Layering images for a magic carpet ride
By Lisa Casinger -- Home Accents Today, 8/1/2005
Liora Manné
The Back StoryGrowing up in Jerusalem, Liora Manné never dreamed of becoming an artist.
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Her family moved to Atlanta when she was 16, and at 17 she taught Hebrew and worked at the Israeli consulate filing. Manné studied journalism and theater in college and graduated from Georgia State University. She went to North Carolina State University to pursue a master's degree in theater, hoping to take a few design classes to fuel her passion. Luckily, a professor saw her portfolio and encouraged her into a full-time design program. She graduated with a master's degree in textile design and engineering, and while still in school started working for Cotton Inc.
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Manné's intention wasn't just to design product, but also to be involved in the crafting and production of it, working with the machinery and yarns, the tools of her trade. She'd always done batik and in 1975, when Cotton Inc. saw some of her prints, the company wanted to produce them commercially.
She moved to New York, where she designed fabrics for the apparel industry and enjoyed success with her textiles because they were three-dimensional and incorporated unusual elements. Manné worked in the apparel industry for several years, but became discouraged as more and more production was going overseas and being knocked off for mass retailing.
During that time she came up with the idea for and name of Lamontage, which comes from lamina (layering) and montage (images), her patented process for a "whole new textile." She quit her job, rented a small work space and set about creating colors, building the small machines needed and trying to convince large, non-woven factories "to stop what they were doing and do my work." By 1991 she was ready for production and decided to start with rugs.
"I had this whole new textile that could be anything but didn't know where to start, so I picked rugs because it's very artistic, it has beginning and end," Manné said. "I made a few rugs but knew nothing about marketing them. I went to a retailer and she said 'wow this is beautiful, but it doesn't have a pile, why don't you do it in knotted' and I thought gosh they don't get it."
Lamontage combines the ancient art of felting with modern technology and has a flat surface. Manné and her artisans hand layer, mix and cut custom-dyed acrylic fibers (more than 600 hues) into intricate patterns in her New York studio, which are then interlocked by hand needle-punching and saturated with natural latex making them durable and suitable for indoor or outdoor use.
Manné went back to the drawing board and came up with her Mosaic collection; still crafted with the Lamontage technique, but done in mosaic patterns it produced a pile-like feel. Soon magazines started featuring her rugs, which created and opened a market for her. Designer showrooms like Schumacher and Stark carried them, as well as ABC Carpet & Home.
"I loved the rugs so much so I started designing conventional rugs (first with Pande Cameron and eight years ago she began working with Transocean)," Manné said. "That was great because it generated the income to sustain me through my research development and continuation with the new processes."
Today Manné's brand includes furniture, a lighting license with AF Lighting, a tabletop license with Dansk, jewelry, purses, tabletop and more. She showcases her brand in her SoHo store, which she opened a year and a half ago, and her designs are carried in stores all across the county and even in MoMa.
Since the debut of Lamontage, Manné also has patented another production technique, Montique, which encapsulates woven fibers in vinyl and is transformed into things like placemats, purses, lighting and platters. Lumina is her collection of colored fibers hand-layered into resin for items like tabletop and functional works of art. Solara also incorporates hand-layered fibers and resin but this collection is poured into molds to make items like jewelry and handbags.
This year Manné debuted two Lamontage rug collections, Dimensions, a 3-D pattern, and Elements, which incorporates grommets into its design. In October Nike will launch its Liora Manné sneaker, Flor has picked up some of her designs for production and she will launch a line of ottomans with Visual Comfort. Liora Manné is enjoying success as her designs and production techniques have found their audience, but she's always working on the next project.
"The ICFF this year was amazing," she said. "In earlier years everything was very minimalist and black and white while I was always about color and this year it was about color. People came to our booth and said where have you been? I've been here but the world wasn't ready."
Design Process and Inspiration"I travel all over the world for product development and that provides a lot of inspiration," Manné said.
Translating her ideas to product can be a simple as going into the backroom of her New York studio and pulling colorful fibers together or as involved as giving her rough sketches to one of her designers who works with computers.
"I have a great playground with my studio," she said. "Being involved in the product development, having all the fibers here, working on different techniques, it all makes ideas happen."
Creative people and artists also inspire Manné. When she first moved to New York, she met designer Todd Oldham who used some of her fabrics in one of his fashion shows and since they've worked together on hotel and other design installations. She's a collector of Natvar Barshar's art, someone she said is "an amazing artist."
ChallengesManné said the biggest challenge is "not to drop the balls" because there are so many details, everything is in the details and you can't overlook them, involved in having so many different aspects of the business. She tries not to lose sight of the big picture, and though balancing everything is challenging, she says it also is exciting.
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