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THE STORY 20 FALL WINTER

8. Craft for Modern Life

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Back in Kurogouchi’s hometown Nagano, people use shoulder baskets when harvesting vegetables or wild plants. As a child, it was a natural sight to see farming tools, and as she grew, she realised the beauty in its fusion of practicability and form. It was then that Kurogouchi thought of designing a backpack or small handbag, an accessory necessary in the modern lives of women, incorporating the farming tool spirit. Baskets created with bamboo or rattan are woven with one throughout the whole process. Have this crafting process in mind, Kurogouchi decided to use linen shoelace to create the similar woven look. To learn the idea, Kurogouchi visited a Mizuhiki* factory, also a traditional craft of Nagano prefecture, which shares the same concept of weaving. Unaffected by the changing times, traditional techniques pasted onto generation after generation, fusing this technique to create sublimation items of the daily lives of women is one of Maiko Kurogouchi’s missions. Based on the experience felt of being ‘embraced’ in Iceland, this collection’s design started on the imagination of creating a basket human. Reminiscing the fact that embracing clothes brings comfort to us humans, to Maiko Kurogouchi.

*Mizuhiki - a decorative Japanese cord made from twisted paper