S5E06 Rethinking Color with Anna Starmer

Anna Starmer talked to TCA about her vision on the future of color being more value-based where homogenous colors have no place and we select colors that fit our values, that are beautiful and endure the test of time. 

Anna Starmer has been guiding brand colour direction for over 25 years. Her colour library, client palettes and Luminary colour publications reveal the future thinking that will shape the future of colour and materials. She is a board member of the British Textile Colour Group, Intercolor and Interfilliere Salon de la Lingerie Paris. And sits on the colour futures panel for Dulux Paints.

Beyond her books, Anna works directly with brands and retailers, manufacturers, organisations and universities. She understands the technical language of colour, from materials for Dualit or Volvo, to colours for Triumph Lingerie to Ikea. Communicating and visualising colour for brands and manufacturers, Anna has developed colour libraries for clients, from Manolo Blahnik to Marks and Spencer. 

Luminary Colour is the bi-annual publication and colour library, founded and created by Anna Starmer. The books and colour swatches are hand made in the UK to an exacting technical standard. Luminary has evolved organically from a future colour forecasting service with a 2-3 year ahead season, into a non-seasonal platform of inspiration and innovation; today we collaborate with botanical dyers, wild dye plant foragers, waste food pigments, waste material specialists and bio-colour innovators – featuring emerging colour swatches in every book.

Colour and material futures sit at the heart of our creative practice, yet beauty is so much deeper than surface level. Our stories have deep rooted connections to the origin of colour and long-term future intentions, way beyond a single season. Our work visualises a regenerative future, exploring a wiser, more intuitive ways of making and creating. 

Transcript

Judith van Vliet : Good afternoon everyone. And this is Judith van Vliet, podcasting out of Madrid with the color authority. Today I'm going to be talking to Anna Stamper, who has been guiding brand color direction for over 25 years. Her color library client palettes and luminary color publications reveal the future of thinking that will shape the future of colour and materials. She's a board member of the british textile colour group Intercolor and interfilier Salon de la Ligeride Empari, and she also sits on color future panels for deluxe paints. Beyond her books, Anna works directly with brand and retailers, manufacturer organizations and universities. She understands the technical language of colour. Coming from Doualit or Volvo to colours for triumph lingerie to Ikea, she communicates and visualizes colour for brands and manufacturers. Anna has developed color libraries for clients from Manolo Blahnik to Marks and Spencer. Good afternoon, Anna. Welcome to the Color Authority and I welcome you to this podcast and I'm super excited to talk to you. How are you today?

Anna Stamper: I'm good. Thank you for having me. Yeah, on this grey day in England, it's good to talk about colour.

Judith van Vliet : I'll set you a bit of sun out of Madrid because as you can see, I'm warm and also I'm in the dark because literally the sun is already hitting the apartments a little bit too far. But that's good for colour as well. It's good to have a mix of sometimes gray days and sometimes sunny days to pick up colors.

Anna Stamper: Very true. Yes. We need a bit more sunshine, though.

Judith van Vliet : Talking about colour and talking about sunshine, I always ask the very first question. It's the same for every interview that I do, and I look forward to hear your reply. And that is what color is to you personally, Anna?

Anna Stamper: Yeah, it's such a hard question because it's kind of everything to me. It's literally everything. But I think color is treasure. Color is treasure because it's, you know, I think we seek out good colors, like looking for treasure. But also I think the way that we work with color material is I talk a lot about creating treasure, creating colors that are going to be sort of heirlooms that you want to hand down to your children in the future. Things that are going to be around for a long time. And these elements are precious. Colour is very precious. It's my richest source of inspiration. I never stop thinking about it. I dream in colors. I think about color when I'm in my yoga class, when I'm in the bath, I'm obsessed. And that's why I do what I do.

Judith van Vliet : I know this is so many people. I mean, your answer is, again, different than any other of the interviews. And that's why I love this question, because it's always different. But the only common thing is that it is all, everything, or it is life. A lot of people say it's life and it's my life. It's my constant, the constant thing that's always on my mind. But you do something quite different than some of the people that I've interviewed before, because you encourage global design thinkers, creatives to shift, to shift to more an intuitive approach to what is design, to what is color. Can you explain a little bit of how you're trying to shift the values of how we design, how we produce, into, you know, these creative minds?

