Cole & Son | Couture Carousel Cushion Monochrome

In the Monochrome palette the Couture Carousel design becomes something closer to a drawing than to a print. Stripped of colour, the sixteen hand-painted figures, each standing for an era of couture from the fifties through to the nineties, read purely as line and silhouette, which is how fashion illustration is usually first set down before anything is coloured in.

The making is the same across the range and it is good. The cushion is backed and piped in Colour Box Velvet, so the seam is defined rather than folded and the reverse has the weight to keep the face flat. The inner is feather and down, which holds a shape, takes an impression and settles properly against a sofa back, none of which a synthetic filling manages.

At 50 cm square it belongs at the back of a deep sofa or against a headboard, where the scale of the drawing has room to register. It is handmade in Great Britain. Being unpatterned in colour terms, it is the easiest of the range to place: it sits against almost any upholstery, and it works especially well in a room where everything else is texture rather than pattern. It is the version to choose if the room is already carrying colour.