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olorful, hand-painted or -dyed Indian bedcovers made
of lightweight cotton and known as palampores became
all the rage in 17th-century Europe when East India
firms began importing them westward. By the 1800s,
brothers Alexandre and Charles-Henri Braquenié, of the
namesake French fabric house, were printing spin-offs.
One of their clients’ favorites, block printed and sometimes painted
on crisp white cotton, was called Le Grand Génois (likely for the Italian
city that produced many palampore riffs) and bore a winding Tree of
Life. The decorative motif symbolizing eternal life was fitting, consider-
ing how the pattern has proliferated since.
“My first memory of it is in Hubert de Givenchy’s home outside of
Paris,” says interior designer Mark D. Sikes, recalling a famously flowered
guest bedroom at the haute couturier’s Manoir du Jonchet. There,
Le Grand Génois covered walls, seats, cushions, and a lit à la polonaise;
it also framed a window. Sikes took note, using the same fabric to
canopy and curtain his own spare room in Los Angeles. “At first sight
I knew I wanted to create a whole room of it.”
He’s not the only one. Tastemakers from entrepre-
neur Chris Burch to supermodel Claudia Schiffer
have ordered yards of the legendary pattern, which is
now screen-printed and sold to the trade through
Pierre Frey. AD100 interior designer Daniel Romualdez
took things a step further in his Connecticut bedroom,
applying Le Grand Génois en suite, on the bed, sofa,
cushions, and walls.
Other aesthetes prefer the motif in smaller doses:
Textile designer Carolina Irving used Le Grand
Génois for a pillow in her pattern-filled Paris flat; this
summer, interior designer CeCe Barfield Thompson
deployed a swath as a tablecloth that served as the
backdrop for her new china. Still, there’s no denying
the success of a palampore used as originally intended—
in the bedroom. Muses Sikes: “There’s something
wonderfully romantic about falling asleep surroundedby that pattern.” pierrefrey.com (^) —HANNAH MARTIN
object lesson