THE STORY 20 SPRING SUMMER

One day, Maiko Kurogouchi was taken aback by a sight of flowers wrapped in a waste bag on its way to become trash. What is normally seen as waste had a sense of beauty that appealed to Kurogouchi as that was one way of “wrapping.” The blurry appearance of the details of flowers seen through semi-transparent bag and sunlight peeking through frosted glass provoked the smell of early summer. How would you represent the obscure appearance? The answer was found in Kasuri.

Before Jacquard technique was invented, it was Kaiser weaving that weaved patterns. They developed a method to create patterns by dyeing warp or weft yarn (or both) before actually weaving them. Inspired by this, Kurogouchi printed original floral drawing onto warp yarn using heat-transfer printing. When printing inks just on the warp and weave it with white woof, the patterns become distorted. We let ourselves go with unintentional and accidental beauty.

The irregularities used to be seen negatively as accuracy was considered important. Kurogouchi finds beauty in inconsistencies.

For the patterns, she chose the sketch she did at her grandmother's place. Updating tradition from the days of hand-weaving and dying, and interweaving personal memories into patterns, the unique textile was born, which provoke the indistinct silhouettes of flowers emerging through a plastic bag and window glass.