NEW YORK, New York – After the Spring '07 acquisition of Travers by Zimmer + Rohde, Erin Finn came on to head up the design division of the brand and has since lead collection launches like the Fall '08 Tamarindo collection which she continues to build and launch new lines of through '09.

Although Travers is generally a brand inspired by English country style, the Tamarindo collection has a distinctly Indian feel, as it draws inspiration from the Tamarind tree, indigenous to India. "The Tamarindo collection was the biggest launch ever for Travers," explained Finn, who called the Tamarindo collection very "global," but hesitated with that word since it tends to be overused, particularly in the design world. "Through the centuries, the Tamarind seedling has globalized itself in the same way design has," she said. "I didn't want to keep saying global, global, global, but we do get the influence from all over the world. So you have this globalization of the tree and a globalization of design and it's also culturally influenced by masculine and feminine design and color. I think [that's] important today because Travers is not a very contemporary design house and never will be because our customers don't shop for that. But there's an artisan behind the design. [This is true] in India, for example; we want to nurture and covet that industry so that we can embrace the artisanal quality of designing through the collections that we launch, which is true of our new [Tamarindo] collection called Entrada. It's really about the exploration of design, the journey of design."

Finn is shaping the new lines in the Tamarindo Collection to incorporate that sort of unique, artisanal and Indian quality in each design. She said of the March Entrada introduction, "I'll be taking our clients on a journey of design through '09," laughing at the whimsy of the statement. But it is that whimsy that Finn said is an important facet in all of Travers' collections. These kinds of novel qualities in Travers' prints, wovens and embroideries comes when a product is handmade and hand woven, said Finn.

"We're traditional, but more a classical traditional, taking classic designs and modernizing them through various techniques and constructions in the various mills we work with throughout the world," she said. "Travers is known as a print house and what our clients come to us for is the unusual, the sense of humor in the classics." Finn attended Maison & Objet in Paris this year, where parent company, Zimmer + Rohde, had a stand with a huge customer following. Because Travers is now under the Zimmer umbrella, the distribution for the brand became worldwide as of September, 2008. "We started launching it in London around the time of Decosit," said Finn. "Where we've never had that exposure, Travers is now in the world market."

As design director of Travers, Finn's goal is to uphold the brand's reputation as a "design curator to luxury," she said. "We take care of the luxury market like the curator of a museum."

Not surprisingly though, Travers too has been affected by the slump in the global economy, but because of its ownership, the brand is less vulnerable than many. "Because of what's happening in the world, being owned by a European company has its benefits right now," she said. "When Andreas Zimmer buys a company, he buys it because he wants to master the distribution in that region. It speaks to the grandness of what Zimmer + Rohde is internationally. They're recognized all over the world." With brands like Warner, Ardecora, the British Hodsoll McKenzie and French Etamine, which just had new launches for 2009 called Amour and Emotion, Zimmer + Rohde's collections span all sorts of global influences.