Trina Turk x FLOR

Tell us about yourself, your brand, and your design philosophy. 

I grew up in ’60s and ’70s California. Those years were a colorful and crafty time on the West Coast—in fashion, interior design, and generally in the culture. Remember yellow and orange cars?

I’m half-Japanese on my mom’s side. I moved to LA in 1985 for a design job and have been based here ever since—I consider myself an Angeleno. Trina Turk was launched in 1995, after working as a designer for other brands for 12 years. The early years of my career were spent mostly designing juniors, so a goal in starting Trina Turk was to design something I would actually wear myself. My design philosophy is based on American ready-to-wear and all that encompasses. I don’t believe in taking yourself too seriously.

You play a lot with bold colors and patterns—can you tell us what inspires these design choices? 

Weekly flea market forays around LA in the late ’80s and early ’90s with my late husband Jonathan Skow had us looking at tons of vintage printed textiles, which we started to collect.

By offering vivid color and print from the beginning, we stood out a bit in a sea of minimalism. Buyers responded to the print and color, and that was what I was interested in anyhow, so the two combined set the tone and led the way for the brand.

Tell us about your collaboration process and how FLOR played a role. 

We have a large archive of vintage garments, accessories, wallpaper, prints, and textiles at the Trina Turk design studio, which we call the vintage room. In our first meeting, we reviewed many more ideas than needed, so it became an editing process. We knew it was going to be good even at that first meeting.

The partnership with FLOR seemed very natural as we both have an affinity for color, and as I looked through the brand’s catalog, there seemed to be an organic match. I thought the idea of using our archive of patterns in the FLOR tile concept would be really interesting.

What aspects of FLOR mirror your own design choices and brand? 

I think FLOR and Trina Turk have lots of similarities when you take into account FLOR’s brand pillars—smart, beautiful, and responsible. Responsibility and sustainability are such important topics within fashion and interior design. For FLOR, responsibility means recyclability and carbon neutrality within their area rugs, and for Trina Turk, our responsibility shows in our designing of collections that are meant to last. Our pieces are not something our customers throw away after wearing once. We are also experimenting with sustainable fabrication.

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