Alex Proba and Salehe Bembury Turn Their Signature Motifs Into Home Decor

Alex Proba and Salehe Bembury speak different design languages. The founder of StudioPROBA moves fluidly between murals, interiors, furniture, and public art to build exuberant compositions rooted in emotion and color. Bembury, meanwhile, has become one of contemporary footwear’s most recognizable designers, translating fingerprints, topography, and organic textures into highly coveted sneakers and products. Yet despite working in different disciplines, both have long shared an interest in how color and pattern shape the way people experience an object.

Salehe Bembury and Alex Proba with their new collection, Soft Imprints. Photography courtesy of Alex Proba and Salehe Bembury.

That common ground forms the basis of Soft Imprints, the duo’s second collaboration (Absorbed Language launched in 2021). The limited-edition collection of rugs and pillows combines Bembury’s signature fingerprint motif with Proba’s abstract forms and saturated palettes, creating tactile pieces that feel like functional furnishings as much as collectible works.

Photography courtesy of Alex Proba and Salehe Bembury.

Rather than treating pattern as decoration, the collection uses repetition, texture, and color to create movement across woven surfaces. Two rug designs and two pillow styles merge the designers’ visual vocabularies into what feels less like a mash-up than a natural evolution of individual ideas.

“I’ve always believed that objects should make you feel something,” Proba says. “With Soft Imprints, we wanted every piece to feel joyful, tactile, and full of life.”

Photography courtesy of Alex Proba and Salehe Bembury.

That emotional dimension has long been central to Proba’s practice, which spans painting, interiors, sculpture, and public installations. For Bembury, whose work frequently draws inspiration from nature and the human touch, the collaboration reflects a shared confidence in intuition over trends.

“I’ve always admired how fearless Alex is with color,” Bembury says. “We both trust our instincts, and that’s a much more interesting place to start than a trend forecast.”

Color is one of the collaboration’s strongest points of connection. Even though their careers have developed in different industries, both designers see color as something that fundamentally changes the relationship between people and objects.

Photography courtesy of Alex Proba and Salehe Bembury.

“Alex and I have always shared a similar way of looking at color,” Bembury explains. “Even though we work in different mediums, we both believe color can completely change how someone experiences an object.”

That mutual understanding also shaped the creative process itself. Soft Imprints embraces the distinctiveness of both practices, rather than trying to soften the individual aesthetics.

Photography courtesy of Alex Proba and Salehe Bembury.

“The best collaborations happen when both people have a clear point of view,” Bembury says. “Alex’s work is unmistakably hers, and that’s what makes building something together interesting.”

Proba echoes that sentiment, describing the collection as the product of a long creative dialogue rather than a one-off partnership.

“Design is a conversation,” she says. “This collection is the result of years of mutual respect, curiosity, and a shared desire to create objects that people want to live with.”

Photography courtesy of Alex Proba and Salehe Bembury.

Produced as a limited edition of just 80 rugs and 200 pillows, Soft Imprints will be available in limited quantities on probahome.com and salehebembury.com.

Editorial Transparency: This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools, which may have been used for research, outlining, editing, or copy refinement. Reporting, fact-checking, and editorial decisions were made by the Design Milk editorial team.