What’s under your bum? The importance of moquette design on the London Underground

God knows how many times I’ve plonked myself down on the battered seat of some form of London transport. Not to bore you with the ins and outs of my life, but all in all, through my school life (Jubilee and Northern lines), party life (Victoria and Central lines), unemployed life (the bus because it was cheap) and current working life (Overground), the tally is currently very high. By the time my working life is over (probably the day I die from chronic crisp consumption or appalling posture), I will have spent approximately 15 per cent of my life on those seats.

Like me, I’m sure many of you have spent hours reading, sleeping, listening to the Wicked soundtrack or drunk on London transport. But how many of us actually know anything about the things we spend so much of our lives sitting on?

The history of moquette is a long and complicated one. Meaning “carpet” in French, it’s the intricately woven fabric designs that line all of the seats in London’s buses and Tube carriages. First introduced to the capital at the turn of the 20th Century, the heavy fabric provides an extra layer of resilience through its hardy tufts. Adorned with a repeat pattern – often a geometric one – in many ways, moquette design is evidence of the various trends that ebb and flow over time.

Away from design, though, the seats of London signify much more than a zeitgeist aesthetic or a point on the Tube map. For many of the capital’s long-term residents, seeing an old design can transport you back to an almost-forgotten memory. For instance, there was a moquette called D78-Stock that upholstered most of the seats of the old Route Master buses, as well as those on the District line in the 80s. Its satisfying design sees neatly stacked bricks of colour alternating between rectangles of burnt orange, black, brown and murky olive green.

When I look at this fuzz of a design, I find myself transported back to my six-year-old self. Having hopped on the back of an open double-decker bus and jostling upstairs beside my equally hyper sister, I’m sitting on the now-defunct moquette design, D-78. I have a feeling I was on my way to the Disney store in Oxford Street, which would explain why I still remember this otherwise insignificant memory to this day.

But back in the day, moquettes were picturesque and figurative. The colour palettes were lighter, a design choice that was quickly erased when transport bigwigs realised it failed to mask dirt. From the 20s, designers were also briefed to create more complicated patterns with a tighter repeat to be more hard-wearing, as in those days, manual workers would board the Tube or bus covered in all sorts of debris that wouldn’t pass health and safety regulations nowadays. Things got really exciting in the 30s though, when a man called Frank Pick came to power as CEO, in turn instigating a design heyday for London transport and changing its public face forever.

Under his hand, London Transport was transformed into a visual system of high design. Also from York, Pick devised the iconic Underground roundel, commissioned the now-ubiquitous typeface Johnston and recruited the leading designers and architects to make work for his beloved underground network. Paul Nash, Enid Marx and Marianne Dorn were just a few of the contemporary giants asked to try their hands at moquette design in that decade.

They were part of Pick’s vision to democratise design, planting it everywhere; under the every man’s bum or across the city’s walls in the form of Art Deco poster art. It’s an era of design that is now synonymous with London, a vintage throwback to the early 20th Century Britain with its hand-painted signage and understated cream coloured posters.

Pick favoured red and green, Andrew tells me, because it symbolised the town and countryside respectively. “He thought green was soothing because it reminded people of the country. He liked to think that the tubes took people from town, out to the country,” and the colours red and green hinted to this modern life balance. From Andrew’s point of view, the Tube was most confident during the 20s and 30s, in part because there were barely any cars to compete with. “There was a very strong public service ethos,” he reiterates. “It was basically this slightly socialistic idea. Even though it wasn’t a nationalised company (it was a public corporation), there was a strong sense of altruism to do the best for the public, especially in the design. Nothing was too good for the ordinary Londoner.”

Before the societal upheaval of the Second World War, design on the London Underground was distinctly considered. The public toilets were conveniently situated near station entrances and the colour of every bench was carefully planned. The beautifully designed transport system was “like a gift to London from this public corporation,” he adds, “and the moquettes in the 20s and 30s reflected the seriousness with which they took the idea of quality in design.”