Tailor-Made Textiles

The rug industry seems a long way from the frantic world of finance in which Tyla Caccese was trained. However, Tyla, founder of Tailor-Made Textiles, has always had a passion for design, for the environment and for social causes. Collaborating with GoodWeave supports her core values. “I don’t want to sell a product if I can’t stand behind it 100 percent,” she says. “Being a member of GoodWeave helps me do that.”

Tailor-Made Textiles’s product–custom hand knotted carpets incorporating natural fibers such as bamboo, hemp, nettle and jute in addition to wool and silk–allows Tyla to merge her interests in finance and environmental advocacy. While fascinated with the business side of the industry, Tyla stresses that she does not want to feel her enterprise is “profit driven every second” as in finance. “My work supporting mills that are committed to teaching and preserving the craft ties into my concern with cultural ecology,” says Tyla.

Though images from the natural environment drive her work, Tyla finds inspiration from disparate and sometimes unusual sources. For example, a course in origami led to her Misura collection. The combination of hand knotted and hand tufted techniques with cut pile evokes the transformative folding process in the Japanese paper craft.

The transformative power of rugs amazes her. “A rug is emotionally, physically and spiritually grounding,” she says. But it’s not just the end product, a fine carpet, that transforms. The process itself, the act of weaving with its cultural, historic and artistic language of civilization, is of particular importance today in what she calls a “mass produced” marketplace. “We have a responsibility to educate new designers and buyers about this process of creation,” Tyla says. Being a GoodWeave member helps her do just that.

Learn more at www.tailormadetextiles.com.