Chintz — although it might today be largely associated with twee or cutesy armchairs and wallpaper — is, in its true form, a fabric that was not only once highly prized the world over, and helped revolutionise fashion and design, but also changed the course of history — in many cases, unfortunately, for the worse. “[Chintz tells] a story that is much larger, and often much less pleasant”, according to Harvard historian Dr Sven Beckert. “A tale of armed trade, colonialism, slavery, and the dispossession of native peoples.”

Over time, the word ‘chintz’ came to be used to refer to a variety of fabrics. “The term was appropriated in [the] English-speaking world in the 18th Century to reference industrially printed cottons,” says Fee. “In popular imagination, over the 19th Century, the term became associated with floral designs and heavy glazing”. As Alexandra Palmer, another curator at the ROM, explains, “More costly Indian chintz had a glazed finish… which added a stiff, luxurious hand”. Whether glazed or not, the use of mordants, resists, and dyes originally defined chintz, the intricate patterns of which were painstakingly produced by hand in two main ways: either with wooden blocks or through the more complex process of kalamkari (from the Persian “ghalamkari”, meaning “pen-work”).

In the 2010s, numerous publications wrote about the chintz comeback, including Vogue, which in 2018 called it “the print that’s back in a big way”. This remains to be seen; but, if history is any guide, it can be said that chintz won’t, at least, go the way of powdered wigs in fashion. “It will always come in and out of home decor and fashion,” says Betsey Johnson, “because it’s so so good”.