Selvedge Magazine

Selvedge Magazine – The Fabric of Your Life

Selvedge offers textile enthusiasts; a magazine, workshops, talks, tours, and fairs that celebrate cloth, culture, and creativity from around the world.

Issue 121 - Adorable

Kawaii, the Japanese culture of cute, arguably a cousin of demure, has held a paradoxically strong cultural presence for decades, incorporating the non-threatening traits of shyness, embarrassment, vulnerability, darlingness, and lovability. It has a significant influence on social media–driven trends, with a reach that rivals Cottagecore and Coquette. Visitor numbers at Cute, an exhibition that explored the extraordinary and complex power of cuteness in contemporary culture earlier in the year at Somerset House, testify to this popularity. The cute aesthetic that drives a protective instinct over babies and small dogs has been commercialized to the point where it “reduces price sensitivity, which makes us happier to hand over money,” suggests Rhik Samadder in the Observer. The recent sold-out Selfridge’s popup installation, Jellycat’s Fish and Chips London Van, where a full “meal” costs around £200, proves this point.

In this issue, they explore the phenomenon from a textile perspective. Cute has a set of identifiable characteristics, one of which is scale. A fascination with small and childlike miniaturization is seen at its zenith in Queen Mary’s Dollhouse, mini-me mother-and-daughter dressing, and the slippery softness of petroleum plushies. Jonathan Faiers chronicles the evolution of faux fur from its origins in Titus Salt’s experiments with brushed alpaca at the Saltaire Mill in Yorkshire to the Unreal Fur x Sans Beast collaboration, inspired by Where The Wild Things Are. Cute takes different forms in different regions and can be represented in the familiarity of folk culture, Latvian mittens, Scottish bonnets, and Mexican piñatas.

This is where things get complex. Cuteness is a manipulation designed to activate our protective instinct, but not only tiny babies and animals trigger it. Deena Beverly explores how anthropomorphic representations in everything from teddy bears to taxidermy can be repellent and appealing simultaneously. Like the funniest jokes, the ones with a grain of truth make the unpalatable palatable. Cuteness offers us a way to conceal and expose, to be perfect and vulnerable, and to be irresistible yet anarchic simultaneously. It is also tied up with a sexless femininity, originating in Japanese schoolgirls’ innocent love of stationery in the 1990s. Feminine romanticism in saccharine palettes, pretty embroidery, and coquette silhouettes are all celebrated in collections of brands worldwide, from Illogical Poetry to La Casita de Wendy. When the latter’s founder, Ines Aguilar, chose to adopt AI technology to produce an economically and environmentally sustainable sampling strategy, she also added to the sense of unease, both innovative and disturbing, drawing in the viewer in an unsettling way.

The zeitgeist of a troubling world has brought cute to the forefront, where it has infiltrated our society. There is no sign of it shifting as demure sweeps paranoid social media this summer. We retreat to a safe space where the emoji rules.

To brighten your day, the article on marigolds harvested in India and Mexico will fill your eyes and heart with love for the bright orange color associated with many ceremonies throughout the world that use the richness of this flower. Seeing Ernesto Neto’s large-scale crocheted and multisensory pieces will help you put things in perspective. Enjoy!

Issue 120 - Magic Carpet

Solomon’s carpet was reportedly made of green silk with a golden weft, 60 miles long and 60 miles wide. According to the Jewish fable, “when Solomon sat upon the carpet, he was caught up by the wind and sailed through the air so quickly that he breakfasted at Damascus and supped in Media.” The term magic carpet is believed to have its roots in Persian and Arabian folklore, particularly in the collection of stories known as One Thousand and One Nights. These tales, compiled during the Islamic Golden Age, introduced the concept of a carpet that possessed magical powers to defy the laws of gravity and transport individuals to distant lands, evoking a sense of wonder, freedom, and exploration. Similar mystical carpets exist in Indian, Russian, Tibetan, and Chinese folklore. Their presence invites us to ask: What’s so special about carpets that they have been given magical powers?

The carpet responds to the fundamental human need of enclosure, defining and giving form to living space. It serves as protection against the limitless scales of space and time. It is both a house and temple, a place of shelter and leisure, and a place for prayer. The frame of the carpet cuts and delineates a portion of infinite space, devoting it to human existence, as is demonstrated in primary school classrooms up and down the country. Carpet time is a space where unity, respect for one another, turn-taking and working together towards a shared goal are encouraged.

As Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judith Hoos Fox, co-editors of this issue, state in their article “Breaking New Ground,” “it is because the carpet is an object of daily use throughout cultures and across societal stratifications [...] that it offers an entry point for artists’ manipulations, reinterpretations, and new creations. It provides the context to merge past with present, serious history with pop culture, and stereotypically Eastern and Western ideologies.” In this issue, we highlight contemporary artists exploring the frugal craft of rag-rug making, digital interpretations, prayer rugs, flat-woven kilims traded across continents, tattie rugs from Shetland, and the prison rugs of Jaipur.

Suspend disbelief and take a ride on our magic carpet as we merge imaginative storytelling, cultural exchange, and timeless human fascination with the extraordinary!

Issue 119 - Savoir Faire

All eyes turned to Paris this summer with the 2024 Summer Olympics. At Selvedge, they were swept along by the excitement and it brought their attention to savoir-faire, the French concept of expertise in textiles.

This issue we look at the 50th anniversary of the Battle at Versailles – the evening a sociocultural shift took place that resonates today. The editorial examines the past iterations of Savoir-faire found in irresistible flea market finds. We rubbed shoulders with the dealers on Sunday morning at Porte de Clignancourt, picking up some soft but sturdy vintage linen so appealing to contemporary designers, French slow fashion brand École de Curiosités, Camiceria Eri bespoke shirtmakers and Sasaki-Yohinten from Japan, and New York-based something in the air, as well as the Selvedge team.

We venture north to Méru and discover the Musée de la Nacre (Mother of Pearl) housed in an impressive nineteenth-century former button factory. Here we learn that by 1900 shells were of greater value than pearls - and world markets were using the shells for cutlery handles, inlay work, and millions of beautiful buttons, some of which made their way onto the First Nation blankets and the working dress of the Pearlies in the East End of London.

Continuing our endeavor, we root around Catherine Legrand's Parisian Pied-à-terre and find it packed with textile treasures from around the world collected during the lifetime of a true adventurer.

Traditional savoir-faire, a treasure trove of textile expertise, is diligently kept alive by the petites mains; such as the pleater Karen Grigorian, who inherited skills from the 19th-century modiste and draws inspiration from 20th-century Autochromes from the Salon du Gout Francais – Nadia Albertini takes us behind the scenes at his atelier. Looking to the future once again French savoir-faire is leading the fashion world with new legislation Loi AGEL (Loi Anti-gaspillage pour une encomie curculaire) requiring every product imported into France to be accompanied by a passport that provides compulsory sustainability and circularity information for the item - bravo!