Bernat Klein: Influence and Inspiration

20 May 2026, by Alison Carter MA MFA

In this week's blog, Costume Society member Alison Carter reviews The Winchester Gallery's current exhibition on the work of textile designer, colourist, and artist Bernat Klein. The exhibition is on view until 23rd May.

This gloriously colourful exhibition was officially launched at a private view at Winchester School of Art on Thursday 23rd April. Chair and Creative Director of the Bernat Klein Foundation, Professor Alison Harley, spoke of her delight that an exhibition of Klein‘s work had now at last found its first venue outside Scotland at Winchester School of Art, which is part of Southampton University where Bernat’s son Dr Jonathan Klein is Associate Professor of Southampton Business School. Jonathan said a few words about his father’s life and legacy, and how very pleased his family were, to introduce Bernat’s name and design work to a largely new audience south of the Scottish Borders, and how delighted they were to lend some family-held paintings to enhance the exhibition. 

For those of us who missed the exhibition Bernat Klein: A Life in Colour at the Dovecot Studios in the summer of 2015, which featured Bernat Klein’s tapestries which had been woven there in the 1970s, exhibited alongside five decades of his work, and Bernat Klein: Design in Colour at National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh from November 2022 to April 2023 (along with other displays at V & A Dundee, and in Glasgow), it was wonderful to finally see a large number of examples of Klein’s prolific but now widely dispersed output, up close and personal in Winchester!

The Winchester Gallery exhibition displays, in the centre, a host of knitted polyester mini- and maxi dresses and trouser suits in print fabrics designed by Klein, within an oval central reserve, arranged in graduating colours of citric yellow, acid orange, hot pink and red through to imperial purple, blue, teal and spring green - laid out much as in his early shops - in swirling psychedelic patterns that completely caught the zeitgeist of the era and which ran with it and, looking back now, perhaps were often well ahead of it. He was, I sense, a major ‘influencer’, as we would now call him. Large boards on the walls explore, through rare surviving sketches, the intricacy of Klein’s designs and patterns, and display his extensive thought processes and analysis on colour theory.  Samples specifically provided for handling enable visitors to feel the textures of his innovative weaves. Remarkable, close up, is the way he incorporated velvet ribbons into his mohair tweeds, in his signature vibrant palette. Textiles and accessories in flat showcases highlight the complexity of these ribbon-run tweed weaves, and make evident their undulating three-dimensional nature, embodying what one might describe as an intriguing depth of character - like the designer himself.     

Indeed, in his autobiography Eye for Colour (1965) Klein wrote: “Axiomatically a good cloth had character and a cloth with character was good.  It didn’t matter whether this character was similar to that of the cloth worn by Bonnie Prince Charlie or whether it expressed the slightly more up-to-date personality (character perhaps) of the designer. Character!”

Klein’s background is key to understanding his interest from an early age in textiles, and his drive to learn about fibres and dyes and colour, and how to use them in new ways to dramatic effect. His Orthodox Jewish parents were textile wholesalers in Senta, a town in north-eastern Yugoslavia (now Serbia), which he described in Eye for Colour. He recalls wearing to school a Donegal tweed suit of browns and greens made by his mother, and how unusual that clearly was in eastern Europe! He studied first fine art and then switched to textile design at the Bezalel School of Art and Craft in Palestine (1940-43). He then moved to England to study textile technology at Leeds University (1945-8).

Beginning his working life as a designer for Tootal (Bolton), and then at Munrospun (Edinburgh), Klein became a naturalised British citizen in 1950 and married Margaret Soper in 1951. His first company Colourcraft Ltd. in Galashiels was where he was able to start experimenting with innovative colours and textures at a dyeing and weaving mill of his own. In 1962 he was overjoyed to discover that Coco Chanel had ordered his woven fabric ‘Roses’ for her spring collection, and used it for a suit. “This was the design which launched me into the world of couture”, he asserted (Eye for Colour p136). His hard work and determination had triumphed. He had finally established himself as a European textile designer of renown, and the rest of his working career is clearly charted on the Foundation website and in the 2005 book Bernat Klein: Textile Designer Artist Colourist – the setting up of companies in his own name, women’s and menswear woven fabrics (1958-1987), sales and showrooms (1964-1981) ready-to-wear (1966-89), mail order catalogues (1973 to 1980-81), and so forth.  He had stepped into the traditional world of Scottish weaving and turned it on its head, introducing into tweeds both mohair for his ‘mohair tweeds’ and a narrow velvet ribbon for what became known as his ‘velvet tweeds’, in hot pink and Mediterranean sea turquoise colourways that had never been seen before in what were formerly utilitarian tweeds in earthy colours! He took them from country to catwalk. He was driven to constantly come up with new dye processes and new weaving techniques, while still working within the established norms of the textile industry. His dyers and weavers found Mr Klein a tough taskmaster at times!

