Crush on you

Reading Time:2 minutes

Published: 12:00am, 10 Jul 2011

Those who like their interiors pristine and orderly may not be enthusiastic about a current trend: overly crumpled fabrics.

These fabrics, which at their most dramatic resemble the fur of a Shar Pei dog, are increasingly being seen at design fairs and in high-end stores. And they're not just being used on soft furniture; hard tabletop accessories are being given the same treatment.

Massimiliano Adami created the aptly named Sharpei chair for Italian furniture house Cappellini (www.cappellini.it). The chair, which retails for about US$4,500, is essentially a beechwood frame covered in heavily crumpled cotton.

Designer brothers Fernando and Humberto Campana have fashioned a piece for Italian design house Edra (www.edra.com) that uses voluminous drapings of leather or eco-fur over a steel tube frame. The Grinza was unveiled in March in Milan, Italy. Also, the Campanas used velvet, one of their preferred fabrics, to make the 120 metres of tubing that goes into their voluptuous Boa sofa (price available on request).

Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka's Cloud couch, which he made for Italian firm Moroso, is essentially reams of crumpled white paper stuck together. While that remains a prototype, in production is Yoshioka's Bouquet swivel armchair, also created for Moroso, which consists of small pieces of coloured fabric crumpled and sewn together like a bed of rose petals (US$9,888 through online retailer Unica Home; unicahome.com).

The motif is showing up elsewhere: the Bin Bin, designed by John Brauer for Danish brand Essey (essey.com; represented in Hong