Toge by Emmanuelle Moureaux
Tokyo 2011: French designer Emmanuelle Moureaux presented a wedding dress made from 500 snowflake-like baubles at this year's DesignTide Tokyo.
Named Toge, which is the Japanese word for ‘thorn’, the spiky shapes are made from wire that is more commonly used for the strings inside pianos.
The bristles of the modular products were slotted together to create the dress, but can also be used to construct freestanding sculptures and partitions in an assortment of rainbow colours.
Emmanuelle Moureaux is based in Tokyo and exhibited another modular product at the design festival there last year - you can see more of our stories about the designer here.
Photography is by Daisuke Shimokawa and Nacasa & Partners.
The following text is from Emmanuelle Moureaux:
“Sharp-pointed thorns. It is a manifestation of its aggressiveness that it will not let others come near, and a manifestation of its own weakness. Aggressiveness and Weakness. When wrapped around in the two conflicting senses, I feel like reaching out and touch the pain in spite of myself.”
“toge” meaning “ thorn” in Japanese, is a modular product that combines (interlocking to each other) freely to create spaces.
“toge” could be used as an architectural module for creating spaces, walls or partitions, or for creating free-standing sculptural pieces.
“toge” looks soft and light as dandelion flowers but is hard as a sea urchin or chesnut.
For its 1st presentation at DESIGNTIDE TOKYO 2011, emmanuelle designed a wedding dress made up of 500 pieces.
Material: piano wire / epoxy resin
Weight: 2g / toge
Size: 147mm
Colors: 14 colors + white