A 30 minute film runs on a loop in a side gallery, of the interview of Klein in 2012, aged 90, sitting in his modernist architect-designed home, High Sunderland, talking with Prof. Harley. She is laying before him archive examples of his 1960s mohair and ribbon-run woollen tweeds to encourage him to talk – and he does so at length, and with absolute clarity about how nature, as he had acutely observed in terms of colour and texture from early childhood and throughout his long career, living and working on the Scottish borders, always informed his work in a very real way, inspiring his exacting palette of vivid dye colours, and the myriad intricate textural references in his weaves.

The interview is enhanced by dance and music specifically commissioned in 2023, set in the landscape of the hills around High Sunderland, overlooking Ettrick Water, a tributary of the River Tweed. The experience of living in the house as a child was written about by Bernat’s younger daughter Shelley Klein in ‘The See-Through House’ (2021). The house is now privately owned. 

At a talk entitled Bernat Klein: A Lasting Legacy the following evening, Prof. Alison Harley gave some background on the Bernat Klein Foundation she heads up, and introduced the guest speakers. Lisa Mason, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Design at National Museums Scotland, Jonathan Klein, and Mary Schoeser, Patron of the BK Foundation, each spoke aspects of Bernat’s life, his work methodology, his output and legacy. A handout gave each speaker’s background and their connection to Klein variously as an academic, curator, son, and textile historian respectively. Original copies of Bernat’s books ‘Eye for Colour’ (1965) and ‘Design Matters’ (1976), and sets of the personal colour guides (1965) were available to purchase, and are also available to buy on the Foundation website. Alison Harley explained how The Bernat Klein Foundation was set up in 2017 with a clear set of aims to promote and develop the legacy of Klein, with ongoing research projects and publications, and educational outreach activities. It has established partnerships with National Trust Scotland and Scottish Historic Buildings Trust which acquired Klein’s studio in 2025. 

Lisa Mason, who is also Chair of The Dress and Textile Specialists, showed an image of the immaculate store at National Museums Scotland holding Klein’s textile archive. She told how she had, to her great joy, bought a key piece for the collection on ebay! I learned in the coffee break that two audience members were also Klein collectors, each wearing examples of his clothing designs - a thick wool coat and a printed skirt and scarf respectively - bought in vintage and charity shops.

It is important, a couple of the speakers indicated, to set Klein into the context of Jewish emigrees who had a significant impact on British textile design, not least Zika and Lida Ascher who fled Czechoslovakia in 1939 and set up Ascher (London) Ltd, supplying printed fabrics to French Parisian couturiers in advance of Klein – as explored in a fabulous exhibition I was privileged to see in Prague in early summer 2019. Tibor Reich, a Hungarian Jew, also studied at Leeds University at this period and set up Tibor Ltd in 1946, a textile designer and company celebrated in 2016 at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester.

There are sizable holdings of Klein archives also at Herriot Watt University and Borders which I was pleased to find are well explained in an interview between the three curators, which is viewable online.

Jonathan, who paced up and down in jaunty fashion as he spoke, focussed on the inside story – Bernat’s larger-than-life, often irascible character and foibles at home, and his work methodology and legacy. In his foreword to the talk, he shared recollections of his father’s “principles and philosophies of design”’ and sought to “show how these principles link together to form a coherent framework” although he said he was aware of ‘one or two of the implicit contradictions’ within this framework! Their house, designed by Peter Womersely in 1957 and completed in 1958 had many advantages – not least plenty of light and extensive views, but it could be cold and the flat roof did leak, and it was largely open plan with few doors, which made privacy for teenagers like Shelley and himself quite hard to find. Fashion shows and photo shoots were held there, so it was like being in a big open plan office at times. He showed an image of his mother surrounded by patterns on the floor of the sunken lounge, and pointed up that Bernat’s knitting designs are less well known than his textile print designs, but that it was his mother Margaret who worked hard, and successfully, on this aspect of the business. I wonder how many Bernat Klein knitting patterns and even samples there are in the Montse Stanley Archive at Southampton University…

Mary Schoeser’s focus for her excellent presentation entitled ‘Nature is Everything’ was, to quote from the handout: “on the significance of Klein’s acute perceptions of nature. It looks especially at his handling of colour and texture, illustrating how his sensory skills captured the haptic qualities of his environment. His yarns, dyes, cloths and architecture are all considered, and links are made to other great minds who have recorded an equal reverence for nature”. Mary told us that she had actually been lucky enough to have a placement with Bernat Klein early in her career, and went to his studio, though she added that curiously she remembers little about it, except the views. And perhaps that was the point of the studio; it was a two storey glass, wood and brick structure that immersed the studio space in the natural environment, brought the outside in, placed inspiration directly in front of the designer and his team’s eyes. What had been especially lovely to see in the Winchester Gallery exhibition were fabulous high quality scale models of High Sunderland and the Studio.

Mary’s talk was insightful and poetic. She included further personal recollections, noting that there is a coat designed by the Lilli Ann clothing company of San Francisco in Bernat Klein mohair tweed dating to c1964 in the National Museums Scotland collection, so Klein’s textiles were already known to certain clients out in California when Mary herself was growing up there. She also talked of how virtually half of us can trace an ancestor back to the textile industry somewhere around the world – one of her great grandparents worked a spinning mule in a Bolton cotton mill. That made me reflect that my great, great grandma was a woollen cloth weaver in Melksham, Wiltshire, while my husband’s father in Hong Kong was floor manager of a textile factory. 

Jonathan was reticent to say that his father was a genius in his field but when Mary asserted that he was, it was good to see Jonathan smile and reluctantly agreed that yes, he was indeed a genius. He showed slides of more of Bernat’s large output paintings and told us that High Sunderland had been described as a “Mondrian set within a Klimt’, which seemed to be reference Bernat himself would have enjoyed. The house extolled what Jonathan called the ‘Vitruvian trio” (also known as triad or virtues) of “firmness, commodity and delight”. He spoke of Bernat’s huge debt to European artists – Turner, Monet, Kokoshka, and not least to Seurat and his pointillist technique.  His father’s paintings, he told us, were formed not just of oil and acrylic paints, but might on occasion incorporate fabrics too – not something I had previously appreciated, but not a surprise given that collage was so beloved of the experimental ‘60s era, of course. As an amusing aside, Jonathan was also pleased to tell us that Richard Coles’ 2nd murder mystery novel  ‘Death in the Parish’ of 2023 makes reference to his father Bernat’s designs – so was Canon Clement’s formidable mother Audrey (played by Amanda Redman in series one) portrayed as a fan of Klein textile designs? More research needed… off I go on another tangent!

Klein’s work is known to many in the dress history field from dress and fabric labels in museum collections, but seeing the collection on display and learning more about the designer, I also realise that some of us may have taken in Klein designed items without realising they were by him – I can think of dresses at Hampshire’s museum archives (in particular a couple of mini dresses donated by Dr Ann Saunders, former Costume Society journal editor), that I would now like to revisit to double check. So, the exhibition and study evening worked their magic on me, stimulating my brain out of retirement, and I am so pleased I made the effort to attend both events! My question to the panel at the end, “are there any plans to tour the exhibition on further?”, was met with an affirmative from Prof Harley, as she was pleased to say they had heard just that morning that a venue in Belfast will be taking the exhibition later in the year!

The Bernat Klein exhibition at The Winchester Gallery on the Winchester School of Art campus is the second show in 18 months to focus on what we can now call vintage dress and textiles, after the success of the Sue Clowes displays of 1980s Boy George era clothing which Costume Society members visited in January 2025 (as did Boy George himself as we later discovered, and I mentioned in my review of that show in The Thread). For those of us who have had contact with Winchester School of Art over the past four decades, whether as course leaders – Barbara Burman and Dr Lesley Miller, and indeed Mary Schoeser herself for a couple of terms - and students of the MA Textiles and Fashion History, including, not least, Dr Hilary Davidson, and also for a period the redoubtable team of Textile Conservation Staff based in Winchester for some ten years, or just as occasional guest lecturers like myself, ever grateful to scoop up volunteers for Hampshire’s museums service costume department, several of whom helped to form the Southern Counties Costume Society in 1995, it is always a joy to see the interest aroused, amongst general visitors and students alike, by past fashions seen up close, in the round, rather than on hangers and in boxes in store, or simply in photographs and online images.

I was also fortunate to be given space to display museum collections in the Winchester Gallery on occasion: with Printed Dress of the Jazz Age in the late 1980s, and Home Dressmaking for Barbara Burman’s project of that name in the early 1990s. In those days there were specific print and weave and knit departments. Indeed my lodger, when I first moved to Winchester in 1986 and bought a house, was the print technician at WSA. Now textile design is mainly digital, but there is an MA in Fashion Design and I always enjoy the degree shows. The Winchester Gallery itself held a 40 year respective of its largely contemporary art exhibitions last autumn, and inevitably made me think, as an art historian first, dress historian second, about how art has so often informed fashion – which is what we see with Bernat Klein’s methodology in taking inspiration from Seurat and Kokoshka, and so often working out his ideas in paint first, and then in fibres. It was especially good to see in the Bernat Klein exhibition, and in the projects set up by the Bernat Klein Foundation, modern interpretations of Klein’s designs promoting his legacy. Klein’s views on the challenges for 1960s and early 70s art schools as outlined in ‘Eye for Colour’ and expanded upon in ‘Design Matters’ might provide today’s art college tutors with an interesting insight into his understanding of how student creativity should best be guided, and then harnessed into production! 

Bernat Klein: Influence and Inspiration is on display at The Winchester Gallery until 23rd May 2026.