Anna Stamper: Yeah, I mean, so I come from a more. Well, you know, I've been doing this for over 25 years, but historically, I started out, I was actually a knitwear designer and a textile designer. And I went into work in an amazing studio in London after being at Chelsea College. And I was working with a team of people who set up the Pantone View color partner, and I was working with yarn companies on color cards. I was working with brands on color trends for two years ahead. And I learned in that role the how to be a colour forecaster and what it was all about. I learned about creating visuals and photography to bring color palettes to life. I also became a member of the british textile colour group. So I've been a member of that group for nearly 30 years. And I met a lot of amazing people in the industry who are doing still amazing things. People like Sandy Maclennan at East Central Studios, David Shah, who I was working with. I worked as the editor of the mix. I worked with WGSM when they launched. So I've been in this industry for a long time. And when I started, it was always absolutely a cyclical every six months, producing a spring summer colour card and an autumn winter color card, there was a set amount of colours. We were encouraging brands to think outside of the box, but also to use colors which were trend forward or fashion forward. I used to do a lot of travel to take street photography all over the world and bring that back to brands, obviously, all on actual film cameras as well, back then. And then I went to work for brands. So I was working with a lot of British high street brands, producing trend forecasts as well. And in the early two thousands, it speeded up even more and brands were wanting color every month. 15 years ago, I started to produce my luminary books. I've just issued number 30. So that's how I know it's 15 years ago. And when that began, it was a spring summer book and an autumn winter book. Every book has 60 colours in it and six stories. It was absolutely a two year ahead forecast and it was fitting into the seasons and the cycles of the industry. And what I've learned and how I developed in more recent years is that I find myself living and working in this industry that I don't really believe in anymore. So about six years ago, I took the season off my book entirely. So it just has an issue number. I did that just before the world went into lockdown. It was really challenging for the people that sell my books to the industry because they were really confused as to why I'd done it. But one of the reasons is that people use colour in very different way depending on what their role is. And luminary is a purely colour and materials inspirational tool. It's not about product, it's not about fashion styles, it's not just for clothing. It's bought by automotive and beauty and packaging and clothing and lingerie and home accessories. So all of these different luminary customers have a different need for color and a different time scale. The automotive industry, like the laundry industry, is much more further ahead because their products are much more complex and detailed and they work with lots of different type of manufacturers. There are also areas where there's lots of innovation around colour as well. And I find myself more and more sort of. Yes, I still produce a color forecasting book. Yes, it still has 60 colors in it. But when I talk to my clients, when I present the books, I don't want everybody to use the same color. I find the homogenization of what's happened with our products in the world very unsettling. I don't like going everywhere in the world and everything looks the same and everything's the same color. I don't think that's what life is about. I don't think that's how we should be or consume or live. And I want luminary to be an inspirer, an instigator and a challenging point, changing the narrative. So when you say sort of the shift, talking about the shift in how can we move away from that? It's an ongoing process. Some clients absolutely still buy luminary and use it in their seasonal palette creation, and they need that because they've got systems internally, they're huge brands, and other clients might only buy one luminary every two years, and they will then also go back to old books, pull colors out, use them for ten years. You know, there's colours in luminary that people talk about that they still love from seasons ago. And that's how I want luminary to be used. I talk about the foundation colors, I talk about deep time and long term colors. And I think there's a real shift in how colour is perceived and used. And I think if we're ever going to make changes in the way that we manufacture and produce goods, colour has to be part of that conversation, and we have to start talking about it in different ways. And so that's part of the narrative that's inside of luminary. I don't have all the answers either, but I am trying to shift the way that we talk about colour in order to come to other types of conversations.

Judith van Vliet : How do you help these? So, first of all, I fully agree with that. I think everything that's too trendy, obviously, then after year it's not trendy anymore. Then what do you do with that product? What do you do with that, whatever it is? Because I know you, for example, also work with big lingerie brands. I mean, you're not going to toss it. And this is very much the world that we're living in. And we need to think about color on in a more long term view. As you said, it's not difficult, not easy for all companies or products or industries. But I hate also traveling to Asia and see the same stuff. I'm like, why did I come here? And then I see the same clothes, the same colors. That's not the world that we want to look like. But how do you help those companies shift? Like if a company contacts you, how do you help them rethink color? And also the choices for materials? Like how? Because color material, obviously they're intertwined. You can't really see them apart. How do you take those sometimes large corporations by the hand and enact on that change with them?

Anna Stamper: Every project is completely different. The storytelling in luminary always start interesting conversations. I try to use hopeful, optimistic stories in my books, which envisage or bring to life different ways of being inspired by colour. But also in the book I feature a lot of new material makers or startups or graduate designers who are innovating around color and materials. You know, it might be color pigments derived from seaweed that are being used by paint companies, or it might be bio colors that are being developed in the lab, which can now be used for screen printing and have been develop for clothing on the high street. And I think part of what I do now and always have, I've always been involved in innovation as part, you know, even as a color and material forecaster for a brand like marks and Spencer. 25 years ago, part of my role was innovation as well. And I used to travel to Japan twice per year to visit manufacturers who were working with real innovation in fabric. We were one of the first high street companies back then to look at organic cotton as a viable product on the high street. We did, I instigated a project about skin color for the lingerie at Marks and Spencer. And we actually went, there was a team of people that went into Marks and Spencer's stores and measured 1000 women's skin colour with the Pantone colour monkey. And we fed that information into the spectrometer. We built an internal sort of graph of skin color in the UK and then we derived five key skin color products and we had a big launch and we got loads of publicity for it. And it was a really successful colour project. It was really interesting. At that time, there were no alternative skin color products in the laundry industry. So it really got people talking about color and these products. They might not be the best selling products for the company, but the fact that back then a brand like Marks and Spencer were investing in that project, they were investing in new innovation and new material technologies. It's not just about trying to find better solutions for their consumer, it's also about, the reality is that its about marketing, its about drawing people toward the brand, showing their consumer that theyve got an interest. So when I talk about colour and materials, it isnt just about the product either. Its about the brand perception as well. And I think big brands right now are finding it hard because theyre being challenged in every way, do this better, do that better. Were talking about who made my clothes, where am I? Fibers grown, farm to fabric. All of these big conversations of circularity and transparency that are coming onto the table. And there's a real, almost like an exhaustion around it in the design industry as well. The word sustainability is very overused. The designers in the middle ground are actually not able to implement or action things. It's becoming more and more difficult to even start these conversations often. But I think that brands need to continue to invest in new ideas and new solutions. And there's a lot of manufacturers that are really pushing the boundaries with this now they're looking at bio based chemicals for the dyeing industry and just starting a little, you know, it's just got to keep going. It's for the long term. We're not going to come up with all the answers overnight. I haven't produced a book that's got all the solutions in it and nobody will be able to do that. But I think it's about continuing this work together, continuing to talk, continuing to share knowledge, and that's what luminary is about. It's about a platform to share knowledge. We feature people's materials in the book and then I have small articles and interviews with them on my website as well.

