Lace is more: when tradition meets sustainability

Reiko Sudo is one of Japan’s most famous textile designers, renowned for her creation of fabric by fusing tradition and innovation. She also pays great attention to the sustainability of materials and processes and has been inspired by old Swiss know-how.

Sudo’s works are full of ideas. The dark-blue fabric called Jellyfish is processed to look like a school of jellyfish swimming in the sea, using heat-shrinking material to make the pattern.

“Kami maki (paper rolls)” uses 19th-century Swiss techniques to transform shredded ribbons into a beautiful deep-red lace. Or she knits a pair of traditional sandals, but uses kibiso, a new material derived from silk waste.

Silk waste

Sudo has been the design director of the leading textile design studio NUNO (Japanese for fabric) in Tokyo for over 30 years. Nuno has been working exclusively with weavers and dyers in Japan, combining new technologies with traditional practices to create original textiles. Her work is highly acclaimed around the world, including being permanently preserved at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Her textiles were also recently exhibited in the Textile Museum in St Gallen in eastern Switzerland.

One of Sudo’s prominent examples of sustainable textile production is precisely this kibiso project, which she launched in 2008 with silk manufacturers in Tsuruoka City, in the northernmost silk production area in Japan.

Kibiso is the very first fibre a silkworm spits out when making silk cocoons. Because of its uneven thickness and coarse texture, it was not suitable for making yarn and was used in skincare products instead.

Sudo and Tsuruoka Silk, a local silk manufacturer, developed a technology to produce fine threads from kibiso. The new material has a high moisture retention and antioxidant effect, just like silk. It is ecological too.

Japan was the world’s largest raw silk producer in the early 1900s. However, the sericulture industry has seen a sharp decline in recent years owing to the influx of inexpensive Chinese silk products and a shortage of young successors in local manufacture. Sudo wanted to help revive the industry by giving Japanese tradition a twist.

The ten-year-old kibiso project has flourished as a brand: bags, shawls and hats are sold widely in Japan and abroad.

‘Time of repentance’

Sudo’s focus on sustainability began at the turn of the millennium. In the 1990s, Japan embraced the prosperity of synthetic fibres such as nylon and polyester. At that time Sudo was immersed in making hybrid fabrics, mixing synthetic and natural fibres – nylon and wool, for example.

However, with the rise in oil prices in the 2000s, people started to realise that oil resources are finite. “It was a wake-up call for me. Textile designers should not make fabrics that can’t be chemically recycled. We must make our production more sustainable,” she said.

“For me, the 2000s were a time of repentance. I gradually changed non-recyclable materials to those that could be chemically recycled.”

For example, she used polyvinyl chloride to make Jellyfish in the 1990s, but as soon as she learnt that burning polyvinyl chloride released carcinogens, she switched to biodegradable polyvinyl alcohol, which doesn’t produce toxic materials like dioxin.

Inspired by Swiss tradition

The spiral-patterned lace kami maki (paper rolls) is also a creation from waste matter. Sudo found damage in a nylon taffeta she purchased and had to cut the fabric into thin ribbons 4mm and 8mm wide.

“While thinking about what I could use them for, the paper rolls piled up on the shelves in our studio caught my eyes. I thought they were beautiful.” She sketched them. “Then chemical lace crossed my mind and I thought I could make something with it.”

According to the Textile Museum in St Gallen, chemical lace was invented in Switzerland in 1883. In the original process, designs are embroidered on a silk base that is then dissolved in a lye solution.

Although the textile industry in eastern Switzerland has now shifted to technical textiles, which are used in 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 impressed by the idea of melting fabric in a lye solution to make lace.” The tonnes of ribbons in front of her looked perfect for making chemical lace.

She followed the Swiss tradition, but with a different approach: she basted ribbon onto a water-soluble base with an embroidery machine, then immersed it in water, leaving the lace-like tracery.

Responsibility for the future

As an expert in fabric design, Sudo is particularly concerned about environmental pollution in the clothing industry. With the rise of fast fashion, mass production and disposable products made from cheap synthetic fabrics have become the norm, and Africa is being flooded with clothing waste. Whenever a low-quality fleece parka is washed, many microplastic fibres are released, contaminating the ocean.

France has banned the disposal of unsold new clothing by law. Sudo thinks “the entire industry must change its mindset”.

“When you design textiles, you have to think about how the fabric ends its life,” she said. “I believe this is our responsibility for the future, as textile designers.”

Reiko Sudo

Reiko Sudo was born in Ishioka City, Japan, in 1953. After working as an assistant at the Textile Laboratory of Musashino Art University, she participated in the establishment of NUNO, where she became 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 modern 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.

Edited by Mark Livingston