Stainless Steel Gloss

Stainless Steel Gloss was designed by Reiko Sudo, one of Japan’s most important contemporary textile designers. Educated at Musashino Art University, she and Junichi Arai were the co-founders in 1984 of the Japanese company and store, NUNO, which produces textiles of extraordinary ingenuity and beauty. Sudo and the other designers at NUNO combine tradition and advanced technologies with remarkable creativity, which led them to the forefront of textile design field.

One of Nuno’s best examples of integrating “hard-core” industry into their textile making process is with Stainless Steel Gloss, designed in 1990. After the polyester filament is woven and calendar pressed, it is spatter-plated with stainless steel, a process used primarily in the automobile industry for plating car parts. The result is a semi-transparent fabric that appears to have a fluidity akin to liquid mercury.

This textile is an important example of an existing manufacturing process that is used in a totally different way, as well as in an unexpected medium. Sudo goes beyond the conventional boundaries of textile design and relies on other areas of industry for creative inspiration.