Judith van Vliet : You know that you talked about that community and collaboration is so important for what you do. It's feeding you, but it's also feeding the people that buy your book.

Anna Stamper: Yeah, that becomes ever more important, I think, in this era, you know, I talk a lot about how are we living as human beings, and that's what drives the stories that are in my book. So we're six months of research goes into every book. And in that research it's not just about what's going on with color in the world, it's about how people are living. It's about what's going on in my country and globally. It's about shifts, socio political shifts. It's all of the things that are affecting me as a human being right now, as a designer, as a mother, as a human being living in this country, on this planet, in this era, because I think we're living in such transformational times and actually that's what's driving so much change. And although as a parent and a future forecaster, it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine what the future is going to be, actually we are also because of all the crises that we face around the world, we're living in this era where design has never been so important, innovation has never been so important. And we need to not lose this interest in sustainability, this passion for change. And I want to make sure through my work that I keep brands aware, keep brands interested. We've got to continue with this period of innovation, otherwise we're not going to come to any good solution. It's hard.

Judith van Vliet : No, I agree. I think due to what's happening in the world currently, especially on the political and economical level, we've forgotten about how to take care of ourselves, of other people, and obviously the planet. And there are very interesting new innovations by using, as you just said, natural pigments, bioengineering, indigo for example, as a colorful for the dyeing processes, but it's still not for mass production. And if you propose those to a big corporate that has to go through quality control, but has to go to uv stability. They're going to add on additives. Additives normally are not the best solution for sustainable action within the company. It's difficult for everybody to make that big step and to take that action currently. But I hope that through the collaborations that you do and the ones that you also put forward in your book, there's going to be more education about what is available sometimes, because I think it's also because there's so much happening, people don't know where to look anymore.

Anna Stamper: Yes, but also, I think you know. So about six years ago, I started to look at how I could produce different types of color textile color swatches from my book. So in luminary, there's 60 textile fabric color swatches, and I've been producing these locally in the UK with a technical color dye house for over 15 years. So I've got over 1200 colors in my library now. But as I was increasingly featuring more material innovation in the book, I wanted to sort of put my money where my mouth was and start to actually produce colors myself in different ways and look to how I could show colors in other ways than just producing chemical dyed cotton in technical textile swatch form. So I began collaborating with different dyers and different producers about six years ago. And over the last few years, we've produced colour with waste food. We produce colour with coffee grounds from a coffee company we've looked at. We had one of the first 100% recycled denim fabrics in the book. We use waste fabrics. I've collected vintage fabrics and used those as colour swatches or raw undyed materials. And I think, as you say, that the brands are not going to start dyeing all of their products with coffee from a coffee company. There's problems with color fastness and achieving the same color more than once. There's technical issues around this which would never get passed on a mass production scale. But what I always say to my clients is that I'm not dying with nettles from the fields around my studio, because I envisage you doing the same. The reason I'm doing this is to show you that there is other ways of doing things and to start that conversation. I moved into a studio at the end of last year, and we're starting to host workshops where we're bringing this to life. So we are doing workshops where we go with a forager and a natural botanical dyer into the fields around Lewis, gather whatever's in season. It could be nettle, it could be Alexander, bring it back to the studio. Learn how to make the dye pot, dye waste and vintage materials. Eat whatever we've brought back with us as well. So I will cook some lunch, like nettle soup or something, if we're dying of nettles. And it's the conversations, for me, it's not necessarily even about what we get at the end of the day. It's not even necessarily about the colors that you can achieve from this. It's also about the conversation that we're having. It's about talking about how we're working, how we're living, what other things have we seen? It's about sharing, it's about making that sense of community. These conversations always lead to something interesting. I've done collaboration, like I did a collaboration with Waitrose where I took all of their waste dead cut flowers. So all of these supermarkets sell cut flowers all of the time. And when they die and nobody buys them, they get put inside of their plastic into landfill. So I did a project where I took a load of those flowers from Waitrose and we turned those into ink and dried them and turned them and dyed with them. And then I used those fabrics and put them into my book. This season. I've worked with a vineyard in Sussex. There's now. It's. The only good thing that's happened due to climate change is that there's now 104 vineyards in the south of England. But they are creating a lot of grape waste. So we took the fermented grape waste and we dyed silk with that for the latest book and it was really challenging. It's really hard to get past colours from food, you know, but we did it and it's really interesting and lots of other material makers are working with the waste from the wine industry. We've got leathers being reduced, leather being produced from the wine industry. I'm fascinated by what's going to happen with the waste. You know, you visit other countries in the world. I was lucky enough to travel around Uganda four or five years ago and they have no waste.

