Shop the latest paisley prints now.

It’s safe to say that Prince loved prints. It’s a sentence that needs to be written down, rather than said out loud, especially if you have taken drink. But of all the prints that Prince had a penchant for, paisley was the one he liked best. It became his trademark print, immortalised in both music and concrete in the form of Paisley Park, the moniker shared by his 1985 single, record company and recording studio-cum-living complex, where you imagine his living arrangements were indeed complex.

Chanhassen, Minnesota, is a long way from the birthplace of the print itself. The name paisley is more recent addition, too. The pattern formerly known as buta is perhaps a more appropriate agnomen. The teardrop-shaped motif is of Persian origin and is thought to be based on the floral display of the cypress tree, which was adopted as a symbol of life and eternity by followers of Zoroastrianism, one of the oldest still-active religions in the world. The design gained traction in the West following the import of goods from the Indian subcontinent, particularly in the form of Kashmir shawls, to the English-speaking world during the colonial expansion of the 18th and 19th centuries. From here, it became synonymous with what was then the British epicentre of textile production, the Scottish town of Paisley.

All of which is a long-winded way to saying that, following a rather convoluted journey, a number of paisley items have landed on site this week. Of note, the wares of Sulka, a brand whose foundation was contemporaneous with paisley’s arrival in Britain, and one that, as tiemaker of choice for the Duke of Windsor, Mr Clark Gable and Sir Winston Churchill, did more than most to establish the pattern in the Western subconscious. And while it would be perfectly reasonable to sport the print on a shirt or scarf, or, indeed, a necktie, we can’t help thinking that, like Prince, we’d be happy at home, left to our own devices, in a pair of paisley pyjamas.

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