Design Talks

Observations on design

Sudo Reiko explores material’s possibilities at Japan House London

Posted on May 17, 2021 by Nargess

Making Nuno, Japanese Textile Innovation from Sud? Reiko

‘Some things disappear, some things have to disappear, but some things live on using different materials and technologies,’ says Sudo Reiko. The visionary Japanese textile designer’s work is anchored on exploring the possibilities of textile. Often fusing ancient and modern techniques, and involving unusual materials, her studio Nuno’s fabrics are almost always unexpected and imaginative. Now, Japan House London is hosting an exhibition dedicated to her work.

Making Nuno, Japanese Textile Innovation from Sudo Reiko (17 May ? 11 July 2021) is an immersive study of the artist and her studio’s creations. ‘Textile gives us the knowledge about our past, present and future,’ says Takahashi Mizuki. ‘I want to bring visitors to the journey of the textile through experiencing the production,’ adds the curator and executive director at the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile in Hong Kong, where a similar show was displayed two years ago.

Sudo’s fabrics tell infinite stories of time, place and people. She says in Japanese textile making, there is a tradition of handing down knowledge and knowhow through generations, and so the human factor, the people and their personalities, are central to the work at Nuno. Working with artisans around Japan, the studio also helps preserve skills passed on through generation.

Five large dynamic installations offer Japan House visitors a chance to see some of Nuno’s experimental processes in action. The Kibiso Crisscross fabric, for instance, takes the discarded protective outer layer of silk cocoons to make yarns from the tough remnants in tailored machines. Or, to celebrate of textile’s industrial process, discarded punch cards, which control the movements of the warp yarn on the programmable Jacquard weaving looms, are roughly stitched together for a screen that projects ethereal shadows onto a wall.

'Making Nuno, Japanese Textile Innovation from Sud? Reiko' at Japan House London explores the work of the visionary textile designer

There is a poetic energy to Sudo’s work that make her objects feel timeless. And her sustainable approach to product and production are extremely timely as consumers become more environmentally aware and expect greater accountability from brands they invest in.

‘I grew up in a small country town, where every spring and autumn we looked forward to the arrival of the travelling salesman and his bundle of kimono fabrics,’ recalls Sudo. ‘Hiding behind my mother, aunt and grandfather, I would watch spellbound as he presented these beautiful textiles, one after the other, on the tatami mats. That was probably when I first dreamt of one day becoming someone who makes beautiful fabrics.’

Images © Japan House London

‘Waste less, reuse more’, says new company Sonoma-USA

Posted on June 22, 2016 by Nargess

An exciting new company has launched on Kickstarter. Sonoma-USA’s mission is to turn waste into usable products, and it has captured the zeitgeist. The Californian apparel manufacturer will divert used materials from the landfill, transforming them into unique, individual and exciting products – accessories such as bags and totes. Sonoma-USA is about reuse, it is about upcycling and using the imagination to give life back to otherwise lost materials.

We caught up with Steffen Kuehr, founder and CEO of the company, to find out more.

This is a very exciting project with a hugely relevant philosophy behind it. What mission do you wish to accomplish with Sonoma-USA?

I’d like to bring more sustainable textile and apparel manufacturing back to the US, to create valuable skilled jobs here in Sonoma County and help divert materials from the landfill to make sure we don’t turn our beautiful rolling hills of Sonoma vineyards into mountains of trash. By partnering with local businesses and engaging the local community we hope to change people’s way of how they look at used materials and start rethinking waste.

You have a pretty diverse background coming to the US from Germany, having lived and worked in London, then in Silicon Valley before joining the Sonoma textile firm BPE-USA six years ago. This sounds like the perfect resume for running Sonoma-USA…

When I came to BPE I had to learn a lot of new things, but it felt very rewarding to make actual, physical products and not just work in the digital, virtual world. Having a marketing and business background certainly helped to bring in new aspects of branding, social media marketing as well as product diversification

How did you come up with the idea for Sonoma-USA?