Judith van Vliet : Oh, they use it, all of it.

Anna Stamper: Everything is used. And we produce so much waste. How can this waste be turned into the things that we need in order to live? You know, this really, really interests me. I think we are in a state of emergency, but I do think that really great things are going to come out of this emergency as well.

Judith van Vliet : It creates opportunity as well, because I think especially creative minds when they are in a crisis or the world that is in multiple crises, in poly crisis, there's always something beautiful coming through as well, whether it's innovation, whether it's a new way of coloring, whether it's a new material, or just simply doing things differently than what we've done before, because that's obviously a big killer phrase in many companies. We've never done it before. Right? Talking about trends, we talked a bit about trends, and I think trends for some companies are still so important. It is something that you're shifting away from what is, for you, a color trend today. Or in other words, where do you think color is moving? Like, what is future color? If we think in the next couple of years, where do you think things are going from where we are still somewhat trend oriented right now?

Anna Stamper: I think language is such an important thing. An interpretation of language is so interesting because the word trend, the word trend still represents newness and innovation and new ideas. But unfortunately, because of the way that fast fashion has gone and this speed of desire and production that's happened, the word trend now has very many negative connotations as well. You know, the word trend has come to represent fast paced, throwaway, cheap, badly produced, badly made products that end up in landfill around the world. So this is what the trend industry is perpetuating. But I think if you took the word trend and talked about it a different way, trend is also. It can be long term. There's nothing to say that trend has to be short term. A trend is that we have moved into much more of an awareness of our impact on the natural world as designers. We've moved into an era where we can have the conversations that we're having now. And it's not woo woo anymore. It's reality. People are speaking about alternative solutions, bio based colors, natural pigments, you know, and it's in our conversations all of the time. This is a trend we are moving in. It's a slower trend, definitely, but when you come and talk about color trends, what is color trends? What could it be for the future? So I produce a luminary book every six months. And as part of that luminary book, you know, I have to refine my offering into stories so that my clients have a defined sort of system of what to work with. Part of what I do is offering a set group of colors. But what I always say is that it can be interpreted in many different ways. So each of my stories has ten colors in it, but I offer a multitude of combinations and different ways of using those colors. I also produce about 80% of the photography in the book myself. And the point of that is to showcase how the colors can look on different type of surfaces, different type of materials, and bringing my ideas of those colors to life through the book. As I'm researching the book, the stories evolve from the research. I don't do it the other way around. So the stories are a result of what I find out in the world. And the title of the book is usually the last thing that I add to the book, because it's the. It's the culmination of everything that's gone into it. So issue 29 was called kinship. And for a long time, I've been working in a more sort of alignment with natural resources, trying to think about how we can live more in tune with nature and work in a more reciprocal fashion, regenerative fashion, with colour and fibre in the world that we live in, rather than a extraction system. And the concept or the title of kinship really came from an amazing book, which I'm sure many people have read called braiding sweetgrass. And it's this philosophy that has been brought to life by many people, which is that humans are not better than every other living thing, that we're not at the top of the food chain as such, but we should all live in equally. We should all be, you know, working together in an equal symbiotic relationship. And I had stories in that book called things like symbiosis, which was, how can we live more in line with technology as well? There's other things going on in the world, you know, that we are equal, that we need to balance the way that we're doing things. We can't just keep taking and not giving anything back, really, the bottom line. And I think the stories that I'm putting into luminary, these are my trends, but they're not just for one season. These are things I'll talk about for years to come. About ten years ago, I did a massive presentation in New York with my agents over there, and it was in a movie theater in New York. And the design industry all came to view luminary, and lots of people were talking about catwalk trends and street wear trends. And I actually traveled to Iceland, photographed volcanoes and moss, and took this as my inspiration that season, and put these huge images of beautiful blue geysers and the fluorescent green moss. And I asked the audience to take their shoes off, and I imagined. Asked them to imagine them with their feet in this moss, and then I asked them to imagine how their work was, if they weren't extracting things, if they were giving back, if they were living in alignment with these, with the moss, with the land with the earth in a kind of folkloric sense, like the old icelandic folk traditions where we live in harmony with nature. And back then, it was really quite out there. It was something that people still talk about. They still talk about that presentation now, but that was ten years ago, and I haven't lost that as a trend. It's a philosophy that underpins all of the work that I do, and I think, I believe it's a philosophy that all of us should underpin all of the design work that we do, you know, agree.

Judith van Vliet : I fully agree. And I think also that's why I work more with long term or longevity colors. More and more, I think more clients are asking for them because they don't want to change color every year or every season, because they're starting to understand that's obviously not the way to go. That's not the ecological process they should be in. But then what is longevity? And what is longevity color? And is that five years? Is that ten years? What should that look like? Is that. Are those colors with more black content, or are there ones a bit more white content? This is obviously something that, for many, is still a big question. What is longevity for you in a color? It is through your stories, because definitely, if you would use that story that you just explained about in New York, you can still use it. It's fully applicable to so many products and industries out there. But what would that look like color wise?

