Top is more: when tradition meets sustainability
Reiko Sudo is one of Japan’s most celebrated textile designers, known for her fabric creations that blend tradition and innovation. She also pays great attention to the sustainability of materials and processes and has been inspired by old Swiss know-how.
This content was published on October 8, 2022 – 10:00 am
Sudo’s work is full of ideas. The dark blue fabric called Jellyfish is processed to look like a school of jellyfish swimming in the sea, using heat-shrinkable material for the pattern.
“Kami Maki (Rolls of Paper)” uses 19th-century Swiss techniques to transform torn ribbons into a beautiful deep red lace. Or she knits a pair of traditional sandals, but uses them kibisoa new material made from silk waste.
silk scraps
Sudo has been the design director of leading textile design studio NUNO (Japanese for fabric) in Tokyo for over 30 years. Working exclusively with weavers and dyers in Japan, Nuno combines new technologies with traditional practices to create original textiles. Her work has been highly acclaimed around the world, including a permanent home at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Her textiles were also recently exhibited at the Textile Museum in St. Gallen in eastern Switzerland.
This is precisely one of Sudo’s most prominent examples of sustainable textile production kibiso Project she started in 2008 with silk makers in Tsuruoka City, in Japan’s northernmost silk production area.
kibiso is the very first fiber that a silkworm spits out when making silk cocoons. Its uneven thickness and coarse texture made it unsuitable for yarn making, and instead it was used in skin care products.
Sudo and Tsuruoka Silk, a local silk maker, developed a technology for making fine threads kibiso. The new material has high moisture retention and antioxidant properties, just like silk. It’s also ecological.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Japan was the world’s largest producer of raw silk. However, the silkworm industry has experienced a sharp decline in recent years due to the influx of cheap Chinese silk products and a lack of young followers in local manufacture. Sudo wanted to help revitalize the industry by giving a twist to Japanese tradition.
The ten year old kibiso project is thriving as a brand: bags, scarves and hats are widely sold in Japan and abroad.
“Time of Regrets”
Sudo’s focus on sustainability began around the turn of the millennium. In the 1990s, Japan welcomed the prosperity of synthetic fibers such as nylon and polyester. At the time, Sudo was heavily involved in creating hybrid fabrics, mixing synthetic and natural fibers – nylon and wool, for example.
However, with the rise in oil prices in the 2000s, people began to realize that oil resources are finite. “That was a wake-up call for me. Textile designers should not create fabrics that cannot be chemically recycled. We need to make our production more sustainable,” she said.
“For me, the 2000s were a time of penitence. I gradually switched from non-recyclable materials to ones that can be chemically recycled.”
For example, she used polyvinyl chloride to make jellyfish in the 1990s, but once she learned that burning polyvinyl chloride released carcinogens, she switched to biodegradable polyvinyl alcohol, which does not produce toxic materials like dioxin.
Inspired by Swiss tradition
The spiral tip kami maki (paper rolls) is also a creation from waste materials. Sudo found damage in a nylon taffeta she bought and had to cut the fabric into thin ribbons 4mm and 8mm wide.
“When I was thinking about what I could use them for, I was struck by the rolls of paper stacked on the shelves in our studio. I thought they were beautiful.” She sketched them. “Then chemical lace came to my mind and I thought I could do something with it.”
According to the St. Gallen Textile Museum, chemical lace was invented in Switzerland in 1883. In the original process, patterns are embroidered onto a silk base, which is then dissolved in a lye solution.
Although the textile industry in Eastern Switzerland has since shifted to technical textiles used in the mobility, medical and aerospace industries, it dominated the world market for this chemical lace and machine embroidery until the first half of the 20th century.
Sudo knew that, of course. “I was very intrigued by the idea of melting fabric in a lye solution to make lace.” The tons of ribbon in front of her looked perfect for making chemical lace.
She followed Swiss tradition but with a different approach: she used an embroidery machine to attach ribbon to a water-soluble base, then dipped it in water, leaving the lace-like tracery behind.
responsibility for the future
As an expert in fabric design, Sudo is particularly concerned about pollution in the clothing industry. With the advent of fast fashion, mass production and throwaway products made from cheap synthetic fabrics have become the norm, and Africa is being inundated with clothing waste. Whenever an inferior fleece parka is washed, many microplastic fibers are released that pollute the sea.
France has banned the disposal of unsold new clothes by law. Sudo believes that “the entire industry needs to change the way it thinks”.
“When you design textiles, you have to think about how the fabric ends its life,” she said. “I think that’s our responsibility for the future as textile designers.”
Reiko Sudo
Reiko Sudo was born in 1953 in Ishioka City, Japan. After working as an assistant at Musashino Art University’s Textile Laboratory, she helped found NUNO, where she became the director. She is also a professor at Tokyo Zokei University.
She creates new textiles using traditional Japanese dyeing and weaving techniques as well as cutting-edge technology.
Her works are highly acclaimed both in Japan and abroad and are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, among others.
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Edited by Mark Livingston
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