I do believe they had 4,000 hats in an exhibition displaying internationally recognised milliner, Hirata Akio, representing 70 years of work. The ”Hirata No Bashi” exhibition was housed in Tokyo’s contemporary artspace, Spiral Garden (which is incidentally home to the Lounge Uncle Hat). Designed by Japanese design studio, Nendo, it was the first time the milliner’s works were amassed and exhibited in a retrospective.
For the exhibition space, we wanted to make Hirata’s hats stand out. The mass-produced non-woven fabric hats we created for the space are the antithesis of Hirata’s carefully handmade hats, and bring them into sharp relief through dramatic contrast.
With the artist overseeing the design of the hats, they offer an interactive and ethereal space in which visitors can wander in a hate dreamland. In the designer’s words, in “a way of physically experiencing the creative freedom that underlies Hirata’s work.” Hats off to creativity, we say.
Published on 5 July 2011 by Agony Uncle