Ethical silk textile art

MAQU + CONSTANZA KRAMER

This is a collaboration between fashion designer Marisa Fuentes Prado from Peru and Chilean-born textile designer Constanza Kramer.

Her fascination for traditional, handmade textiles makes her travel the world. In the process, she immerses herself in ancient techniques, which she translates into a modern textile language in Germany.

In 2018 she focused on Japanese textile art, crafts and culture. In Tokyo, Kyoto and Okazaki she gained deep insights into traditional printing and natural dyeing techniques like Katazome or Edo Sarasa or Japanese natural dyes.

The result of this project: eight exclusive one-of-a-kind pieces made from 100% non-violently sourced silk and organic cotton, handmade at Maqu Store & Studio, presented in Berlin in summer 2018.

Ethical, non-violent sil k or Peace Silk is obtained like conventional silk from the cocoon of silkworms, but in this case the caterpillars are not killed but can develop and live as butterflies called silk moths.

For the construction of the cocoon, the caterpillars themselves produce a substance which hardens when it comes out in the air and is wrapped around itself by the animals. This endless fiber, up to 900m long, is unique in nature.

The animal grows into a moth in the silk thread cocoon and then dissolves or breaks it open. To obtain the silk, a hole is cut in the cocoon, which the moth then uses to hatch.

This, and above all the re-linking of the thread, is very time-consuming, which makes the material more expensive than the conventional variant, which is ethically unacceptable in our eyes.

PhotoS: Emmi Lonka Model: Renata Oliveira