In 1997, Valérie Barkowski extracts a single stitch from Fez embroidery, enlarges it, and scatters it irregularly across a white cotton pillowcase. This is the first piece in the Noon collection. Twenty-nine years later, it is still made by hand in the Marrakech workshop, with the same gesture, with the same thread.
Fez embroidery: what makes it unique
Fez embroidery, or Tarz el Ghorza, is one of the most complex embroidered techniques in Morocco’s heritage. Its line stitch is built without a preliminary drawing: the embroiderer counts the warp and weft threads, starts from the centre of the piece, and builds her geometric motifs from the inside out.
Its absolute singularity: the right side and the reverse are strictly identical. You see no fastening stitch, no thread left protruding. The motifs—stars, crosses, arabesques—are impeccable on both sides. A standard few embroidered techniques can reach.
Traditionally monochrome, it unfolds in blue, garnet, green or plum. But this work was not found in shops. It lived behind the walls of homes, passed down between mothers and daughters, reserved for wedding trousseaux. Valérie Barkowski discovers it in that space—domestic, non-commercial, invisible from the street.
“From the moment I arrived in Marrakech, this embroidery fascinated me—an absolute precision that gives an impression of simplicity. So ordered, symmetrical, impeccable.”
From traditional technique to Noon: a deconstruction
Traditional Fez embroidery forms large, structured motifs that cover the entire surface. Valérie Barkowski chooses to break it down: she extracts a single stitch—a small eight-pointed star that forms a square—and isolates it.
This single stitch, she enlarges, shifts its scale, then scatters it irregularly across the entire surface of a pillowcase, then along the edge of a bedsheet. The result: an embroidery that retains the rigour of the Fez stitch while producing a radically different visual effect—airy, minimal, contemporary.
This is the brand’s constant working method: identify a savoir-faire, understand its internal logic, extract one element, change the scale. Do not copy. Reinterpret.
“I extracted the stitch, enlarged it, and scattered it. The impression is similar, but the result is entirely different. Noon embroidery is a personal interpretation of a long-standing tradition.”
Summer 1997: the first pieces, the first embroiderer
To produce the first pieces, embroiderers capable of maintaining the required level of precision must be found. Valérie Barkowski activates the medina network. She reaches an association of women introduced to artisanal embroidery by Moroccan Catholic nuns.
The first embroiderer is called Rabea. She lives in Dar Bacha, a stone’s throw from what would become the V.Barkowski boutique. She walks with difficulty, with a malformation. They do not speak the same language. But the first sample she delivers is impeccable: the stars are small, perfect, regularly irregular. Both sides identical. Not a single thread protrudes.
Then Rabea revealed that of the sum paid by the association, only 32% was given to her. The discovery was brutal: an institution presenting itself as protective was siphoning off the wages of its own workers. This was the first lesson in a reality that would take years to fully unfold – that of intermediaries who capture a share of the artisans’ work, sometimes under the guise of charity, sometimes even within the team. Employees of the workshop, better paid than the embroiderers, demanded a commission from them in exchange for orders. This continued for years before being discovered.
This first contact opens up a network. The medina’s embroiderers work from home; it is a Moroccan social reality: for women whose family obligations limit travel, home-based work provides access to an income of their own, in a country where women’s role remains, in some circles, confined to the domestic sphere.
Once the first women are found, dozens more follow. Each embroiderer works at home, at her own pace. The Marrakech textile workshop receives, checks, assembles. In the busiest periods, up to five hundred embroiderers work simultaneously for the brand.
Each embroiderer produces at her own pace, in her own style. Which creates a logistical constraint: a client order must be embroidered by one and the same person to ensure the piece’s visual coherence. Slowness is part of the system.
The workshop now operates on a smaller scale, with the same exacting standards and techniques.
Twenty-nine years of a collection: what has changed, what remains
The Noon collection has evolved. The pattern has grown over the years, and this change in scale has a direct technical consequence: the double-sided Fez embroidery, characteristic of the original technique, becomes more difficult to apply to larger formats. Current pieces are embroidered on one side only. The design remains identical, the precision intact; it is the scale of the pattern that makes reversible work impractical at these dimensions.
The collection now covers hand-embroidered bed linen,duvet covers, sheets, pillowcases, and embroidered table linen, tablecloths, placemats, napkins. Always in white mercerized combed cotton poplin for bed linen, a coarser cotton for table linen, and linen available upon request. The embroidery colors are infinite: solid tones or multicolored assortments from our collections, or even a color straight from a client’s imagination who provides us with their Pantone.
What does not change: the stitch itself, the gesture, the hand. And the growing difficulty of finding embroiderers able to sustain it. The savoir-faire is passed on less. Wedding trousseaux—the traditional space where women embroidered for months, surrounded by their mother and aunts—are now embroidered externally, or replaced by machine embroidery. Embroiderers trained in the exact technique of the Noon collection become rarer each year.
“Twenty-nine years later, Noon embroidery is still as loved and purchased. But I can see the tradition being lost. The stitch itself changes. That is why each piece takes the time it takes—and why that time cannot be reduced.”
