Even though his words now come in fits and starts barely louder than a breath, Maya Romanoff still does what he has long done best: raise eyebrows.

Since long before he tie-dyed his first T-shirt, he has been a revolutionary, all right. Tie-dyed his way right into the Smithsonian's permanent collection, and onto the cover of House & Garden. Sold a tie-dye leather vest to Roger Daltrey of The Who, a caftan to Cheryl Tiegs. That was back in the 1970s when tie-dye, Tiegs and Daltrey were hot as the lit-up end of whatever everyone was smoking at Woodstock.

Romanoff's psychedelic wraps -- an opera coat, a backless ribbon dress -- were hung above the grand staircase at Ultimo in Chicago's Gold Coast, flew off the racks at Henri Bendel in New York and I. Magnin in Beverly Hills.

But then, unwilling to put up with the ephemeral whims of fashion, Romanoff turned his tie-dye attention to outdoor art, draping Belvedere Castle in New York's Central Park with 150 yards of tie-dye panels and unrolling 48,000 square feet of hand-dyed canvas strips off the side of the Sun-Times building in Chicago.

Somehow, Romanoff found his way into interior design and started slapping tie-dye on walls. Didn't stop at twisted, knotted, dyed cloth or paper either, once he discovered the canvas that is the wall.

He has put up mother-of-pearl, crushed granite and marble, and Swarovski crystals. He has papered walls in 18-karat gold. And braided hemp. And razor-thin slices of Paulownia wood, from the Chinese fig tree. And glass beads that shimmer like a lake at twilight.

"Extraordinary surfaces. Since 1969," goes the inscription of Maya Romanoff, the corporation, known in chic design circles around the globe for the last four decades for what it has done to the vertical planes that delineate our lives. Its logo, of two entwined lotus blossoms, is a touch of Zen that goes back to the beginning of this free-flowing enterprise.

For some 18 years, Parkinson's disease has slowly, agonizingly, been robbing Romanoff of his balance, his gait, his grasp of even a breakfast spoon and his voice. But the disease can't put a dent in the creative spark that is the 69-year-old's trademark.

It was in the marketplace at Gabes in Tunisia that Maya was transfixed by the ancient art of tie-dyeing, the swirl of kaleidoscopic colour and unpredictable pattern that emerged from all the dipping of hand-spun cloth.

But it wasn't till after coming home from Woodstock, in 1969, that Maya and Becky, his then wife, tried their hand with a bottle of Rit, a slew of rubber bands and their first knotted-up T-shirt.

At a Rolling Stones concert in Miami, they'd barely opened the sides of their van before every last psychedelic shirt was sold. Emboldened by their tie-dye triumph, they took on New York.

Albert Hadley, who at the time was partner to Sister Parish, the late doyenne of interior design in America who counted Jackie Kennedy among her highbrow clients, recalls how the Romanoffs, "hippies in flowing white robes, unrolled textiles of great variety and beauty -- cottons, linens, silks, some soft leathers and a variety of velvets. Some were rich and heavy, others gossamer thin."

As one critic of the time wrote, "They took New York by storm."

Walking through an alley on a dreary winter's day, looking up to see laundry flapping in the wind, Romanoff got yet another big idea: dangling tie-dye swaths off buildings. So began the chapter that had him dyeing bolts of canvas by the thousands of yards, covering sides of buildings in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Miami.

Ultimately, though, it's inner space that has held his attention all these years.

In the private and not-so-private spaces of a client list that reads like a spin through late 20th century pop icons -- Donald Trump, Donna Karan, Quincy Jones, Britney Spears, Barbra Streisand, even the Sultan of Brunei -- Romanoff's revolution has rolled on. The needle never got stuck in the tie-dye groove.

The Romanoffs have brought in artists who, along with Romanoff, conjure secret techniques for affixing anything from precious metals to earthy bits of bark and mulberry, clay and crushed stone, to rolls and bolts and tiles that transform inner spaces to otherworldly.

The psychedelic world of Maya Romanoff has unlocked untold dreams. And raised just as many eyebrows.