Is Morocco good for a textile / carpet-focused trip?

For anyone who loves textiles, Morocco is close to paradise — a country where weaving is a living, regional, deeply meaningful craft rather than a museum piece, and where you can buy extraordinary pieces directly from the people who made them. Moroccan rugs have become globally fashionable, but here you can go to the source, understand the differences, and bring home something with a real story. I plan dedicated textile trips, and they're some of the most satisfying journeys I do.

It helps to know the main rug families, because each tells you a region and a people. The famous one is the Beni Ourain — thick, cream, undyed wool with simple dark geometric lines, woven by Berber tribes of the Middle Atlas (the rug the modernist designers fell in love with). The Azilal rugs, from the High Atlas around Azilal, are wilder and more colourful, often with abstract motifs telling the weaver's own story. Boucherouite are joyful recycled rag-rugs of mixed textiles; kilims are the flatwoven, patterned weaves; and "cactus silk" (sabra), actually agave fibre, makes the lustrous shimmering throws. Then there are the city rugs of Rabat and the embroideries of Fes and Tetouan, the indigo-dyed cottons, and the gauzy sabra scarves.

For buying and seeing the craft, the souks of Marrakech and Fes are the obvious markets — the rug souks are an experience in themselves, theatrical and ripe for happy haggling (do bargain hard and only buy what you love). But for authenticity and fair prices, I steer guests to the source: the weaving villages and women's cooperatives of the Middle and High Atlas, where you watch wool being spun, dyed with natural plant dyes, and knotted on the loom, and your money goes to the weavers. Towns and markets like those around Azilal, the Beni Ourain area, Taznakht (a great kilim-and-rug centre on the way south), and Chefchaouen all reward a textile pilgrim.

To get the most out of it, travel with someone who can read quality — the knot count, natural versus synthetic dyes, hand-spun versus machine wool — and who can arrange visits to cooperatives and workshops, even a hands-on weaving or natural-dyeing lesson. Combine the souk theatre of Marrakech and Fes with a couple of days in the Atlas weaving country, and you'll come home not just with beautiful rugs and textiles, but understanding exactly what you bought and from whom. It's a genuinely brilliant focus for a trip.