I’ve been to my fair share of openings, and enjoyed many an affair with fair coloured and fruity tasting, continental, free flowing….beers. But I wasn’t expecting Prima to put on such a spread.
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Flowers were the office prop of the day down at Design Prima

With prima being a purveyor of the latest in office space style, naturally the show would attract people who had their own office attire to match. 

A plethora of men in suits with their ties removed and top button undone, making the most of their day out of the real office. Ladies in happy coloured tops and heels. not everyone made the effort, but Working Title found a few that did. 

A very sharp dressed and immaculately turned out gentleman, mixing a blue and white striped shirt with a sneaky bowtie poking out from the lapels of a black denim tailored mid length jacket. Cleverly combined with some dark aubergine coloured trousers suitably big enough to prevent his super polished black leather marching shoes from taking over. I hope he is an architect and a granddad and an art teacher. 

A very simple but sexy look, can’t go wrong with well fitting black and grey. Despite her overly healthy looking tan this lady had a glowing smile and a subtle elegance.  

This fine gentlemen was on the Rexite stand, a bold choice coupling black tailored trousers with a soft beige single breasted jacket, the violet coloured shirt helping to bring it all together with a tie complimenting his Italian brown leather shoes. Couldn’t quite work out if he was Gilbert or George. 

With this years Prima being my first, I didn’t know quite what to expect. I hoped the exhibition would resemble a TV studio that specialised in office based programs, imagining all these different sets in one place, with furniture and purposefully positioned stationary all arranged with the intention of putting their product in context inside the vast space of the Business Design Centre. I wasn’t disappointed.

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Making ourselves comfortable on Pledge’s vivacious office chairs, I got chatting with Mike Arding, Design and Development Manager and Colin Mc Nair, Sales Manager of Pledge Office Chairs. Most engaging about Mike and Colin is their sound knowledge of the manufacturing process in relation to his design role. Mike himself is based at the factory in Leighton Buzzard and invited Working Title to visit.

What do the Model T Ford, 1956 Eames lounge chair and Concorde have in common? Aside from being historically monolithic design classics they were all upholstered using leather from Scottish leather company Bridge of Weir. With a heritage going back as far as 1758, their client list includes The Orient Express, The Lusitania, British Airways, the British Houses of Parliament, Gucci, the Burj Al Arab 7 star hotel in Dubai, Vertu phones and Jaguar to name but a few.

If you have ever been unfortunate enough to experience the biting pain of a stinging nettle, you will know never to allow it to touch your skin. However, the textile company Camira, in association with De Monford University have produced an upholstery fabric out of the nasty weed, encouraging you to sit on the stuff.

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From a land where the traffic warden comes the second Tuesday of every month and there’s only one traffic light, the business design centre in London must have been quite the change for the staff of Bute Fabrics.
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