Tag - textiles

 
 

TEXTILES

Unitika President Shuji Ueno attends a news conference in Osaka on Thursday.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 29, 2024
Unitika announces withdrawal from textile business
Its textile division has been struggling in recent years due to intensifying competition with Chinese and other rivals.
Aiku Kurotaki’s “Human 1” (2024) — and “Human 0” (2024) to the left — on display at Tokyo’s Som Gallery earlier this year.
CULTURE / Art
Nov 26, 2024
‘From 0 to 1’: Aiku Kurotaki’s fabric of existence
The artist's wool sculptures play off the idea of string theory, which conceptualizes subatomic particles as infinitesimal strings vibrating in fixed patterns.
Workers at a garment factory in Gazipur, Bangladesh, on April 16, 2023
BUSINESS / Tech
Nov 5, 2024
AI supports fashion's climate goals, but workers may be left behind
In Bangladesh, about 60% of apparel workers, or 2.7 million people, risk losing their jobs due to automation.
A model displays a creation by Japanese designer Norio Surikabe during a runway show on Sept. 6 for the latest edition of Rakuten Fashion Week Tokyo.
LIFE / Style & Design
Sep 14, 2024
Tokyo’s top fashion showcase pushes rising stars to the world stage
Rakuten Fashion Week Tokyo celebrated industry veterans while shining a spotlight on emerging talent.
The colored patterns of Tsuguru "nuri," made in Aomori Prefecture, are achieved by applying multiple coatings of lacquer, which are later polished down to reveal layers of colors beneath.
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
May 18, 2024
A new initiative rethinks old Tohoku crafts
Described as “collector's items,” the works are being kept under wraps until their debut at a May 24-25 exhibition at Kudan House in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Jun 16, 2023
Marimekko designer Fujiwo Ishimoto returns to his roots in Ehime
When I arrive at the flagship store of Mustakivi in Dogo, Ehime Prefecture, I’m greeted silently by 82-year-old Ehime-born designer Fujiwo Ishimoto. He unlocks the back door to his adjoining atelier and motions for me to come in. We pass through the kiln room and enter a studio filled with ceramic...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Dec 10, 2022
Deep in Yamagata's mountains, rural artisans pull on history's threads
A spell of financial insecurity during the Edo Period gave rise to one of Japan's strongest textile traditions.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Oct 10, 2021
28 shades of aimai: Reinventing Japan’s traditional color wheel
Want to upholster your couch in a color that references “fog hanging above blue seas”? Now you can, with designer Teruhiro Yanagihara's lineup of textile shades for Kvadrat.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Jul 4, 2021
No time to die, but a great time to wear a maekake apron
Once standard workwear for tradespeople, Anything Co. Ltd.'s maekake feature contemporary graphic designs, iconic ukiyo-e prints, manga characters and sports team logos.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Dec 19, 2020
There’s a story behind each of Makiko Minagawa’s textiles
The former textile director of Miyake Design Studio is still pushing the boundaries of natural fabric, craftsmanship and sustainability.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Mar 9, 2020
Design innovations in Kyoto's textile industry pave the way forward
The contrasting worlds of contemporary designer Mae Engelgeer and Hosoo, a historical Japanese textile company, overlap to ethereal effect at 'Colortage,' an exhibition of new approaches to fabrics.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jan 27, 2020
The warp and weft of sustainable weaving
Jin Shirai has mastered each of the traditionally separate roles of Japan's handicraft textile industry — from growing cotton, spinning it and dyeing the yarn, to weaving and designing fabrics.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 11, 2019
Mina Perhonen: Fashion has a life of its own
Mina Perhonen's emotive approach to fashion highlights artisanship, eco-friendliness and our natural desire to connect and remember the past.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 30, 2019
Motohiko Katano: Tied to shibori dyeing
A pioneer of shibori textile dyeing, Motohiko Katano created striking modern designs and fascinating tessellations of motifs that seemed to defy the capricious nature of resist dyeing.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 4, 2018
'Les Mains sans Sommeil': It's not what you do, it's the way you do it
'Les Mains Sans Sommeil' is an ode to handiwork by Hermes artists-in-residence, whose experimental textile works wrestle with beauty and desire in surprising ways.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Aug 11, 2018
Designer Linda Polgar gives vintage textiles a new lease of life
Longtime Tokyo resident on choosing fabric, fashion designers and surviving Japanese summer.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Jul 6, 2018
History is woven into the very fabric of Ome
Ome has a long history of high-quality textile production, and today's designers are trying to preserve old fabrics and techniques while still giving them a contemporary update.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHY DID YOU LEAVE JAPAN?
Mar 31, 2018
Midori Sato and her 'only in America' dream
How a child of wartime Japan embraced the unknown and became a textile conservator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Feb 11, 2017
Crafts and coral of an embattled coast
A little north of the massive Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, a slew of scattered residential settlements and visitor sites are pincered between the Torii Station Army Base and an ammunition storage facility situated in Yomitan, a region of the southern mainland, where a massive U.S. amphibious landing took...
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: FASHION
Dec 10, 2016
Inspired fashion: from Marie Antoinette nail art to '60s textiles to Wong Kar Wai movies
Marimekko's colorful past

Longform

Yasuyuki Yoshida stirs a brew in a fermentation tank at his brewery in Hakusan.
The quake that shook Noto's sake brewing tradition