Over the years I have been collecting a ton of scrap materials and fabric leftovers which are a regular side product of our production process at BPE but also in other local manufacturing businesses. Materials that are already paid for, with often cool patterns that are simply too valuable to throw away – military camo nylon from our knee pad production, fleece and water repellent nylon from our dog raincoat production and a wide range of other fabrics from different contract sewing jobs for different clients.

In addition to those materials we have been experimenting with materials like reclaimed vinyl banners and billboards that usually end up in the landfill as well – and those are very durable and fun materials to work with.

Have you always had a passion for issues surrounding sustainability?

Yes, but my desire to create something better and more meaningful has developed much stronger over the last few years. The passion has grown the more I got involved in the local community and the more I got to know the apparel and textile industry.

Considering the environmental challenges we face, especially with overseas mass production but also in the US where people still live one of the most wasteful lifestyles on the planet, and raising three little kids, I think it’s just not fair to leave the next generations with piles of our trash to clean up.

How involved are you with eco groups?

Sonoma County, where we are based, is very advanced when it comes to environmental awareness and social consciousness. I’m involved in organisations and movements like the Sustainable Enterprise Conference where I was a speaker for the last two years, and we are guided by the principles of the UK-based One Planet Living movement for our manufacturing business.

Besides tracking and monitoring our environmental impact, we also monitor the social impact of our activities on our employees and our local community. To ensure all these aspirations are fully developed in our business model, we are legally structured as a Benefit Corporation and have started the one-year process to become a certified B Corp.

How do you see Sonoma-USA evolving in the future?

I have a pretty big vision of what I want to build moving forward, and the Sonoma-USA brand is only the first step… the low hanging fruit. There are tons of materials such as banners or billboard out there that we can collect from businesses in the local community and transform into unique and purposeful products.

For instance, with one of the businesses we work, Sonoma Raceway, we will take their old banners off their shoulders. They save the money it would have cost them to haul that stuff to the landfill, it frees up valuable storage space, and it contributes to their sustainability efforts since we have already helped them to keep over 2000lbs of banners out of the landfill. On top of that their customers can buy a very unique piece of Raceway history since each product will be one of a kind.

Furthermore, we will donate a percentage of our proceeds from the products made with Raceway materials back to a charity of Sonoma Raceway’s choice, so it is essentially a win-win situation for everyone.

Support the Sonoma-USA Kickstarter campaign here

Find out more about Sonoma-USA here

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty

Posted on March 12, 2015 by Nargess

In his last collection before his death in February 2010, Lee Alexander McQueen returned to nature for inspiration. ‘I have always loved the mechanics of nature,’ wrote the designer. Plato’s Atlantis was inspired by Darwin’s 1859 the Origins of Species with a narrative that concerns itself with devolution rather the evolution of mankind.

Here McQueen’s complex, digitally engineered prints, inspired by exotic sea creatures, meet intricate craftsmanship, meet technology, meet the digital age. The collection was streamed live over the internet to entice dialogue between the creator and the consumer.

Plato’s Atlantis is the full expression of McQueen, and it marks the end to an intelligent, theatrical and visually exhilarating exhibition. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty opens at London’s V&A Museum this week and is a must for anyone with an interest in design.

Fashion exhibitions can often fail to reflect the excitement of the runway – the cloths can look drab and lifeless on the cold mannequin. Here, the museum’s senior curator of fashion, Claire Wilcox, has succeeded in envisaging a seductive narrative that is dark at times, evocative at others, always theatrical and soaking in drama.

She explores McQueen’s incredible craftsmanship and his gift as a tailor. She searches his imagination, his many influences – the cabinet of curiosities room cannot but put a smile on the face – and how he challenged the boundaries of art and fashion.

Few fashion designers have managed to straddle the world of fashion and art. The industry can seem a little shallow at times due to the very nature of the product, its short lifespan and the seemingly vacuous world it inhabits. McQueen really was one exception.

There was something of a contemporary Elsa Schiaparelli about McQueen in the way he infused a sense of fun, an almost surrealist approach, to his work. Yet the clothes were always beautifully crafted and flattering. For him fashion was a performance and catwalks performance art.