Anna Stamper: It's a really. It's like, how long is a piece of string, isn't it? It's a very difficult question, and it also depends on the end use and the product category that we're talking about often. Now, when I work with a brand, I'll have what I call the foundation colors, which are more long term. So for a clothing brand, for instance, they would have a foundation palette that would be there for at least two to three years, the same color. And this enables them to buy bulk fabric. So it's less waste in the industry, it's less rejections through color matching in the long term. And then they'll have a smaller, changing set of colors, which we would layer on top throughout the year, if you like. But I think so many things are impacting our choices of colors now, not least the climate. Lots of parts of the world no longer really have a winter season. So I have clients in Australia, and my, what would have been traditionally my autumn winter colour book doesn't really have a place in Australia anymore. I've got a story in my most recent book, which is about all of these icy colors, glacier blue, arctic white. And it's this question of what are these colors going to be in the future? How long can we talk about these? I live in the south of England. My children haven't seen deep snow for ten years. Our climate is changing and that means that we need different types of clothes. It's really, really hot here in the summer and it doesn't get so cold here. We're having a much, much wetter time as well. So our houses need different types of products. The paint that we're using needs to be different and things might actually need repairing more often. The outside of buildings are getting really damaged because the weather is different. The other thing is you've got to consider the cost of living crisis that's going on currently because people aren't buying as much as they were, so they're being more cautious. And this may mean that they might buy things in colors that they want to keep hold of for longer. They might be safer in their color choices. I read an interesting article recently saying why is the west got chromophobia? And it's like everybody's just choosing grays and neutrals and interior design and clothing and cars and everything. Nobody's being brave with their colour or fun with their colour anymore. But I think there's so many different factors that are influencing this. So many factors. I would hate to think that bright, bold, interesting colour choices are becoming elitist or just for the luxury market. I would hate to think as well, which is another conversation, that the really beautiful, handcrafted element of products can only be elitist and for the luxury market. But is it that we do buy less and we invest in things that are really well made and really beautiful less often, rather than the speed of consumerism that's been going on? It depends on the product. I think that's the bottom line. I think we need less in our lives and we need color consultancy more and more, because the color choices that we make need to stand the test of time. They need to be absolutely beautiful because we want them in our lives for longer. And so I think our role becomes ever more important in that sense. So it's less about what's the next color or what's the top ten colors for next year. And it's more about, let's just find the most beautiful colors that we can that are really going to stand the test of time, that we're still going to love. And then it is instinctive, it is about intuition, it's much less about fashion or style or, you know, it's very much coming. And I do a lot of work in projects and workshops about what do you really love as a person? We all have a very innate, instinctive reaction to colour that's immediate, and we've kind of lost that because of the amount of information that we're being fed all the time. But I think that this thing of coming back to, to what you love as a designer is vital in actually choosing colors that will then be loved for the long term. And that's about really spending time with color, really looking at touching, feeling colour and, you know, embodying the color and believing in it before you put it into practice.

Judith van Vliet : I think it's not even just only about making more ecological choices within color. It is also really knowing what color fits to you, a color that you personally can live with a long time. And that's where I think there's a lot of information lacking within people themselves because they also tend to be influenced what's new, what's cool, obviously, what's the neighbor got? You know, what color car are they driving? There's a lot of things that still, that we are way too much influence, I think, because we indeed, like you said, there's too much information thrown at us, at the constant. I mean, we're not made for all that information that keeps arriving to our brains. We're not made for that. We can't really work with that. I love the word. I love the word love that you just used. Love, obviously, I mean, it has so many multiple facets to it as a word, as a passion. And when you talk about color, that's obviously what we love. You also produced in a book that indeed had that title in which you indeed, just like you currently said, just said, I want people to go back to what they love. You know, I want designers to do what they really are passionate about, what they really love. Can you talk a little bit about that very special edition that you did?

Anna Stamper: So there's two. There's two books. So the latest issue of luminary, which was issue 30. So it's issue 30. So I wanted to kind of invest in it and think about, you know, make it a little bit special. And so we redesigned it. It's got a bit more content. And also I wanted it to be something that could be used beyond a single season. And really, you know, the ethos of this book. So the title of it is lovely, but it's about how can we put love at the forefront of all our decision making of designers. How can we build love into what we do as designers? So it's not just about how do we love our brand more, how do we love the planet more? It's about putting love at the forefront. So, you know, what's our relationship with colour? What's our relationship with materials and how do we push that forward? And there's many different layers to it. And in, in the book, for instance, there's a book that's all about nostalgia and romanticism, which is playing with this return to the vintage that's bubbling up, the reusing of materials, the recycling, the upcycling, the waste implementation into so many materials now. But it's, you know, the emotion behind that is nostalgia, romance. So many of the students that I work with at universities are all kind of collecting vintage clothing from secondhand shops and using that material for their college projects. You know, they want to recycle, they don't want to use virgin materials. And I think this yearning to create, but without impacting on the environment, is driving forward different ways of enabling design. And the idea that, you know, I love design, I love color, I love product, I love creating. You know, I never went to college because I wanted to be a colour forecaster. I'd never heard of that. When I was 17 and I left my village and moved to London, I went to college in London because I wanted to make things. I love making things. I wanted to be on my sewing machine and dying and painting and creating stuff. And, you know, I had absolutely no idea about the industry. I'd never seen a vogue magazine. I'd never heard of Vivian Westwood, and I just wanted to make stuff. And I think so many designers in the industry are hugely creative, but we're not able to even impact or enact, sorry, upon our creativity. It's very difficult. The design industry, it's a process that lacks creativity at the moment.