Noon embroidery is the first embroidered home-linen collection designed by Valérie Barkowski in Morocco. It is also its guiding thread: it set the method, opened the network, taught the codes. Everything that followed—other embroideries, passementerie, the AYA, NIL, YUMI collections—comes from the same reflex: a local savoir-faire, a personal reinterpretation, a production that provides home-based work.
An object can endure when it is built on a sound internal logic. The Noon collection is its longest demonstration.
Fez embroidery, or Tarz el Ghorza, is a traditional Moroccan embroidery technique originating in the imperial city of Fez. It is built in counted running stitch, without a preliminary drawing, and its distinctive feature is that it is strictly identical on the right side and the reverse of the fabric. The motifs—geometric, symmetrical—are usually monochrome: blue, garnet, green, plum.
How is Noon embroidery different from traditional Fez embroidery?
Noon embroidery starts from the same base stitch as Fez embroidery, but extracts a single motif—an eight-pointed star—which it enlarges and scatters irregularly across the entire surface of the linen. Traditional embroidery covers the piece with large, structured, dense motifs. Noon is airy, minimal, contemporary. It is a reinterpretation, not a reproduction.
Is Noon linen available made to order?
Yes. Dimensions, embroidery colour and the base cloth (cotton or linen) are fully customisable. Simply send a Pantone reference or a fabric swatch to sales@valeriebarkowski.com. Made-to-order requests are quoted individually.
How do I care for Noon embroidered linen?
Hand-embroidered Noon bed linen can be machine-washed at 40°C on a delicate cycle. Air-drying is preferable to preserve the embroidery. For ironing, turn the piece inside out and iron on the reverse.
What is the difference between Noon, Kross and Otis embroidery?
The three collections are based on distinct stitches of Moroccan artisanal embroidery. Noon starts from the Fez stitch, with a scattered star motif. Kross and Otis interpret other stitches and create different visual effects—more geometric, denser. All are produced by hand in the Marrakech textile workshop.
It is the simplest stitch in all embroidery: the one a child reproduces instinctively, needle in hand, the one used to mend a hem or assemble a garment before the final seam. Trass brings this stitch into our hand-embroidered home linen in Marrakech for the first time. The city’s embroidery has been built around other …
Our YOYO collection celebrates a free line and an array of possible designs. Discover here what makes our new collection of twisted-thread bed linen so distinctive. A design born from a hotel commission YOYO was born from a bed linen commission for a hotel project in Marrakech. “I had designed sets for a hotel in …
An author jewel is almost never born in the workshop. With Valérie Barkowski, it is first born elsewhere, in the chance of a journey, a piece sourced at a market. There are drawers I have been opening for twenty years. They contain nothing precious in the sense jewellers mean it. Antique beads bought at a …
Fez Embroidery: The Origin of Our Noon Collection
In 1997, Valérie Barkowski extracts a single stitch from Fez embroidery, enlarges it, and scatters it irregularly across a white cotton pillowcase. This is the first piece in the Noon collection. Twenty-nine years later, it is still made by hand in the Marrakech workshop, with the same gesture, with the same thread.
Fez embroidery: what makes it unique
Fez embroidery, or Tarz el Ghorza, is one of the most complex embroidered techniques in Morocco’s heritage. Its line stitch is built without a preliminary drawing: the embroiderer counts the warp and weft threads, starts from the centre of the piece, and builds her geometric motifs from the inside out.
Its absolute singularity: the right side and the reverse are strictly identical. You see no fastening stitch, no thread left protruding. The motifs—stars, crosses, arabesques—are impeccable on both sides. A standard few embroidered techniques can reach.
Traditionally monochrome, it unfolds in blue, garnet, green or plum. But this work was not found in shops. It lived behind the walls of homes, passed down between mothers and daughters, reserved for wedding trousseaux. Valérie Barkowski discovers it in that space—domestic, non-commercial, invisible from the street.
“From the moment I arrived in Marrakech, this embroidery fascinated me—an absolute precision that gives an impression of simplicity. So ordered, symmetrical, impeccable.”
From traditional technique to Noon: a deconstruction
Traditional Fez embroidery forms large, structured motifs that cover the entire surface. Valérie Barkowski chooses to break it down: she extracts a single stitch—a small eight-pointed star that forms a square—and isolates it.
This single stitch, she enlarges, shifts its scale, then scatters it irregularly across the entire surface of a pillowcase, then along the edge of a bedsheet. The result: an embroidery that retains the rigour of the Fez stitch while producing a radically different visual effect—airy, minimal, contemporary.
This is the brand’s constant working method: identify a savoir-faire, understand its internal logic, extract one element, change the scale. Do not copy. Reinterpret.
“I extracted the stitch, enlarged it, and scattered it. The impression is similar, but the result is entirely different. Noon embroidery is a personal interpretation of a long-standing tradition.”
Summer 1997: the first pieces, the first embroiderer
To produce the first pieces, embroiderers capable of maintaining the required level of precision must be found. Valérie Barkowski activates the medina network. She reaches an association of women introduced to artisanal embroidery by Moroccan Catholic nuns.
