Calico Wallpaper Introduces Estuary, a New Collection with Ahluwalia
Estuary marks Ahluwalia's first exploration of wallcoverings, translating the designer's distinctive visual language into an immersive mural format.
.jpg "Estuary in colorway \"Undertow\"")
New York, NY (September 16, 2026) — Debuting during the London Design Festival, Calico Wallpaper introduces Estuary by Ahluwalia, a new collection created in collaboration with fashion designer Priya Ahluwalia. Bringing together Calico's immersive approach to wallcoverings with Ahluwalia's distinctive visual language, the collection explores migration, memory, and the evolving meaning of home through designs inspired by the movement of water and the cultural landscapes it connects.
Estuary marks Priya Ahluwalia's first foray into wallcoverings, bringing her distinctive visual language into a new creative medium. Known for thoughtful exploration of identity, heritage, and the global diaspora, Ahluwalia translates the layered narratives, rich materiality, and cultural references that define her work into immersive wallcoverings, opening a new chapter of the brand beyond fashion.
"Throughout the process, we were continually inspired by Priya's openness to exploration and experimentation. She approaches design through storytelling, bringing together personal history and sensitivity to color, texture, and material," says Rachel Cope, Creative Director at Calico Wallpaper.
Presented across six colorways — Brackish, Confluence, Estuarine, Sounding, Tidelight, and Undertow — the collection evokes the shifting color of tidal landscapes through layered mineral tones, softened blues, warm earth pigments, atmospheric greys, and luminous blush hues. Each palette offers its own emotional register, allowing every installation to become a personal reflection on memory, place, and connection.
Drawing from Indian and Nigerian architecture, family photographs spanning the 1960s through the 1980s, maps, paintings of water, and the textures of earth and clay. Ahluwalia developed a visual language that balances abstraction with emotional resonance. Many of these references also formed the brand's collections, continuing an ongoing exploration of place, heritage, and the experience of creating home across generations.
"With Estuary, I wanted to create a collection that reflects the fluid nature of home, identity, and belonging. Collaborating with Calico made it possible to bring those ideas into interiors in a way that the brand hasn't done before, translating my visual language into immersive wall murals. Working with the Calico team has been a great experience and allowed us to venture into an exciting new chapter," says Priya Ahluwalia, Creative Director and Founder of Ahluwalia.
The collection began as a series of original watercolor paintings, allowing pigment to bleed, settle, and layer organically before being translated into Calico Wallpaper’s signature mural format. Through an iterative process moving between hand-painted artwork and digital refinement, each composition was carefully developed to preserve the spontaneity of the original paintings while creating immersive environments that respond to the scale and atmosphere of interior space.
Designing for interiors offered Ahluwalia a new creative perspective, shifting the focus from garments experienced momentarily to spaces inhabited every day. Throughout the collaboration, particular attention was given to how scale, color, and composition shape the emotional character of a room, resulting in murals that invite contemplation, connection, and personal interpretation.
Launching as Ahluwalia celebrates eight years of her eponymous label, Estuary marks the next evolution of the brand’s multidisciplinary creative vision, expanding its storytelling from fashion into the home. The collection considers interiors as places where personal histories, cultural identities, and everyday rituals converge—inviting people to create environments that feel both deeply personal and universally resonant.
Estuary by Ahluwalia will debut during the London Design Festival in September 2026.
ABOUT AHULWALIA
Founder and Creative Director Priya Ahluwalia launched her eponymous label in 2018 after graduating from the MA Menswear course at the University of Westminster. The brand combines elements of her Indian-Nigerian heritage and London roots, exploring the potential of vintage and surplus materials through innovative textile techniques. Informed by art, music, and literature across the African and Asian diasporas, Ahluwalia creates work that sits at the intersection of past and present, near and far, nostalgia and futurism. Ahluwalia is available in retailers worldwide and at Ahluwalia.world.
@Ahluwalia | Ahluwalia.world
ABOUT CALICO WALLPAPER
Calico Wallpaper is a designer of bespoke wallpaper. The company was founded in Brooklyn, New York, in 2013 by creative and life partners Nicholas and Rachel Cope. Their process combines artisanal methods from the decorative arts, such as traditional marbling and dip-dyeing techniques, with innovative technologies. Calico Wallpaper works with a global roster of leading designers and architects. In addition to residential and hospitality projects, Calico Wallpaper’s designs have been exhibited internationally at Milan Design Week and London Design Festival and have obtained a place in the permanent collection at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. In 2021, Calico Wallpaper opened its first showroom at 57 Lispenard Street, New York, NY, with partner and furniture manufacturer Stellar Works.