Modern French fabrics

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New, innovative materials are created manually from gold and silver threads, from beads and feathers. At least that's what the French manufactory MALHIA KENT does.

Creative director of the brand, designer Yves Carrigan, together with the chief editor of the German-speaking Burda Dagmar Bili.
LAGERFELD, ARMANI, TOMFORD - all the leaders of these firms visited the headquarters MALHIA KENT, in a luxury villa on the banks of the Seine in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. Here, for half a century, manufacture has been producing unusual fabrics for the most famous fashion houses in the world. Revolutionary design created by hand. "If the creative director of the Fashion House wants a cotton candy-like fabric, then he will get it from us ..." - says the director of the manufacturer, designer Yves Carrigan.
More than 10 thousand twisted and 15 thousand simple threads are at the ready to fulfill any, most unusual request of the customer. First, a computer sketch is made, then the student team is taken up: future fashion designers do the most painstaking work on a computer sketch. On traditional looms, they weave a small pattern of threads, ribbons, metal fibers, lace, feathers, sequins, paper, beads and raffia. The maximum length of a new fabric sample is 2 meters. These samples are sent to the customer.By the way, customers are not always people with big names, among them there are many beginning designers who dream of combining their own style with materials that at first glance can not be combined in any way (for example, plaid and sequins or muslin and gold threads). And as a result, completely unusual fabrics appear, and admired exclamations are heard at fashion shows: "MALHIA KENT has created another masterpiece!"
By the way, Mahliya Kent is the pseudonym of the founder of the company, which in 1961 bought a weaving workshop and just sent out several samples of Coco Chanel out of love for art. Madame Chanel was so delighted with them that she ordered several rolls of expensive multilayer tweed with a colorful fantasy pattern.
In addition to orders, the manufactory also produces its own collections of fabrics (more than 2000 fabrics per year). Unsuccessful patterns are stored in archives (more than 50,000 samples are already in it). "If we didn’t like something, we send the sample to the archive, and a year later we get it out and look again," - says Eve. "This technique has helped us more than once to see what exactly is missing to complete the work."

First, the fabric must be woven on the machine ...

... and sometimes whole portraits are woven.

Metal threads are used in very different thicknesses.

Often, work on a small piece of fabric is in full swing for many days.

Each probe has its own number and its own shelf position.

New tweed metallic.

New handbag with fancy tweed from CELIA LANGE.

Tweed with neon and metal threads.

Detailed pictures are made of the finest fibers.

By the way, ordinary lovers of exclusive goods can buy fabrics from MALHIA KENT.
Photo: Carolin Waanke-Penicaut, Jan Schmiedel, PR.
Models from the collections of CUSTO BARCELONA (3) and YIGAL AZROUEL (1).
The material was prepared by Elena Karpova.

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