Harris Reed Transforms Victorian Wallpaper Into Fashion in Latest Collaboration

"I think history is everything," Harris Reed tells me, the lilt of his accent, a British-American mélange, curling around the words. "You learn the most from looking back."

It is mere days after his Spring/Summer 2025 presentation—a paean to the world of lost textiles, with structural gowns made from vintage haberdashery fabrics to 200-year-old Point de Venise lace tablecloths. I’ve caught him in the flux period; he’s about to go do it all again at Paris Fashion Week. Any other designer would be out of puff, but Reed is alacritous, brisk, full of life. The 28-year-old, a 2020 graduate of Central Saint Martins, has a résumé many designers dream of, built within just four years: well-received collections, made notable by his fastidious, capital R-romantic taste; a first-ever client in Harry Styles, whom he dressed in an internet-breaking gown for Vogue; and, as of 2022, an appointment to creative director at Nina Ricci. For a young designer moving rollercoaster-fast, looking to the past is not just a way to slow it all down—it’s a way to build an unshakeable foundation. 

That foundation takes root in Reed’s longstanding partnership with Fromental, a hand-painted and hand-embroidered wallcovering atelier based in London. Led by husband-and-wife team Tim Butcher and Lizzie Deshayes, the studio shares a kindred brand philosophy with Reed’s. Here are meticulously crafted silk wallcoverings, including fluid and flowering chinoiserie; replicated travertine, glossed by iridescent metallic paints in gestural motion; and distinctly English bucolic landscapes, painted in the style of 19th-century plein air prints, among countless others. Fromental, too, nods to the past. For their 2022 collaboration with interior design enterprise Rinck, Butcher and Deshayes carefully wafted through the archives of Le Mobilier National—the French government’s archive of furniture and textiles—to find upholstery patterns from 20th-century objects. “At Fromental, we strive to create pieces that are not just visually striking, but that resonate on a deeper level, evoking a sense of wonder and connection,” Butcher says. 

The partnership materialized after Reed sought out Fromental’s work for his London home. Butcher called their first meeting an “alchemical reaction,” with common ground found in their mutual love for rare textiles, archival textures, and chintzy prints. Everything fell into perfect order—Fromental collaborated with Reed on his Fall/Winter 2024 collection, “Shadow Dance,” repurposing opulent Victorian silk wallpapers as fabrics, and, in May, embroidered an archived peony design for Demi Moore’s flowerbomb Met Gala look.

“Taking wallpaper really worked well with our design process,” Reed says. “The team was very worried knowing the fragility, and knowing some of it had hundreds of hours of hand embroidery and hand painting that was going to be quite difficult to work with. But as someone who likes to work with massive silhouettes and to push the boundaries of how clothing can be worn, I was looking at the clothing more like a Henry Moore sculpture, something that's much more sculptural. The wallpaper was incredible because it allowed me to wrap it around the body, manipulate it, use it, and make it more sculptural. A lot of times with my fabrics, I have to fuse canvas and horsehair to allow it to have structure. The great thing about the wallpaper is it had that rigidity and that stiffness to really allow the sculptures and pieces to come together. So they really kind of brought one another to life.”

According to Reed, the partnership is a testament to the “ethereal and the material,” and what we might glean from looking to the past. Reed tells me that his design process stems from tactile experience; the collaboration’s creative emphasis was based on deadstock, esoteric materials. “It really was whatever we found,” he says. “I knew we wanted to play with color. I knew I wanted to play with texture. I was really drawn to the heavily embroidered pieces, the nature scapes, things that had birds and animals. We can use old wallpaper and give it this new life, and Fromental really allowed us to do that.”

The Harris Reed modus operandi—maximalism, romance, theatricality, fluidity—is perfectly squared against Fromental’s delicate, ornate work on such massive canvases. “The collaboration reflects a commitment to craftsmanship, attention to detail, and a deep respect for the materials we work with. It also embodies the idea that true creativity often comes from the meeting of different minds and disciplines,” Butcher says.

Butcher and Deshayes’s shared experience in fashion and textiles—the pair have backgrounds in creating hand-painted fabrics for designers and couturiers like Oscar de la Renta, Matthew Williamson, Christina Kim, and Gilles Mendel—are on full display. “Our initial journey and vision for wallpapers was profoundly influenced by fashion. To marry the discipline of fashion with the expansiveness of interiors, creating something that is both intimate and grand,” Butcher says. “Fabric and papers share a common language of texture, pattern, and color. To come full circle and bring 20 years of our experimentation into the collection was a celebration and a homecoming.”