Kasthall has launched a new handcrafted rug collection for Swedish fashion brand Acne Studios. The rug design company has previously done custom work for other fashion brands, including Chanel, Dior and Yves Saint Laurent. For the Acne Studios global flagship store on Madison Avenue in New York, last year Kasthall commissioned British designer Max Lamb to design the rugs, which were then hand-tufted in the Kasthall Design Studio. The new rugs are designed in a number of shades of blue.
How did the collab originally come about? The brands explain: “The collaboration began in 2016, when Max Lamb and the Acne Studios team visited the Kasthall design studio and atelier in Kinna [in Sweden] for a workshop, at which Kasthall presented different types of yarns and techniques. The color shifts in the rugs was crafted using a unique technique developed by Max Lamb in which the color is drizzled and sprayed on the yarn using PET bottles, giving each rug a unique pattern. The rugs were then hand-tufted in the studio, each given a unique finish using fringes in two different pile heights.”
“For me, it was important to elevate the store design, as opening a store on Madison Avenue is such a statement for Acne Studios,” says Jonny Johansson, the company’s creative director. “And therefore I went for gold. The gold needed a soft element, and Kasthall was a perfect collaborator to create that softness with the unique rugs. It was a very pleasant process, as both Acne Studios and Kasthall share the same Swedish design heritage. And the rugs look cool.”
“We drew inspiration from numerous different sources, the key ones being art and fashion,” says Eva Boding, CEO at Kasthall. “This is a prestigious commission for Kasthall and we are very proud that Acne Studios, Sweden’s foremost fashion house, and leading international designer Max Lamb chose Kasthall. We enjoyed a close and creative collaboration on-site at our factory in Kinna, Sweden, where the starting point was a clear vision from Acne Studios, combined with Max Lamb’s expressive design language.”