The V&A is expanding on the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2011 collection to feature thirty additional garments, including some rare early pieces; and a new section will focus on McQueen’s fledgling development as a designer in London.

The museum has also acquired 13 photographs by Anne Ray an extraordinary body of work described by McQueen as ‘my life in pictures’ (pictured above). The two formed a close friendship in the 1990s and Ray was granted great freedom to photograph in McQueen’s studio and at his shows with no restrictions.

The resulting photographs capture the energy behind-the-scenes, the intense preparations for each spectacular performance as well as portraits of the designer in reflective and joyous moments.

McQueen was a huge fan of the V&A, saying the collections ‘never fail to intrigue and inspire me… it’s the sort of place I’d like to be shut in overnight,’ a sentiment shared by us.

So it is fitting for this wonderful establishment, one that champions art and design in all its forms and shapes, and is never afraid to be daring, to take on a visionary creative such as McQueen.

Nargess Banks

Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, in partnership with Swarovski, is the V&A Museum in London from 14 March – 19 July 2015.

The Bolt: Shostakovich’s controversial ballet

Posted on November 27, 2014 by Nargess

Dmitri Shostakovich wrote The Bolt in 1931. It was a piece of musical experimentation, a ballet of unruly satire, populated by a host of comical characters.

The Bolt is based on a true story that follows the exploits of Lyonka Gulba (Gulba in Russian means idler), an indolent worker who persuades a young man to throw a bolt into the factory machinery, sabotaging the production of his workplace in revenge for being sacked.

The production featured real hammers and machine-inspired daring choreography by Fedor Lopukhov; the composer embellished the story with aerobics and acrobatics, with several passages mimicking the swishing and hammering sounds of modern factory machinery.

Critics reacted terribly to premiere at the Leningrad Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet that same year. So much so that it was immediately pulled off the programme with any performance thereafter strictly forbidden, until 74 years later when it saw the stage again, this time reconstructed for the Bolshoi Ballet by Alexei Ratmansky.

Gallery for Russian Arts and Design in London is staging an exhibition to celebrate this controversial ballet through costume designs and period photographs. Curated by GRAD’s Elena Sudakova and Alexandra Chiriac, the exhibition is organised in collaboration with the St Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music.

It features the witty costume designs of Tatiana Bruni bringing to life the characters that populate the ballet – from the Sportsman, the Textile-Worker or the Komsomol Girl, to the Drunkard, the Loafer and the pompous Bureaucrat.

Bruni’s designs have striking geometrical colour blocking. They are often seen as the apogee of post-revolutionary Russian experiments in stage design, and were inspired by the aesthetics of agit-theatre and ROSTA windows or artist-designed propaganda posters.

Constructivist values and aesthetics are reflected in all of the elements of the ballet, from
the costume designs to the score, choreography to set design.

Shostakovich’s exceptional blend of proletarian music genres play through the gallery space, transporting us to early thirties Russia and evoking Lopukhov’s daring choreography.

Bolt is at the Gallery for Russian Arts and Design in London from 6 December 2014 to 28 February 2015

Nargess Banks

Design Talks is published by Spinach Design

Students interpret Jaguar design

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Nargess

This is an inspired take on Jaguar design by Royal College of Art students Ewan Gallimore and Claire Miller created for Clerkenwell Design Week 2013, which opened this week. The initial brief, put forward by Jaguar’s advanced studio in the UK to vehicle and textile design students, was to create a joint exterior and interior form study that expresses their vision of the marque’s future design language in either a sports or luxury context.

Ewan and Claire explain their art installation: ‘We began the project by looking at light, specifically the way the light falls within the space at Clerkenwell. We thought about how our form could accentuate this light and convey volume through its use of materials and our knowledge of how these materials react with one another.’

The installation’s form relates to the Jaguar brand through its sculptural volumes, use of materials and visual lightness – this being pivotal to the marque’s ongoing design language.

‘These elements helped us to create a sculpture that aimed to display a seamless transition between interior and exterior space,’ say the team.

Read more on Jaguar design as we speak with design director Ian Callum on future ideas and Julian Thomson of advanced design discusses on the new F-Type.