Judith van Vliet : Yeah, it's all about strategy, which I'm not against strategy, but it is. There's too much processing, I think, between what is a creative idea and what you, in the end, produce. There's too many steps. There's too many things that just render everything complicated. And that's obviously where designers, they lose their drive. And I think that's what's not helping in the current industry.

Anna Stamper: I think people are. Well, all people are quite confused at the moment. And it's not. It's whether you're a consumer who is not a designer, you're confused. You don't know what to buy. You don't know what colour to choose. You don't know what to wear. And part of that is the chaos of this constant overload of information that's fed to us through our phones. But also, professional people in the industry are very confused, and it's for the same reason. It's too fast, it's too complex. Also, so many problematic things going on with the industry that we can't solve any of them at the moment, or very few of them at the moment. I wrote a book, or consumer book in 2019 that was called Love Colour, and it is for the home interior designer. But the concept of that book, it's all about choosing colours to live with at home that you love. So the first part of the book is giving people ideas on how to create their own treasure box of colours or their own and mood board. So part of what I do is always collecting things. So, yes, I'm researching online, but also I'm researching by constantly collecting things. It might be from a vintage market or some paper that I've found. You know, I'm collecting colors that I'm drawn to, and I like to have all of this in my studio. I'm collecting different innovative materials and things that I find, and this inspires me. And then I pull this together to create my combinations of colour. So I'm encouraging people to do this for themselves. And again, it goes back to that instinctive personal relationship to color that's unique to every person. And also I use my own photography in this manner as well. So I use photography to gather images all of the time and to photograph surface and texture, material and objects and what things look like when they're next to each other. So how does that create different kinds of combination? Or when you're in a quite a hot country and the shadow is quite violet and it changes the color of a wall. You know, these things, through photography enable me to come up with new ideas around color. But I think how we love color. You know, what I do is visualize this all the time. I suppose that's what I'm trying to say. That's my work. I'm telling the story of what I love in color and what's inspiring me right now and trying to help people in the industry to fall back in love with their role as a creative as well. You know, I had an era before lockdown where I used to go in and do these workshops in brands and designed three design directors in a row, all burst into tears with me. And it was this kind of realization that their role was so uncreative. Now they imagined me to be kind of swanning around the world, taking beautiful photographs and playing with fabrics all day long. And actually, of course, my job is entirely different to that. But it just meant then, you know, people don't feel very creative, even when they're in creative roles anymore.

Judith van Vliet : Maybe some of the juniors, but definitely not when you're directing a team. There's too much administrative stuff to be done, I do think so. When we talk about love, when we talk about passion, when we talk about the fact that color is life, talk to me, please, and obviously, the audience, about how you work with the UN and social enterprises to enable people that have very little to use color and create something for themselves, or even if it's just the love of color, talk a little bit about that, because I think what we can do socially with color and how we can change the world with color, I think it's very much future of colour.

