THE STORY 19 FALL WINTER

Maiko Kurogouchi's blue journey continued to carry through by memories and serendipitous encounters. During her recent stay in London, she remembered the visit, back in 2008, to Seizure by British artist Roger Hiorns a piece the artist made by crystalising a post-war council flat with blue copper-sulfate crystals. She stumbled upon the last piece by filmmaker Derek Jarman, Blue, made in 1993, and a friend handed her Joni Mitchell's Blue as a Christmas gift.

Kurogouchi's desire to turn these encounters with different shades of blue into garments led her to develop new textiles.

For instance, she returned to the same threads she used in the previous collection, that was spun to mimic the laminate structure of morpho butterflies. The deadstock threads, when woven with silk, are turned into a textile that would bear the shining texture of butterflies and aurora in the refraction of light. By weaving shiny silk with the Jacquard yarns, Kurogouchi re-interpreted the idea of denim -which is quintessentially casual in nature- and it's indigo blue to create her take on the future denim.

In an attempt to express what she saw in Hiorns' crystals in Seizure onto a textile, Kurogouchi consulted with a Bishu weaver to develop one of a kind tweed using lamé thread and wool. When she saw the sample, a scene of the blue shimmering room came back running through her head.

This piece of tweed that only he could weave in Japan resembled the blue that Kurogouchi registered in her memory.

For the knit top in the same series, she turned to a factory in Ashikaga, Tochigi which wove laces in the same colour as the lamé tweed, using a net weaver generally used for cured meats. That was how the crystals that Hiorns created were crystalised further in Kurogocuchi's memories, materialising in a piece of textile transcending space and time.