Regular blog readers will recall that I find the very concept of “Jane Austen-inspired” smells, flavors, and visuals – as in Austen perfume, toothpaste or knitting patterns – bizarre and problematic. I accept that this is because I am a blinkered and limited human being.
Clearly, however, others are far less bemused by Austen-inspired brand extension than I am. The latest evidence of this fact is the Jane Austen textile design competition co-sponsored by the Whitchurch Silk Mill, a historic nineteenth-century factory located not far from Steventon, the Hampshire village where Jane Austen was born and lived until she was twenty-five.
Earlier this week, the mill announced that a textile pattern designed by Nicole Calliste, a student at the Winchester School of Art, had won a contest “to produce a design which reflected Jane Austen’s enduring influence for a modern-day audience.” (Like so much else going on in Hampshire this year, the competition is part of the commemoration of the bicentenary of Austen’s death.)
Calliste’s design, which she will weave on a handloom at the mill, was inspired by the curious and imaginative Catherine Morland, the heroine of Northanger Abbey. “This is the sort of fabric a young woman of great imagination and creativity may have chosen today,” the mill’s director says.
By June, the pattern will be for sale in the mill’s gift shop, incorporated into pencil cases and other items. Judging from the newspaper photo, it’s a bright and appealing textile. But if you didn’t already know it was Austen-inspired, could you tell? I couldn’t – but, as we’ve already established, I’m blinkered and limited.