Miami motifs: costumier Catherine Martin designs textiles for Mokum

There seems to be no end to Catherine Martin’s creativity. The Australian star has won four Academy Awards and a Tony for her costume and production designs, created a menswear range for Brooks Brothers, supplied the vision for the Faena Hotel Miami Beach and turned her hand to homeware collections. Her latest creation is her third fabric range for Mokum Textiles, entitled ’Paradiso’.

’I spent a lot of time in Miami when I was working on the Faena Hotel project,’ says Martin speaking from New York, where she’s working with husband Baz Luhrmann on a forthcoming Netflix series, The Get Down. ’The glamorous 1950s vibe of Miami, as well as huge amounts of research into the 1940s hotel scene there, really led me to a couple of motifs that were very popular in that time period,’ she explains.

Those motifs are flamingoes and the sun. They’re joined by a third design, a coral pattern. All are available in a number of colours, and are suitable for both indoor and outdoor use.

This type of design work gives Martin the opportunity to express her own ideas. ’When you work on a story in movie-making or opera or musical theatre, your inspiration always needs to be the essential story – and helping the director and actors tell that story,’ she explains. ’When I design fabrics there is discipline involved and you have to think about the material and the world in which you’re working. Designing fabric allows an enormous amount of creative freedom so it’s lots of fun.’

And her perfect piece of furniture for the range? An Eames rocker in white, finished with Helios fabric in yellow. ’I can only imagine that for a Saturday afternoon on a sunny spot on your porch, reading a good book and drinking a glass of wine, there couldn’t be anything better.’