Cooper Hewitt Museum: Scraps

On a Sunday afternoon, I went to the Cooper Hewitt Museum and saw the Scraps: Fashion, Textiles and Creative Reuse exhibition. This exhibition mainly covers three designers’ reuse of fabrics referred to as “textile scraps” to create beautiful and innovative works of fashion unleashing scraps’ full potential. Three specific pieces I found most interesting were of Christina Kim’s “Tikdis shawl,” Reiko Sudo’s raw silk textile, and Luisa Cevese Riedizioni’s zip up bag.

Christina Kim’s shawl reminded me of a quilted blanket. There was no sense of organization or structure in the design of the textile, and that isn’t a bad thing. It is actually one of the reasons why I drew interest towards the textile and loved it. The textile consists of patched up fabrics of different styles I would consider to be either woven yarn dyed plaid or striped along with a bunch of smaller patches cut into circles are stitched on top of the stitched together textiles. Overall, the various colors and patterns give the shawl a very organic vibe to it which is what I feel Christina is going for. You see that throughout her whole collection really. From the description, the medium is silk with a metallic foundation whereas the circle patches or “dots” are made out of cotton jamdani scraps. Jamdani is a type of cotton made from a hand-woven loom originating in Persia but popularized in parts of Southern India. Christina Kim’s family is originally from Seoul, South Korea but moved to Los Angeles when she was fifteen years old. I found it cool that she studied art history as a major because it proves how much art and fashion are intertwined, especially in the realms of sustainability and reuse. Christina even in her profession wants to encourage artisans to work in a more sustainable livelihood.

One of Reiko Sudo’s textiles she designs is made from jacquard float weave raw silk and kibiso, hand trimmed. From what I already know about jacquard, it is a woven fabric made from a loom. Looking at the fabric, it looks heavily intricate, as juxtaposed as that sounds, and draws an interest of how a loom and create the circles from a loom. Unless the kibiso, which is a type of silk, was used to as the circle patches. Learning more about Kibiso and Ogarami Choshi, it is assured that all fibers are used. Sudo made additional efforts in making sure no wastes were discarded. Sudo is known as one of Japan’s more influential and contemporary designers. She’s renowned for her work as managing director for NUNO and combining traditional Japanese handwork with advance technology unleashing numerous innovative products and collections. From Sudo’s website they write the following in explanation for such a mixture to go about.

“When we create our textiles, nature and tradition are woven with technology.

When we see our textiles, a moment of the future is glimpsed.

When we touch our textiles, they breathe and we feel at ease.

When we listen to the language of textiles, the message is beautiful.”

And you can see the relation of such a collaboration in this textile here, a mix between traditional design and technological manufacturing. the textiles looked like they had the best of both worlds the natural earthy colors she used for her textiles made me think she didn’t use that many dyes either.

Third, we have Luisa Cevese’s zip up bag which is made from silk threads and polyurethane. Polyurethane is best described as a white glossy plastic originally in liquid form until it’s dry (Hill, 2013). Cevese chooses polyurethane to make the bag water proof and more durable. It is polyurethane that plays as the full bag’s coating, I imagine, where the silk threads, in its many colors, are placed on top of the bag. This is a great example out of the three pieces in mixing both natural and manmade fibers. Looking at Riedizioni’s website, characterizes the natural elements such as the silk as something very warm and soft whereas the plastic is very cold and rigid making the partnership between the two so perfect. I became very interested in the use of silk amongst all three designers and how silk is sustainable. Learning from our course, silk can be both renewable and biodegradable. However, the decision is still up in the air on whether or not creating silk is ethical. A lot would argue that silk is not ‘vegan’ for the thread is being extracted from the silkworm itself. Others would also argue that this manufacturing would attest to animal cruelty where silkworms are now boiled in their own cocoons to add as little breakage to the thread as the silkworms hatch. However, based on these new commercial processes, silkworms are now human dependent in order to mature into moths. Alternatives to this process would be using ‘wild silk’ where the silkworm would be left unharmed but overall the process can cost more time and money. I really do enjoy looking at each designer’s process in reusing scraps; I’m eager to see what else they’ll innovatively do in the future to fix these stray issues left in manufacturing.

Not connected to the exhibition exactly, but the use of technology was amazing to encounter. I loved the wounds and the sense of human and technology interaction visitors had making the artifact experience all the more memorable and fun. I truthfully can’t imagine a more perfect museum for Scraps to exhibit in than Cooper Hewitt because all artists had some sort of innovative way to involve technology in their process for sustainability. In what I’ve learned in Management, both the internet of things as well as sustainability are intertwined because they need to reach all realms of society—the individual, corporations, and even government—in order to take full effect. Overall, it is really inspiring to see these artists find new ways to involve technology into their craft while at the same time making everything more sustainable.

-MASR

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