Editor’s Note
This article offers a glimpse into a unique textile exhibition where design and music intersect. The featured “fan-shaped gallery” harmonizes organic patterns with park views, creating a multisensory experience.
The venue spans the first and second floors, comprising six areas, each named with musical terms: “chorus,” “score,” “ensemble,” “humming,” “voice,” and “remix.” In the first area, “chorus,” visitors are greeted by a diverse array of textiles lining the museum’s fan-shaped gallery. The space harmonizes the greenery of Kinuta Park visible through the glass windows with minä perhonen’s soft, organic designs.
Since the brand’s founding, minä perhonen has maintained the approach of creating clothing from the fabric itself, having designed over 1,000 textile patterns to date. Here, approximately 180 of them are displayed as an installation, grouped by motifs and inspirations such as butterflies, sky, flowers, geometry, and prisms. Observing the gentle connections between individual designs reveals how one design does not end after a single season but evolves into another.
The following area, “score,” introduces the genesis of these textile designs and the diverse items born from them. It focuses on 21 patterns, allowing visitors to trace the process from the designer’s concepts and sketches, through repeated prototyping to production, and further transformation into clothing and fashion items. This is achieved through original drawings, tools used in the design process, and actual garments and products. It’s an area where one can fully sense the story, dedication, and evolution inherent in each design.
Viewing the original artwork, the textile, and the actual product one by one, one is moved by the process of how textiles with a unique warmth are born from manual work using familiar materials.
Furthermore, ‘tambourine,’ one of minä perhonen’s representative designs featuring repeating circles of small dots, has expanded into lifestyle goods like tableware and rugs. It has also given birth to new designs such as ‘tarte,’ with its elliptical circles, and ‘anemone,’ which replaces the circles with floral motifs. The way a single idea is passed on while transforming its shape is a true embodiment of the word “tsugu” (to inherit/pass on).