Bolts of Lightning
The aesthetic legacy of Sally McQuillan
The late Sally McQuillan, the founder of Raoul Textiles.
Written by Lorie Dewhirst Porter
For a small town, Santa Barbara has no shortage of residents with boldface names. More interesting, arguably, are the low-key denizens whose outsize talents enrich the cultural fabric. The late Sally McQuillan was—and continues to be—one of those people.
Raoul Textiles, the business Sally created with her husband, Tim, in 1981, is known throughout the world for its hand-printed fabrics and wallpapers. It has a retail store on State Street, a factory on Parker Way, and 14 showrooms spanning the United States, Europe, and Australia. But early operations, housed in a Quonset hut, were undeniably humble, as were its products: T-shirts. From the beginning, Raoul Textiles was a family affair. And it remains so, ably helmed by the McQuillans’ grown children, Madeleine and Gene, since Sally’s death in 2024. (Tim died in 2000.)
A handmade scrapbook opened to indigo and delft Raoul patterns.
Sally’s sun-soaked youth in Florida clearly influenced her future creative efforts. “She always talked about going to parties where everyone was wearing a Lilly Pulitzer dress,” says Madeleine. And it’s easy to find echoes of Pulitzer’s wildly popular colorful shift dresses in Raoul’s tropical fabric designs. Sally studied painting in college but relocated to Santa Barbara before graduation. “The story she always told,” Madeleine says, “was that she was much more interested in painting the wallpaper behind the subject than painting the subject itself.” Adds Gene, “She realized she really liked repeat patterns.”
“Raoul Textiles is known throughout the world for its hand-painted fabrics and wallpapers.”
Tim and Sally met in 1975 at Tim’s Santa Barbara restaurant, Rhythm Café, and married six years later. The Quonset hut became ground zero for the couple’s experiments with screen printing, as they created colorful T-shirts to sell on the beach. Sportswear brands Billabong, Nike, and Quiksilver heard about the McQuillans, and soon Raoul Textiles—named for a wooden figurine from Oaxaca that Tim gave Sally—was printing fabric for the surfwear industry. Meanwhile, Madeleine and Gene were literally growing up in the factory. “It was our playground,” says Madeleine. “It was our home. It was everything.”
A dining room created by Kit Kemp Design Studio features Raoul Textile fabrics. At the head of the table, a balloon-backed chair in Eve fabric is flanked by chairs covered in Sari.
By the turn of the millennium, Raoul Textiles had come into its own. A proper factory building replaced the Quonset hut, and Sally pivoted to designing fabrics for interiors. She chose linen—which she loved for its rustic elegance—to back her designs, which were, and still are, printed entirely by hand. In 1999, World of Interiors, a British style magazine, profiled the company with a spread featuring images of the McQuillan home. The article noted that Sally drew her designs by hand, without a computer, something she continued her entire life. The WOI piece was a huge coup. “She thought that really launched Raoul,” says Madeleine.
In designer Kit Kemp’s London drawing room, the sofa is clad in Eve fabric, a bold pomegranate print from Raoul Textiles.
Publicity aside, Sally’s fabrics paved the way for a generation of designers who craved her artisanal approach, as opposed to a slick and digital one. Los Angeles designer and writer David Netto says, “Sally’s designs have lifted my work and made me come into whatever talents I may possess as a designer much more fully than if I had to make rooms without them.” London-based Kit Kemp, the founder and creative director of the exclusive Firmdale Hotels, features Raoul Textiles throughout the hotels and in her own home, despite having her own fabric and wallpaper lines. According to Kemp, “There has been no one before or since who understands textile design and the love of color like Sally.”
The Raoul Textiles shop on State Street features art, furniture, and decorative objects, including baskets by Christine Love Adcock.
“Sally’s fabrics paved the way for a generation of designers who craved her artisanal approach.”
Indeed, the success of Raoul Textiles stems in no small part from Sally’s singular talent for distinctive color combinations. “Her sense of color was genius,” says Gene. “It was innate,” adds Madeleine. “She just knew what would look good together in ways that wouldn’t occur to pretty much anyone else.” It comes as no surprise that all Raoul fabrics are printed with custom colors. “You can’t buy our paint in a bucket,” Madeleine says. “We make it ourselves.”
A residence in the Bahamas designed by David Netto features Raoul Textiles Exoticus Fabric in Elephant Leaf.
Opening a local retail store in 2010 was a natural progression. “Sally always wanted to expand what she was doing,” says Madeleine, “and it allowed her to flesh out a whole Raoul space and show that to the public.” Because she couldn’t find furniture suitable to showcase her fabrics, Sally created Engle & Deutch, a collection of handmade seating, tables, and accessories, to do so. Her wallpaper line debuted in 2020.
For a Santa Monica home, Netto used the same fabric, adding a tropical touch to a classical wooden cabinet.
“The siblings are primed to carry Raoul Textiles into the future”
She also filled the store with objects that caught her interest, especially items from Africa. With longtime friend Herbert “Skip” Cole, a professor emeritus in African art and architecture at UCSB, Sally sponsored evening lectures at the store for the Friends of Africa group. “We had dozens of talks on African art and architecture, and the stylish atmosphere of the Raoul store was a terrific setting,” says Cole, adding “African influence is also seen in several textiles Sally designed.”
Kashmir-India on a canopy bed designed by Suzanne Rheinstein.
It seems natural that Madeleine and Gene would end up working at Raoul. Gene studied textiles at Central Saint Martins in London, an arts and design college, followed by a stint at George Smith, the venerable London furniture design firm. He joined Raoul in 2013 and handles the financial and public side of the business. Madeleine’s route was less direct. Intent on becoming a librarian, she studied comparative literature at Brown University but moved back to Santa Barbara in 2009 to help Sally open the store. Madeleine discovered she had a knack for production; she now manages the factory and oversees the showrooms.
Sally McQuillan in the Raoul Textiles factory.
The McQuillan family in early days of Raoul Textiles.
The siblings are primed to carry the Raoul aesthetic into the future. Considering the more than 200 prints in Raoul’s textile library, combined with the sizable archive from Sally’s early design days, they have plenty to work with.
“She knew we would take care of it,” Madeleine says. “She was also glad we would continue to take care of the people who work here. She was like a mother to them too—some started working when they were in their 20s.” Gene adds, smiling, “The show must go on.”
