Travel + Leisure
Traveling to the Source

Four globe-trotting American designers tell how they team up with indigenous artisans, by Elizabeth Garnsey

One of Ralph Lauren's and Calvin Klein's secret sources for fabrics, John Robshaw has his textiles produced by age-old methods—ikat weaving in Bangkok, batik in Java, wood-block printing in Jaipur. Now debuting: Swami, his line of batik surf wear "By producing my textiles abroad, I get to become a minor character in the lives of the people I work with," says fabric designer John Robshaw. "I go to their weddings, celebrate their festivals, eat in their houses, and inspect the new washing machine they bought after I placed a large order. In Jaipur, India, I stay in the Hotel Diggi Palace, which is a sort of designer's ghetto where foreign artists hang out. I have breakfast every day on a terrace overlooking the garden courtyard, filled with peacocks, monkeys, and birds stopping on their migration to Siberia. You pay as little as two dollars a night for one of the spartan stone rooms, which have marble floors, ceiling fans, and lots of windows and balconies—very Moghul-modern. I love Indian snack food. The best lassi [a cold yogurt drink] I ever had is at one particular stand in Jaipur that sells it in clay cups. When you're finished, you just throw the cup down in the street, and it crumbles and then dissolves in the rain—insta-recycling. I always travel with a snorkel and mask, my fifteen-year-old Nikon, and very little clothing—I make myself new shirts and pants along the way."
[caption: Soft touch. LEFT: Samples from John Robshaw's linen closet. RIGHT: The designer on a Victorian chair upholstered with his Thai ikat fabric.]