Can Nishijin Weaving Become a Medium of the Future? — HOSOO Explores a New Relationship Between Textiles and the Digital World in Milan
Every April, Milan Design Week draws designers, architects, and creatives from around the world. Amid a city filled with new furniture, lighting, and product launches, Kyoto-based textile house HOSOO posed a different kind of question—one concerned not with objects, but with the future of making itself.

The question was deceptively simple:

What is a textile?

At Milan Design Week 2026, HOSOO presented WAVE WEAVE, an installation created in collaboration with German contemporary artist and sound composer Carsten Nicolai (Alva Noto), alongside its new textile collection, Raster Gradient.

Courtesy of HOSOO Co., Ltd.

What makes these presentations particularly compelling is that they extend beyond the familiar narrative of preserving traditional craftsmanship. Instead, HOSOO proposes a new perspective—one that reconsiders Nishijin textiles not as craft objects, but as a medium capable of recording, transmitting, and transforming information.

Can a Textile Record Sound?

The collaboration between HOSOO and Carsten Nicolai began in 2023. Born in Chemnitz, a former center of the East German textile industry, Nicolai has long been fascinated by the origins and structures of weaving. HOSOO, meanwhile, has been refining Nishijin weaving techniques since its founding in Kyoto in 1688.

What united them was a shared interest in structure.

Courtesy of HOSOO Co., Ltd.

The installation WAVE WEAVE was conceived as an exploration of the relationship between two seemingly different media: sound and textiles.

At its center is Sono Obi Wave Weave. Sound data is visualized as a spectrogram and then translated into woven structures. Remarkably, the resulting textile possesses a framework through which it can be converted back into sound.

Courtesy of HOSOO Co., Ltd.

In this context, the textile is no longer merely a material.

It becomes both an archive and a playback device—a medium capable of storing and transmitting sonic information.

Today, we typically encounter data through screens and speakers. Here, however, sound takes on physical form, becoming thread, weave, and material presence within space. Making the invisible visible has, in many ways, always been one of weaving’s oldest functions.

Painting Digital Landscapes Through Nishijin Weaving

The newly launched Raster Gradient textile collection extends this same line of inquiry.

Based on Nicolai’s silkscreen work of the same name, the collection translates gradients generated through varying dot densities into woven form using Nishijin weaving techniques.

Courtesy of HOSOO Co., Ltd.

Viewed up close, the surfaces are composed of countless individual points. From a distance, they resolve into smooth gradients.

The visual experience feels strangely familiar to anyone accustomed to digital displays. Yet these images are not constructed from pixels, but from threads.

The collection relies on Nishijin weaving’s ability to precisely control thread density and structure. Multiple colored warp threads are combined to create exceptionally subtle tonal transitions.

Courtesy of HOSOO Co., Ltd.

What emerges is not simply an analog version of a digital image.

Rather, it is a translation of digital visual language into a tactile medium. Information that once existed only on a flat surface acquires depth, texture, shadow, and physical presence.

Where a Tradition Founded in 1688 Is Heading

The history of Nishijin weaving spans more than 1,200 years. Since its founding in Kyoto’s Nishijin district in 1688, HOSOO has inherited and refined techniques traditionally used for kimono and obi production.

Yet in recent years, HOSOO has moved beyond the framework of a conventional heritage craft brand.

Through collaborations with architects, artists, and designers, the company has expanded textiles into the realm of spatial expression. In 2023, it opened its first international showroom, HOSOO MILAN, in the city’s Brera district.

Courtesy of HOSOO Co., Ltd.

This latest presentation continues that trajectory.

The objective is not simply to preserve tradition, but to connect it to the future. HOSOO positions Nishijin weaving not as a historical technique, but as a living and evolving mode of expression.

Textiles as a Medium, Not a Craft

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the exhibition was its redefinition of textiles as structures.

Sound has structure. Images have structure. Textiles have structure.

By identifying this shared foundation, sound becomes textile, textile becomes image, and data transforms into space.

Courtesy of HOSOO Co., Ltd.

This is not merely a story about the fusion of traditional craftsmanship and digital technology. Rather, it points toward a deeper question: how human beings perceive, record, and transmit information.

The question is no longer whether Nishijin weaving will survive into the future. The more compelling question is what Nishijin weaving can become in the future.

At Milan Design Week 2026, HOSOO and Carsten Nicolai offered one possible answer.