Structural Skin by Jorge Penadés
On the occasion of the 31st Festival International de Mode et de Photographie, Jorge Penadés has brought inspiration from Japan to Hyères, France. Known as Boro, the folk textiles mark the intersection of mottainnai, or the deep aversion to waste, and boroboro — appreciating the beauty of well-worn objects, whether they are frayed, decaying, or repaired — which reflect the East Asian nation’s respect for craft, labor, and natural resources. Hence, “Structural Skin”, in which Penadés developed a technique for reconstituting leather offcuts into a kind of pulp that expresses the beauty of the material. Indeed, the scraps come from none other than French fashion house Hermès, atelier petit h.
Commissioned by Villa Noailles for the festival, the result is unexpected yet undeniably beautiful. The colors remain intact allowing the character of the original materials to come through in abstracted swirls, like veins of marble or the grain of wood. Formed into slats, a panel of this “structural skin” forms a back panel that bisects a pair of side-by-side circular mirrors to achieve a highly graphic overall effect.