Textile Museum St. Gallen

Midge

Midge

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The wonderful textile museum in St. Gallen has a new exhibition - which I will surely visit (and report back)!

This time, it's about the innovative fabrics that the textile company Schlaepfer created from 1965 til 1995: http://www.textilmuseum.ch/lisbet-und-robert-j-schlapfer-textile-innovationen-1965-1995/

Schlaepfer is part of St. Gallen's textile industry, and at some point they started to specialise in special fabrics - embroideries, sequins and all that - and for those kinds of fabrics, they became the first go-to for many Haute Couture houses.

There was an article in my newspaper today, talking a bit more about it, and explaining that for some time, Chanel always got the first choice when they had new designs. The company is actually still around - as part of a bigger company, but still under the old name. There was an exhibition a few years ago here in Zurich about the rise of the textile industry in St. Gallen (whicht started with hand embroidery and lace), which featured some amazing Haute Couture designs using Schlaepfer's extravagant fabrics (think Christian Lacroix - he was another big client of theirs in more recent years). This exhibition here will focus only on Schlaepfer and show the fabrics, but also design sketches, sample books - and sample dresses (made to showcase the fabrics), designed by the company director's wife, Lisbet Schlaepfer, and sewn by their house seamstress. According to the paper, they must be spectacular. I can't wait to see this! :)

Karin
 
Here it is - a 60s mini in a rather wonderful lurex pucci-esque fabric. I did research a little, but I don't think I realised that St Gallen was famous for textiles.

St Gallen dress.jpg


St Gallen dress 2.jpg
 
Oh Ruth, this is divine! I don't know the company either - there have been lots of smaller textile companies all over Switzerland. And often there's almost no records to be found about them unfortunately.
St. Gallen started producing fabrics in the middle ages and went into lace and embroideries later, which they're still famous for, and there were lots of silk-weaving companies in and around Zurich. Like Abraham, who were most famous was probably their partnership with Yves Saint Laurent. The canton of Ticino still has a lower salary level than the rest of Switzerland, so some companies still produce there, instead of moving to eastern Europe or something like that - the quality of work in Ticino is still better. Zimmerli produces there, and I've read that Ermengildo Zegna have their fabrics made there too.

Karin
 
It's a fabulous dress, I loved it! Surprisingly for such a fabric, which I think was probably a nylon or polyester knit, shot with silver lurex, it had quite bad moth damage. I still managed to sell it for reasonable price (with full disclosure of course!).
 
Thanks for that Linda - the article sums it up nicely :)!
Forster Rohner were in the exhibition here in Zurich a few years ago too. It's utterly amazing what they are able to create. St. Gallen isn't quite a "mountain town" though, but a city with a long and illustrious history - not only known for the textile industry, but also it's abbey, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Karin
 
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