Designtex Revisits Color Palettes From Decades Past

On a park bench in Manhattan in 1961, Ralph Saltzman and Harry Paley founded Designtex as a response to a problem that architects in the city faced at the time. The glass skyscrapers being built were the pinnacles of modernism, but the many different window treatments installed on different floors broke the clean-lined aesthetic. The company’s answering product was a translucent drapery architects could specify during construction of their buildings to unify the appearance. (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe promptly installed it in the Seagram Building.) Myriad collections followed, some accompanied by witty trade-targeted campaigns—“Designtex has a flock of beautiful contract wools” from the ’60’s and “Two can. You and Designtex.” from the ’70’s. Cut to now: 60 years after the launch of its first full-fledge collection, in 1962, the brand revisits the color options of polyester-crepe Senecal, its generous 66-inch width making it ideal for today’s need for large privacy panels.