The first embroiderer is called Rabea. She lives in Dar Bacha, a stone’s throw from what would become the V.Barkowski boutique. She walks with difficulty, with a malformation. They do not speak the same language. But the first sample she delivers is impeccable: the stars are small, perfect, regularly irregular. Both sides identical. Not a single thread protrudes.
Then Rabea revealed that of the sum paid by the association, only 32% was given to her. The discovery was brutal: an institution presenting itself as protective was siphoning off the wages of its own workers. This was the first lesson in a reality that would take years to fully unfold – that of intermediaries who capture a share of the artisans’ work, sometimes under the guise of charity, sometimes even within the team. Employees of the workshop, better paid than the embroiderers, demanded a commission from them in exchange for orders. This continued for years before being discovered.
From one embroiderer to five hundred
This first contact opens up a network. The medina’s embroiderers work from home; it is a Moroccan social reality: for women whose family obligations limit travel, home-based work provides access to an income of their own, in a country where women’s role remains, in some circles, confined to the domestic sphere.
Once the first women are found, dozens more follow. Each embroiderer works at home, at her own pace. The Marrakech textile workshop receives, checks, assembles. In the busiest periods, up to five hundred embroiderers work simultaneously for the brand.
Each embroiderer produces at her own pace, in her own style. Which creates a logistical constraint: a client order must be embroidered by one and the same person to ensure the piece’s visual coherence. Slowness is part of the system.
The workshop now operates on a smaller scale, with the same exacting standards and techniques.
Twenty-nine years of a collection: what has changed, what remains
The Noon collection has evolved. The pattern has grown over the years, and this change in scale has a direct technical consequence: the double-sided Fez embroidery, characteristic of the original technique, becomes more difficult to apply to larger formats. Current pieces are embroidered on one side only. The design remains identical, the precision intact; it is the scale of the pattern that makes reversible work impractical at these dimensions.
The collection now covers hand-embroidered bed linen,duvet covers, sheets, pillowcases, and embroidered table linen, tablecloths, placemats, napkins. Always in white mercerized combed cotton poplin for bed linen, a coarser cotton for table linen, and linen available upon request. The embroidery colors are infinite: solid tones or multicolored assortments from our collections, or even a color straight from a client’s imagination who provides us with their Pantone.
What does not change: the stitch itself, the gesture, the hand. And the growing difficulty of finding embroiderers able to sustain it. The savoir-faire is passed on less. Wedding trousseaux—the traditional space where women embroidered for months, surrounded by their mother and aunts—are now embroidered externally, or replaced by machine embroidery. Embroiderers trained in the exact technique of the Noon collection become rarer each year.
“Twenty-nine years later, Noon embroidery is still as loved and purchased. But I can see the tradition being lost. The stitch itself changes. That is why each piece takes the time it takes—and why that time cannot be reduced.”
NOON Ozera Duo Placemat Set
NOON Tablecloth
NOON Napkin – Set of 4
What the Noon collection says
Noon embroidery is the first embroidered home-linen collection designed by Valérie Barkowski in Morocco. It is also its guiding thread: it set the method, opened the network, taught the codes. Everything that followed—other embroideries, passementerie, the AYA, NIL, YUMI collections—comes from the same reflex: a local savoir-faire, a personal reinterpretation, a production that provides home-based work.
An object can endure when it is built on a sound internal logic. The Noon collection is its longest demonstration.
→ Discover our hand-embroidered Noon collection
FAQ – Fez embroidery and the Noon collection
What is Fez embroidery?
Fez embroidery, or Tarz el Ghorza, is a traditional Moroccan embroidery technique originating in the imperial city of Fez. It is built in counted running stitch, without a preliminary drawing, and its distinctive feature is that it is strictly identical on the right side and the reverse of the fabric. The motifs—geometric, symmetrical—are usually monochrome: blue, garnet, green, plum.
How is Noon embroidery different from traditional Fez embroidery?
Noon embroidery starts from the same base stitch as Fez embroidery, but extracts a single motif—an eight-pointed star—which it enlarges and scatters irregularly across the entire surface of the linen. Traditional embroidery covers the piece with large, structured, dense motifs. Noon is airy, minimal, contemporary. It is a reinterpretation, not a reproduction.
Is Noon linen available made to order?
Yes. Dimensions, embroidery colour and the base cloth (cotton or linen) are fully customisable. Simply send a Pantone reference or a fabric swatch to sales@valeriebarkowski.com. Made-to-order requests are quoted individually.
How do I care for Noon embroidered linen?
Hand-embroidered Noon bed linen can be machine-washed at 40°C on a delicate cycle. Air-drying is preferable to preserve the embroidery. For ironing, turn the piece inside out and iron on the reverse.
What is the difference between Noon, Kross and Otis embroidery?
The three collections are based on distinct stitches of Moroccan artisanal embroidery. Noon starts from the Fez stitch, with a scattered star motif. Kross and Otis interpret other stitches and create different visual effects—more geometric, denser. All are produced by hand in the Marrakech textile workshop.
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