As a renowned designer and trend forecaster in the design community, Stacy Garcia often finds inspiration during her time spent on the road. “Inspiration for me absolutely comes from my travels, especially boutique hotels,” she said. “I will often make visits to different locales just to experience how design is impacting various places. I also find inspiration in patterns and colors form different cultures.”
In Garcia’s recent collaboration with Durkan Hospitality, she was particularly inspired by Asian cultures for the new Pacific Rim carpet collection, which was also very much influenced by a return to traditional textile making. “As the name implies, you see patterning, color, and techniques that come from a certain area of the world,” Garcia noted. “With traditional textile making, there is a real hands-on approach; Pacific Rim honors these traditional techniques with a return to the craftsmanship and history of textile making from this part of the world. There is an overarching desire for people today to unplug from technology and surround themselves with authentic items.”
With that, the design process for Pacific Rim began by hand, with Garcia’s team conceptualizing the collection with handmade patterns and illustrations. By utilizing this traditional technique, a connection is made to materials and goods that aren’t mass produced by machines. “These designs don’t look computer generated on purpose,” she explained. “I went to art school before computers, so I was doing hand-carved block printing, hand looming, and painting with watercolors. To create a collection utilizing these techniques was so much fun. I challenged the team to dig in and not use computers until we were ready to scan their designs. It had to start by hand, like the old-fashioned way of making textiles.”
