When it comes to the art of displaying textiles, there’s not been much in the way of innovation to date. Soft materials are usually laid flat on a table or hung on a wall. To show them to greater advantage, you might try draping fabrics over a three-dimensional support that more closely resembles the human body. Interior designer Yusuke Seki had that thought in mind when developing an exhibition concept for new Tokyo-based textile brand Majotae, a company specializing in fabrics made from woven hemp. Seki arranged samples from the Majotae collection atop 2,016 white steel rods that evoked a field of hemp, the plant that yields the fibres for the material.

Visitors were encouraged to touch and feel the textiles in an environment that recalled a Japanese shrine with a pebbled floor. ‘I reduced the flat surface that would normally be used for display to the minimum amount of points needed to support the textiles,’ says Seki, who isn’t the only designer to have arrived at this idea. Nendo’s store for Issey Miyake (Frame 76, p. 53) featured a similar solution for showing off Miyake’s fashions. Nendo’s strategy is news to Seki, though, who says he arrived at the concept for Majotae on his own, confirming a certain logic shared by the designers of striking displays.

Design: Yusuke Seki
Photos Kenta Hasegawa