HaaT Shows Its Five-Colour EARTHED MOSAIC Check at Issey Miyake's Kyoto Gallery Until Christmas

HaaT, the Issey Miyake label that starts from the cloth, has given one new fabric a show of its own in Kyoto. KURA, the gallery inside ISSEY MIYAKE KYOTO, opened "EARTHED MOSAIC" on Sunday, November 1, and it runs until Friday, December 25. The fabric is a check in five colours taken from the natural world, made in the Bishu region, and the exhibition sets it beside a dress made from it, a graphic version of the check and a digital pattern that spreads through the room. Tokyo Art Beat lists it as free, open 11am to 8pm.

The texture is the point. Each colour is a cotton or a wool yarn, and the order of colours shifts through the weave before the cloth is finished; HaaT's own post calls that step felting. Cotton and wool shrink by different amounts, so the cloth comes out lightly ridged rather than flat, and the squares break up into what looks like a patchwork of tiny pieces, different from every angle. The dress on show is cut around square shapes to make its drape.

HaaT

The digital pattern on the walls takes the cloth's real colours and evens them out into a flat, regular check. Issey Miyake's text suggests that, blown up and tilted, it can seem to hold more than five colours, or draw the eye to how light sits in the fabric's ridges, and it pitches the flat version as the starting point for looking at the real thing.

A label built on textiles

HaaT started in 2000 as a brand that works up from the textile, under its total director Makiko Minagawa, with factories in Japan and India. Since 2021 it has run three lines: EVERY MONTH, for fabrics from skilled makers and original designs; EVERY WEEK, high-quality pieces for daily life; and EVERY DAY, practical clothes for changing seasons and temperatures, made with natural materials.

HaaT

Our read: a gallery show for a single fabric is a very Issey Miyake way to launch a season's cloth, and it suits HaaT better than a lookbook would, since the uneven surface is exactly what a photo flattens. HaaT's own photos this weekend put the check on a buttoned jacket and other pieces, but neither the exhibition page nor its posts give prices or say when anything made from EARTHED MOSAIC reaches the shops.