The DENIM01 chair was born from a desire to counter industrial production, which often lacks meaning and humanity. This project also represents a new exploration of creativity through craftsmanship, specifically crochet.
By choosing to work each step by hand, I aimed to create a unique piece imbued with my personal experience and passion for craftsmanship. Through this project, I also hope to highlight the value of manual labor and emphasize its importance in our contemporary society.
Giving new life to a used object allows me to extend the pleasure of creation through an entirely manual approach, even without prior skills, distancing myself from the model of industrial production. The choice of material was dictated not only by the crochet technique but also by the decision to use an industrial chair, mass-produced in thousands of copies. This chair, found in my family’s garage, symbolized for me a senseless cycle of consumption and production.
It didn’t make sense for me to cover this chair with store-bought wool. That’s when the idea of using denim came to me—a material readily available at flea markets, in the unwanted bins at Emmaus, and even through donations. This is due to the overproduction of jeans, with about 800,000 pairs entering the market each day, replacing those already in existence. To me, denim symbolizes overproduction, but it also has a beautiful texture.
After carefully patterning the entire chair and cutting 18 pairs of jeans into fine strips, I began crocheting. Stitch by stitch, I saw this new skin emerge on the chair, with the varying shades of denim creating a unique pattern and an unusual texture.
This chair led to the creation of a lamp and then a rug. I am excited to present these pieces at Paris Design Week 2024, from September 5th to 9th, at Espace Commines, located at 17 Rue Commines, 75003 Paris, as part of an exhibition organized by the collective Meet Met Met.
You can also discover these works at the "Village Palace" exhibition, taking place from September 5th to 14th at the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris. A big thank you to Simon Geringer, Prisca Razafindrakoto, and Jean-Baptiste Durand for their invitation.
