Susan Collier

Susan Collier was the co-founder, with her sister Sarah Campbell, of the award-winning company Collier Campbell, one of the most successful textile design businesses in Europe.

Her natural talent attracted the attention of the freelance designer Pat Albeck, who gave her her first job. She soon began selling sketches to the scarf brands Richard Allan and Jacqmar, and in 1961 took her portfolio to Liberty, which bought six of her images and commissioned more. 

Susan Collier’s professional mantra was cheat the repeat - hand painting enabled a rich variation of colour and movement, even in mass-produced fabrics, which could not be achieved by more technical means.

She once described herself as... politically motivated to produce beautiful cloth for the mass market.

She established her own freelance design studio to develop original designs for Liberty of London Prints, and from 1968 was retained by the company, specialising in lively blossoms on Tana lawn cotton. There she was joined by her younger sister Sarah, who had worked for her during school holidays and subsequently studied at art college.

The sisters always painted their designs and continued to do so despite the changes in printing techniques and the coming of computer design. 

In 1971, Susan Collier was appointed design and colour consultant on all Liberty of London Prints’ fabrics and products, with responsibility for the firm’s range of apparel, decorative fabrics and accessories. Under her guidance the firm was transformed from a manufacturer of prints in limited runs into a major supplier of wholesale printed fabric to the mass market, capable of providing fabric in the quantities wanted for couturiers’ new ready-to-wear collections and for the burgeoning furnishings trade.

In the early 1970s the sisters formed the independent Collier-Campbell studio and began to supply fabrics under their own names. It was then that one of their Liberty of London silk dress designs inspired Saint Laurent in his first off-the-peg Gypsy Collection.

By 1980, Collier Campbell had created a niche market as designer textile converters (people who take raw fabric and make the finished product), with a full production and quality control team. They became Habitat’s leading textile converters and also supplied finished cloth to Marks & Spencer, for which they created Tapestry.

In 1984, they won the Duke of Edinburgh’s designer prize for their six views decorative fabric collection. In 1988 they were commissioned by Conran to design the carpets for the new Gatwick North Terminal.

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