French chintzes, Japanese silks, 18th and 19th-century florals — and reimagined them as a range of 13 designs encompassing stripes, florals and plains with an archival essence rarely seen in performance fabric. Printed fabrics are digitally produced at Zoffany's UK factory onto an outdoor-ready base that's mould resistant, lightfast and finished with a fluorine-free treatment for stain and water repellency; woven designs are made from solution-dyed acrylic in Italy to the same exacting standard.
The result is a collection that moves seamlessly between inside and out, with a carefully coordinated palette designed to look as beautiful in outdoor light as it does in a drawing room. Luxury indoor-outdoor fabric, done properly for the first time.
