Cocca: Handmade Fabric Addiction

19 May 2008 Category: Arts & Crafts, Graphics, Japan

Cocca: Handmade Fabric Addiction

This delicate fabric has an uber-intriguing flower pattern for your table, wall or whatever else you can imagine: "Hana-circle blue," a past design by Cocca from Tokyo. © Cocca

Has there ever been a store that you enjoyed browsing so much that you actually began buying just as a reason to go inside and spend time looking around? Tokyo’s Cocca offers that kind of addiction, sending you home to hang their handmade fabric from your walls, sewing your own set of brightly coloured curtains (yes, we do that!) or displaying garments and table linens with beautifully abstract traditional prints – be it a rice grain, a shrine or the Tokyo Tower. Thus bridging old and new Japan, this fabulous collective works at the intersection of fashion and print design. PingMag visited them in their lovely shop-house hidden down a small side street of posh Daikanyama to catch up with Cocca’s chief planner, Nanami Maejima.

Written by Bonnie Mcelfresh

Graphic excursions on your curtain! Cocca’s collabo with fashion brand Spoken Words Project brought us this negative-like print of a people and animal pattern: “taisho black.” © Cocca

The Craft

I discovered this Daikanyama gem just over a year ago when the shop opened and began inspiring us to freshen up our homes. Their stunning fabric designs are all original prints by local designers. The fabric itself is handmade in Japan, often crafted by the original print designer. Each print is produced in small quantities, and only available for a limited time. Precious!

Another work with Masahiro Tobita’s Spoken Words Project - “Panel Tricolor” is another strong retro pattern. And though it looks like canvas… © Cocca

… it’s actually a fine fabric for all kinds of uses. © Cocca

The Fabric Experience

Cocca aim to give people a total life experience by applying their fabrics to a plethora of everyday items from purses to pillows to photo albums and whatever else you could imagine. Nanami Maejima explains, “Fabric is everywhere in daily life. We’re hoping to make fabric as fashionable as clothing” – by combining tradition with nowadays’ Japan!

Filigree floral pattern in slightly Nu Rave tones — “Rosepop,” an earlier line of Cocca’s. © Cocca

“Machibari,” meaning ‘pin,’ is the name of this cute pattern. Look closer! © Cocca

Abstract Patterns

Nanami appreciates the modern Japanese design movement’s ability to innovate without forgoing the best of the country’s traditional design. “We take the good old stuff and combine it with the good new stuff,” she says. Hence Cocca’s prints usually employ overtly Japanese themes such as Tokyo Tower, Zen gardens, the Itsukushima Shrine or a simple rice grain. That might sound like pretty specific subject matter for fabric, but the representations are often so abstract that, until you learn what they signify, all you notice are the stunning designs.

From the “New Tokyo Series” line by textile designer Masafumi Arita — “New Summer Day in Tokyo.” So soothing! © Cocca

To give you an example, one of their more recent prints uses sharp lines and block shapes in bright, complementary colours of purple, yellow and orange; the vibrant orange represents the Tokyo Tower [scroll down and check the upholstering on the chair.] Cocca’s “Urban Motorway Zen garden” print by textile designer Arita Masafumi (whom you might remember from before) has irregular triangles pieced together in shades of mustard; large-scale circles come together in clusters among the triangles to represent sand grains in the garden. The many themes hidden in these abstract prints means that the stylish threads you use to sew your cushion, curtains, skirt or handbag may also be displaying a symbol of Japanese heritage — a pretty unique concept for a fabric store.

“Urban Motorway Zen garden,” also by Masafumi Arita for Cocca — triangles represent a stylised Tokyo motorway! From the “New Tokyo Series.” © Cocca

Old and New

While a few of Cocca’s simpler designs are produced in-house, Tokyo artists collaborate with the director, Chizuko Mori, to create most of their print designs and products. Chizuko gained her experience over ten years working as the owner and director of Baden Baden — another Tokyo design collective focusing on traditional Japanese furniture. In fact, she opened Baden Baden when she returned home to Kyoto after spending most of her youth in Germany. Upon arrival, not only was she moved to tears by the beauty of Japan’s architecture, temples and shrines, but she wanted Baden Baden to help contribute to the preservation and continuation of traditional Japanese design. Cocca’s creative aesthetic is comparatively modern, but the artists of the collective continue to integrate traditional Japanese quality and subject matter, ultimately creating an amalgam of old and new Japan.


The handmade “Rice Tote Red” with its fine details: wooden grip… © Cocca

… and a wooden base for stability. © Cocca

The tote’s pattern consists of stylised rice grains… © Cocca

… and elaborate pockets inside. Neat! © Cocca

Collaborate and Create

Cocca prioritises the design and production of its fabric over the creation of the products, furniture and clothing to which it is applied. Chief planner Nanami Maejima is adamant that “the fabric comes first. Most importantly, we look for designers who can share in the enjoyment of the fabric.” Their most prolific print designers include Masahiro Tobita with his fashion brand Spoken Words Project, and Masafumi Arita, a textile designer who started the New Esperanto Label in 2001. Arita specialises in transforming folklore into modernity and combined forces with Cocca to create the New Tokyo Series.

Imagine this on your wall! “Blue Zero Tape,” yet another collabo of Masahiro Tobita’s Spoken Words Project and Cocca. © Cocca

Once the fabric is produced, the design collective from Daikanyama works closely with a variety of local products, furniture and fashion designers who agree to give prominence to the fabric in their designs. Currently, the store offers a completely new line of fabric twice a year. They’re hoping, however, to bump that up to a seasonal four times a year. To give you a glimpse of what’s coming, there will be a children’s clothing line as well as a range of bedroom linens. We can’t wait!

The retro-looking pattern of this iron armchair is actually an abstract expression of the Itsukushima Shrine and the Tokyo Tower. Who knew of this bright red!

Two of Masafumi Arita’s designs: “New Summer Day in Tokyo” from above on a chair, and, again from his “New Tokyo Series,” a “Summer Night” chair.

Thank you, Cocca and Nanami Maejima! It’s difficult to imagine a better way to start our day than waking up to your high-quality printed bed sheets!

Cocca
Address: 1-31-13 Ebisu Nishi, Tokyo. Map.
Open: Tue to Sun, from noon to 8 p.m.
Phone:03-3463-7681

53 Comments

  1. Especially the blue tape on the wall looks fabulous. People who are into more complicated patterns will find those many you presented us today fun to live with, too.

    Maybee its a girl thing.

    Posted by: David on May 19th, 2008 at 10:32 pm

  2. Amazing! I’ve found fabric with a similar idea behind it in the US before, but these examples are so powerfully Japanese. They remind me of my great grandmother.

    Posted by: Aimee on May 20th, 2008 at 5:18 am

  3. nice, solid tote.
    oh!

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  4. COCCA ROCKS!!!!!!!!!
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