Villa Nova | Carina

Carina is a plain, and a very wide one. The 280 centimetre width is the point of it: cloth made to be turned on its side and run across a window in one uninterrupted piece. The blend is almost entirely polyester with a little linen worked through, and that linen is what stops it reading as synthetic. A faint irregularity in the yarn catches the light here and there, so the surface looks softened rather than machine-flat. It hangs with weight and springs back into its folds after being pushed aside.

The composition is 95% PL polyester and 5% LI linen, woven to a 280 centimetre width. Being a plain it has no repeat to match. There are eleven colourways running from pale to mid-depth: Parchment and Cashew at the light end, Driftwood and Silt through the middles, Pigeon and Cinder taking it grey, with Alpine bringing in a muted green and Camelia a chalky pink.

This is the cloth we reach for in family houses and let properties, where curtains need to work rather than be admired. We use it for full-height curtains in a double-aspect sitting room, simple roman blinds in bedrooms, and loose covers on a headboard. It sits happily beside a patterned cushion or a printed blind without competing. Order a sample to see it in your own light.

The 280 centimetre width lets you railroad it, running the fabric sideways so a wide window is covered in a single drop with no join in the finished curtain. That matters: a seam down a plain always shows in raking light, however neatly it is sewn. Tell your curtain maker when you order, because quantity is then calculated on the width of the window rather than the drop. Lined and interlined it holds a deep pinch pleat; unlined it makes a soft, light-filtering panel.

• Composition: 95% PL 5% LI
• Width: 280 cm
• Pattern repeat: None — plain
• Suitable for: Curtains, blinds
• Care: Dry clean recommended
• Collection: Estella, Villa Nova
• Colourways: 11 (Agate, Parchment, Driftwood, Alpine, Camelia and 6 others)