On 24 July, Danish designer fashion and lifestyle brand Ganni announced that, in partership with lifestyle magazine Wallpaper, it has conducted a collaboration with three female Chinese designers to work on 3 of its “fabrics of the future”: VegeaTM, CeliumTM and Oleatex to create homeware pieces.
The project is named “Co-Made”, punnily and phonetically translated into Chinese “可美了” (kemeile, lit. such beauty). The project is part of the magazine’s 2024 theme “material performance” (因材施教). It means that all pieces are inspired by the textile used to create them. On Weibo, China’s Twitter equivalent, the topic “可美了Co-Made” gained over 491,000 views.
VegeaTM is a faux leather made from grape skins, oils and natural fabrics left over from wine making. Zhong Zixin, designer of her eponymous brand, founded in 2020, decided to pay homage to the origin of the material and created a woven dining table cover for wine serving. Nadi Huang and Weikun Tang from RESTUDIO created a “cartilage Lamp” out of CeliumTM and Oleatex. The shape of the lamp is inspired by the flowing motions of Stingray swimming. Also using these two materials, the “Cuddle Sofa & Bench” by Xiaoya Wang of One Week Design created a trio of furniture inspired by the painting “The Kiss”. CeliumTM is a cultivated cellulose from bacteria while Oleatex is a faux leather made from olives.
Ganni and Wallpaper will hold an exhibition in Aranya, Hebei, a seaside town near Beijing between 13 and 31 August. All the pieces produced for the project will be on display and a talk with the three designers will be held on the first day. Ganni has been working on sustainable “fabrics of the future” since 2019, and has been making garments and accessories from these fabrics. This is not only an experiment in material use, but also an exploration in homeware for Ganni.
