HER designs have been seen on A listers including Rita Ora, Daisy Lowe, Jerry Hall, Georgia Mae Jagger, Joan Collins and Joanna Lumley.

And her limited release silk corgi cushions, released in time to celebrate the Queen’s 90th birthday this year, may have pride of place at Buckingham Palace.

Ali Taylor Mapletoft is the designer behind Hove-based luxury print label Age of Reason, whose playful designs for silk scarves, cushions and womenswear have a punk twist and a topical vibe.

Inspired by a childhood spent in the mountainous landlocked southern African country Lesotho as well as literature,

historical costume and pop culture, 37-year-old Ali creates striking hand-rendered prints often including historical drawings and hidden messages, and always with a quintessentially British style.

Her online shop features cushions with messages such as Don’t Kill My Vibe and I Will Never Surrender as well

as bold statements like My Rules, My Gaff and My House, scarves in designs with names such as Grey Ships, Love Is A Battle and Anarchy, and funky print women’s clothes including trousers, leggings, dresses, T-shirts, kimono and colourful bomber jackets with a bird or iris design. 

This year, she has caught the zeitgeist of the nation by producing not only the corgi cushions – two were sent to Buckingham Palace as a birthday gift for the Queen – but she has also collaborated with English Heritage to design a range for its shops to celebrate the tercentenary of the birth of renowned landscape gardener Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.

And rather than mass-producing items in a limited number of designs, she does exactly the opposite: sometimes only a dozen cushions, for example, will be created in one design, and once they’re sold out, that’s it.  For example, only four corgi cushions in each of two designs were made.

“I have too many ideas!” said Ali. “A print piece should never be boring, it should become part of your personal

-style story. I want to see people living effortlessly with my designs.

“But I will perhaps only make a dozen of one thing – it is to do with wanting to make something special for

the person who buys it. These are luxury items and people may save up to buy one so that should be something very special indeed.”

Ali sources flat-weave silk from Como in Italy, the same silk used for Liberty scarves, and zips from the UK, while cushions are filled with wool from Yorkshire, Shetland and Orkney, including the island of North Ronaldsay where the sheep roam the beaches and eat seaweed.

Ali uses confident strokes of pen and ink to create striking hand-rendered prints in her studio at her home in Hove, which she shares with husband Charlie and six-year-old daughter Iris. The design is then photographed and digitally handprinted at Forest Digital in Uckfield, then handed to seamstress Nicola Carr, who business The Pin House is based in Yorkshire.

Ali, whose work has been featured in magazines such as Stylist, Grazia, Red and Vogue online, takes the business very seriously: behind the quirky and colourful designs lies a serious message. She cares passionately about sustainable fashion, and the wages and working conditions of the people she works with.

“Issues such as sustainability and ethical working practices are not a marketing ploy,” said Ali, who supports

the Fashion Revolution campaign Who Made My Clothes? The campaign was launched after the Rana Plaza clothing factory collapsed in Bangladesh in 2013 killing 1,138 people. “We have a social and corporate responsibility in what we do, so I look into everything I do very carefully.”

For example, Ali chooses wool to fill her cushions rather than artificial filler material used in products made

by China, for example, because it has been linked with breast cancer in those who breathe in its fibres. She prefers digital printing over screen printing because it’s more environmentally friendly, using less water and producing less chemical dye.

In 2014 she spent a year only buying clothes and accessories if she could meet the person who had made them.

Then after 12 months of interviewing artisan designers and blogging about it she created her Age of Reason womenswear range, which is designed and cut to ensure minimal cloth wastage, with off-cuts and selvedge hand-crafted into garment bindings, trims and small items like pocket squares. 

And she has worked with The Pin House to build up a larger customer base because “if they’re doing well, then

it’s good for my business”.

She said: “I don’t believe in keeping trade secrets. I want everyone to know who I work with. And collaborations produce better ideas.”

Born in Oban, Scotland, Ali, whose parents are potters, grew up in Lesotho before the family moved to London

when she was 16. After studying Art at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, Ali worked a as filmmaker and created music videos for bands.

Launching her own business as a designer came to her in “an epiphany”, she recalled. “I’d always been arty and

collected Liberty scarves and scarves from charity shops,” she said. “But there was a moment, when I’d just had Iris and I was sitting on a roof breast-feeding her while we were filming a video for The Magic Numbers, and I thought, ‘This is a bit miserable – I’d rather be designing’.

“I designed my first three scarves – playful designs of kinky Russian dolls with nipple tassels and chastity belts! At the same time, we decided to move to Brighton for the lifestyle and the sea.”

Ali, who is expecting her second child, is currently exploring new territory. She is collaborating with confectionery company The Meringue Girls to design and produce a range of cotton T-shirts for mothers. Out in around six weeks’ time, the range will include designs with an astrological and mystical tone including a simple goddess drawing and the slogan Girl With The Power, another reading You Can Sit With Us – and the rest are a surprise.

“It’s about inclusivity and women helping women,” explained Ali. “It’s a grown-up version of girl power and

being connected with more people. You can’t help being influenced by your own life and what we want and need, and as I’m a mum, I wanted to design these T-shirts for mothers.”

The Age of Reason shop is at age-of-reason-studios.com.