Althea McNish

Althea McNish (1924-2020) was the first Afro Caribbean woman to gain international prominence in the British textile world, both for her furnishing and dress designs. Althea said she saw life "through a tropical eye" and most of her designs are based on nature though some use abstract and occasionally geometric themes.

Born in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago, Althea accompanied her mother to England in 1951, where her father had already moved to work. In London she won a scholarship to study architecture at the Architectural Association, but chose instead to take a course in print studies at the London School of Printing and Graphic Arts (now the London College of Communication).
She moved on to the Central School of Art and Design, where her tutor, the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, persuaded her to apply her print skills to textiles. Then, after finishing postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Art in 1957, she became a busy freelance designer. Her work from the appealed to young consumers who were desperate to move beyond the greyness of the immediate post-second world war years, and right from the beginning of her career she attracted commissions to design fabrics for big names such as Liberty and Heal’s. McNish also worked on dress fabrics for Zika Ascher’s textile company, which supplied them to French fashion houses, including Dior. Her work was regularly featured in glossy magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar.