Designer - Anne Kyyro Quinn

Anne Kyyro Quinn is a freelance fabric designer who embarks on producing three-dimensional textiles, mainly famous for her organic detailed cushions. Quinn does not describe her products as luxurious, but her designs have sculptural three dimensional qualities and could almost be looked upon as a work of art, making them incomparable to most other textile designs, and very rare.

Quinn is based in London and her company is a reasonably small textile based business which was started in 1999; and arguably not the most recognisable designer.

Quinn’s approach to fabric design is very different to traditional textiles as her designs are usually made up of only one block colour. The 3D qualities however within the material’s structure create extraordinary patterns, and speak for themselves. These are what would usually be printed on to the material – therefore creating unusual, yet aesthetically pleasing fabric designs.

Quinn works using, most significantly throughout all of her designs, felt. Felt is made up entirely of wool fibres, and most commonly merino wool. Felt also has a property which enables Quinn’s designs, particularly her custom fabric wall panels to be sound proof, as well as being flame retardant.

Quinn’s designs are finished by hand, this is something which large retailers would never consider because it would be extremely time consuming, meaning it would be hard to find something similar and making these the perfect choice. Typically the felt in Quinn’s design is usually very vibrant, felt is dyed easily, and can be effortlessly sculpted into virtually any shape, this is how Quinn’s stylish and modern designs are created. The finished textiles are very different to other designs on the high street and not easily replicated by larger brands, because they would find it extremely hard to manufacture and produce these sorts of designs in a factory environment.

Quinn’s designs also prove very time consuming to make, especially if you want a quick turnover, which large retailers do. Quinn’s textiles show how she connects with the materials she is using to enable maximum quality and function, as well as being aware of the overall appearance. 

Luxury brands are often the same sized companies as Quinn’s, but this company are still reasonably unrecognised and thus fairly flexible in what they offer, custom designs can be considered and Quinn can work closely with the client personally to achieve a superb service and gratifying finished product.

It is arguable that Quinn could be seen as more ethical than the other designer’s because her primary source material itself is eco-friendly, as well as not needing a great deal of machinery to manufacture it, other than sewing machines to embroider sections together. Because she finishes them by hand this is also saving energy. However regarding production there is no information stating Quinn’s company to be ‘fair-trade’ or ‘ethical’, this isn’t surprising though for such a small company. Quinn’s products, once finished, look very exclusive and impressive. Quinn’s cushions average between 80-130 British sterling pounds and it can easily be imagined people paying even more, due to the products being so unique and as stated before very hard to replicate thus no cheaper mass-production alternative.