Anna Stamper: Yeah. I mean, this is an amazing ongoing relationship that I have with the UNHCR, which is the United Nations Refugee Organization, and they have implemented an umbrella company of organizations around the world called Maid 51. And they had a meeting in Cairo at the end of 2023, and it was the leaders of these different social enterprises from around the world. Each of those companies employs refugee people in their own country, 37 different countries, as artisans, to produce crafted products to sell on the global marketplace. Amazing umbrella setup that they've developed. It enables refugees and displaced people to have an income to find a new community in the new country that they found themselves in. But also it beautifully restores them to something that connects them back to their home, which is their craft and their making. And in luminary, I often talk about making as medicine or colour as medicine, because I find that, you know, like in lockdown, everybody started knitting and sewing and dying. And it is. It's healing. It's like cooking. It makes us feel good. We work with our hands, but also it connects us to, you know, how our grandmothers were and grandmother's recipes or grandmother's knitting that she taught us. And, you know, so these displaced communities of people, they're often women as well, that have fled their home countries, are given the opportunity to use the skills that they've been taught by their grandmothers to actually earn a living and gain some independence in their new country. So I was brought on board as a colour specialist to help to define the colours in their products, to make them more commercial. But what we did last year was I went to Cairo to put on, create a workshop with the social enterprise leaders. And I posed a question about colour, and I wanted each organization to. So that I asked them all to bring a colour with them that represented the different refugee communities that they were working with. And then I took my latest luminary book and we pulled together all the colors in the book and we developed colour palettes which would suit their product that they're creating and also, at the same time, tell the story of the people that they're working with and their heritage and their countries that they're coming from. And we had this really amazing three days in Cairo. I visited some of the social enterprise groups, but we did this brilliant workshop and we had really incredible people who are working with hundreds of thousands of refugees around the world. And, for instance, there was a gentleman that's working with refugees in Kenya from other parts of Africa, like the Sudan. And he came to the table with a very bright red silk and he said, this silk represents the blood that's running through the communities that I work with and the loss and the death that's happened. And then he pulled out a very beautiful bright green. And he said, the green represents the rebirth, the nature and all the good things that are going to grow from the work that we're doing here together. I mean, you can't. These stories are incredible. Very, very emotional, very real. And we're using colour to bring these stories to life. And in these communications, we were talking about dying with plants. We were talking about different communities around the world and their skills, their heritage skills. So there was an amazing lady there from Mozambique who was working with traditional healers, plant healers in Mozambique, and she set up a project where she is using the healing plants with this ancestral knowledge to extract colors from the same plants, to see if they can imbue the textiles and the dye pigments with the same healing qualities that the plants have. This information, we're trying to start to record and share it as well, on a global scale. It's an ongoing project, but there were people from all parts of the world doing really, really interesting things. So at the end of the day, we created colour palettes. We have a unified color message across the brand, which helps them to produce better products and hopefully earn more money, which all goes back to the refugees. But I think, for me, what was really amazing was I produce luminary for global design brands. The books go into the industry. I'm trying to enable change. I'm trying to shift the narrative. I'm trying to get these huge, multi billion pound brands to start rethinking how they extract color, how they extract materials, and how could they invest in other ways of doing things? And then I go to this amazing workshop in Cairo, and these people are already doing it. Theyre already in these processes. Theyre already hand dyeing wool with the farmers and the shepherds in their location on the ground. They're using these ancestral wisdom recipes, this knowledge of the grandmothers and the ancestors. They're bringing back these traditions, bringing them to life. I was in a workshop where? In Cairo. They're employing sudanese women that have been forced to flee their own country. Often they've had extremely awful existences, which has forced them to flee. And they are working with natural dyes. They're teaching each other how to sew and stitch and dye fabrics. They're in community, they've got their babies with them, they're chatting, they're being fed, they're earning a living. You know, the positive aspect of this design process is unreal. And the fact that what I do could be part of that, it breaks everything in. Every bit of effort that I put into it makes it all worthwhile.

Judith van Vliet : I think color is very healing. Color is healing. Working with your hands is healing. And for them to be able to do that and be together in their community, there's the word community coming through again. It's very much key. Yeah. And I would try to imagine you there, that it's very humble as well to be there, because it's inspirational. At the same time, you're doing what really matters, which is helping people.

Anna Stamper: Yes, but, yeah. And it totally inspires me. The work that I did there led to one of the stories that's in issue 30 of luminary, which is called uprooted, and in that we searched for lots of different creatives all over the world producing work which celebrates their ancestral traditions or enables them to work with craft. And I just went to an amazing forum in Parma de Mallorca a few weeks ago called extant, and there it was completely full of indigenous textiles and different people from 75 different countries working with hand skills and dyeing and fibre, enabling and keeping these skills alive, but also bringing them into the front of the design industry. Again, it's a really interesting era, I think, that we're living in, because on the one hand, you know, we're all talking about digital design and AI and technology and scientific biosolutions for new chemicals and the dying processes. And on the other hand, we've got stories of ancestral grandmother's recipes for plant dying, or, you know, this man that was brought over from Uruguay, who was in Palmdy Majorca, who never left his country before, who was hand weaving the wool from his own flock of sheep, and people from Gujarat who were dying with Indigo. It's. It's a really amazing era, I think, that we're living through at the moment where we are, because we're seeking for solutions. We have. Not only do we have all of this wisdom that we've gathered over time, but at the same time, we're afforded the technology to be able to be global and to share and communicate and connect in this way, that I'm very hopeful that we're going to come out with better ways of doing things now.

Judith van Vliet : I think hope. Hope generally is something that we need as human beings, as creatives, as. As designers. And I think also it's the only way forward, you know, otherwise, we'll just move backwards, and I don't think that's what we're looking for. Another thing, we were talking about this, just before I hit the recording button, was your new studio, which was quite the project. I heard from how you found your new space, how you've rebuilt it, obviously with different type of materials, reclaimed materials, and how it has become this hub for coming together and sharing. Tell us a little bit about this unique place.

