During the decade before he emerged as "the world's most famous postwar artist" in the 1960s, Andy Warhol worked in the world of commercial design and advertising, said Giles Sutherland in The Times. His illustrations for magazines and retail clients are already well documented, but one aspect of his pre-fame career – his work as a textile designer – has until recently been overlooked.
Warhol "did not design clothing, nor was he a couturier"; he sold his patterns to manufacturers, "often anonymously". The printed fabrics, emblazoned with "repeated motifs" of "socks, ice-creams, hats, shoes and butterflies", would then be used to create all kinds of "colourful fashion items", from "petite dresses" to "underwear, blouses and swimwear".
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"The clothes themselves feel very 1950s and Doris Day, prim and conservative," said Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times. When you see swatches of his fabrics on their own, however, "the unmistakable Warhol touch magics away the date and takes us somewhere timeless". His patterns are "light and airy", becoming ever "cheekier" and more absurdist as the show progresses: "birds and butterflies" on early pieces give way to "unlikely pieces of gardening equipment or weird types of writing implement"; everything is drawn with his "blotchy trademark line", usually against a white background.
There's humour, too. One cloth is "covered with pretend buttons", another with Manhattan pretzels; Warhol's "plebeian fondness for shopfront America" was not ironic. This show is a "delightful" exploration of "a lost bit of Warhol".
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