Anna Stamper: Yeah, so I live in Sussex in the south of England. I moved out of London about ten years ago. So I've been producing luminary, mainly on my own, for 15 years. And it's. It's a real passion project. It's like a piece of art. I'm kind of in the zone making luminary. I collaborate with people in order to bring it to life. I have an amazing printer, brilliant dyers, and people that I work with, and my brother is my graphic designer. But generally, I'm just in my studio on my own, and I realized that I actually was craving being around more people. And I really like talking about the stuff that I'm featuring in my book. I really enjoy not only talking about my philosophy and the stories that I've written in response to the research that I've done, but I really like sharing Other People's work and coming together and having conversation, I think, becomes more and more valid as we're trying to change the future. And that's my role. I'm a future forecaster, but I'm not. I'm not the one coming up with all the ideas. I'm the one that's gathering the stuff that I like and sound of and then telling people what I like, but I want to listen, I want to learn. Part of my process is continuous learning. So I was. For a while, I was looking for somewhere where I had a bit more space where I could consider bringing the content of my luminary books into the real world and sharing that in a physical form. So there was an old. It's a 400 year old coaching inn hotel in the middle of Lewis, where I live, which had been derelict for ten years. And somebody bought the building and turned the majority of it into apartments and carefully restored it. And the back part of the building, the old dining hall and the beer cellar, were completely derelict. And so we bought them as a shell. There was no electricity, running water, mushrooms growing on the walls, no windows. Pigeons in here. Yeah, it was very basic. My husband is very practical and very patient, and he and I renovated it. It took us the best part of two years, slowly saving up a bit, doing a bit, saving up a bit more. We had help from friends as well, but generally, the philosophy really is the same for everything that we do, you know, we wanted to do it kindly and carefully, in keeping with the building, but also to not use harmful materials as much as we could. So we. That's another reason why it took so long. For instance, we found an old floor that had come out of a textile factory in Manchester, in the north of England. And we bought the floorboards, and my husband hand cut each piece and turned it into a parquet floor. It took a really long time, I bet. I worked with all sorts of different people. Like, we've got a kitchen down the other end, and the worktop in the kitchen is a piece of slate that came from an old snooker table that was completely broken. I've got old doors that I found in vintage markets that we reconditioned and used. All of the furniture is secondhand and reclaimed. I collaborated with the tiles behind me. I collaborated with the mosaic factory, and we also used reclaimed tiles on the floor. Things were left over from other projects. The textiles, like the one behind me, is a vintage patchwork that I found in the flea market around the corner. And actually, it makes the space more loved. And it has a great story. But it is. For me, design is about tactility. It's not just about color, it's about surface. It's about the materials that bring the place to life. I wanted to create an environment that felt quite homely as well. So we have a wood burner here. My husband is a tree surgeon. He maintains a woodland, so we use the deadwood from the local forest to heat the place. We've been very careful about the energy that we've put in as well. And we've had some suppers in here. We're hosting workshops. We've got some botanical dine workshops coming up. I put a kitchen in because I want everybody that comes in here to eat some food with me and to sit around the table and to chat with. Yeah. We're slowly thinking about how to use the space and what it could be used for. I'm really interested in bringing different elements to life as well that support us as creatives. I'm interested in what we need to support us as human beings in this era as well. And a few weeks ago, I had an amazing lady. She did a sound immersion in the downstairs studio because it's a really beautiful space, the old beer cellar. So it has a big arched ceiling, which we've just left in Bagmaster. And she played her crystal healing bowls and gongs down there, and it was the most wild experience.

Judith van Vliet : Acoustics, obviously.

Anna Stamper: No, I want people to come here and experience just being out their offices, sharing materials, talking about colour, coming up with ideas. So when people come, we'll start by going for a walk on the downs, or we might do a breath workshop downstairs. They might end the day with one of those crystal balls healing sessions in the basement. But we have local food suppliers that will come and supply food. I had an amazing lady, came and shot her book from the repair shop, from the BBC. So Ian and I made her lots of homemade cake and looked after her, made her lunch. And I think for me, that's part of being creative. Good food sitting down, listening, talking. Yeah.

Judith van Vliet : Food brings. Good food. Especially brings good conversations normally.

Anna Stamper: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really important.

Judith van Vliet : I think this is very much the way forward with color. And what is creative is community. Being together in environments where we feel comfortable sharing, I think that's the main thing. And also what you've tried to create for. For your community and your extended community, for whoever wants to visit.

Anna Stamper: Yeah. Because I think historically, the sort of colour forecasting and the trend industry, it's felt very elitist and it felt like this kind of magic, secret institution that nobody else had any access to. It was only for the commercial design industries. And I think nowadays everything needs to be more open, it needs to be more fluid and shared. And I think the era that we're living in of social media and global connectivity as well, I think we need to just work together more and we need to be more transparent. And that part of that is bringing what I do into a wider audience. So it's not just for a very small amount of people in the design industry, because there's loads of content and information in the work that I do that could be really useful to small brands or individuals that previously wouldn't have even thought to come to me for guidance or inspiration. And I really want to be able to kind of open up what I do to that level as well so people could come in, work with us in any way that is suitable for their end use, you know, and I think that's becoming more valid.

Judith van Vliet : Careful what you wish for, because there's a lot of people listening to the podcast, so you might have a lot of people that will come to visit you. But yeah, I think that's the point. That's the point of obviously getting also your vision out and your philosophy and how you see color. So I really want to thank you for sharing everything that you've so lovely shared with us, and I hope you'll be back.

Anna Stamper: Thank you very much. It's lovely always to talk about colour. It's a joy. Thank you.

Judith van Vliet : I hope you enjoyed this last episode. If you are a fan of the color Authority podcast, please let us know by reviewing and rating our show on whichever platform you're listening on. The next episode is coming out next month, and in the meantime, I'm wishing you a wonderful, colorful day.