TOULON.- Textiles move from the margins of decoration to the center of modern design in a new exhibition at the Hôtel des Arts TPM in Toulon, where approximately 100 works trace how fibers, fabrics and woven structures have reshaped furniture, architecture and the objects of everyday life.

Now open and continuing through October 31, 2026, “Follow the Thread! Design & Textiles” brings together the work of approximately 40 designers from France’s national collections. The exhibition spans the modern avant-garde through contemporary experiments with digital manufacturing, recycled fibers and environmentally responsible production.

Organized with the Centre Pompidou, the Toulon Provence Méditerranée metropolitan authority, the Manufactures nationales, Sèvres & Mobilier national, the Centre national des arts plastiques and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the exhibition argues that textiles have played a far more structural role in design history than their longstanding association with ornament might suggest.

Rather than treating cloth as a surface applied after an object has been created, the show examines fabric as a material capable of determining form. It can follow the body, divide a room, filter light, absorb sound or become the primary structure of a chair, lamp or architectural element.

From modern interiors to radical materials

The exhibition begins with designers associated with the modern avant-garde, including Sonia Delaunay, Élise Djo-Bourgeois, Eileen Gray and Hélène Henry.

Their work demonstrates how textile design entered into close conversation with furniture and architecture during the early decades of the 20th century. Pattern, color and weaving were no longer isolated decorative disciplines but tools for defining the atmosphere and organization of modern interiors.

The prominence of these women also establishes one of the exhibition’s central arguments: that women designers were not peripheral contributors to textile history but key figures in the development of modern design.

The story shifts during the 1960s, when synthetic fibers and new industrial processes transformed what fabrics could do. Stretchable, durable and flexible materials offered designers new ways to respond to the human body and to create furniture that appeared less rigid and more adaptable.

Works associated with Pierre Paulin and Olivier Mourgue show how jersey and other elastic textiles helped produce new forms of seating. Upholstery was no longer simply a covering placed over a conventional frame; it became part of the object’s visual identity and physical construction.

The exhibition also highlights Simone Prouvé, whose work brought together weaving, architecture and industrial materials. Her practice represents an important bridge between traditional textile knowledge and the technological possibilities of the postwar period.





Craft and technology become intertwined

Later sections examine designers who deliberately blurred the distinction between handmade and industrial production.

Gaetano Pesce used unconventional materials and hybrid processes to challenge standardized design, while the Brazilian Campana brothers drew on vernacular materials and cultural references to expand design into anthropological territory.

One of the exhibition’s signature objects is Marcel Wanders’s Knotted Chair of 1996. Made from knotted aramid and carbon fibers hardened with epoxy resin, the chair resembles a handmade macramé structure while depending on advanced composite technology for its strength.

The work emerged from the radical context of Droog Design and embodies one of the exhibition’s main themes: an object can appear fragile and handcrafted while being structurally dependent on modern engineering.

In Wanders’s chair, the knot is both decorative and functional. A traditional manual technique becomes the basis for a lightweight piece of furniture that would not be possible without synthetic materials.

Hella Jongerius likewise brings experimental weaving into dialogue with contemporary production. Her work often preserves irregularities, visible processes and material differences even when digital tools and industrial methods are involved.

The exhibition also includes designers such as Gjertrud Hals and Chloé Bensahel, whose practices investigate how fabric can carry information, interact with technology or function as a responsive surface.

Fabric as architecture

By the beginning of the 21st century, textiles had also become a way of organizing space.

The exhibition presents work by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, whose acoustic textiles can absorb sound while functioning as soft, movable partitions. Such pieces offer an alternative to permanent walls, allowing interiors to be reorganized according to changing needs.

This transformation of textile into architecture continues through experiments with metal mesh. Designers and architects including Ron Arad, Dominique Perrault and Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost, Vincent Poujardieu and Muller Van Severen use mesh not as a secondary surface but as a sculptural and spatial material.

Metal mesh may be rigid or flexible, transparent or reflective. It can suggest the openness of fabric while retaining the strength and durability associated with architecture.

The exhibition’s inclusion of Diane de Kergal’s Lampadaire Emergence II, made from metal, silk and wood, further demonstrates how textile materials can mediate between structure and light. Its translucent silk forms soften and diffuse illumination while giving the lamp an almost organic presence.

Design confronts environmental responsibility

The exhibition concludes with a generation of designers responding to the environmental consequences of material production.

Pauline Esparon and Jeanne Goutelle are among those investigating natural, recycled and regenerated fibers. Their work addresses questions of durability, reuse and circular production while reconsidering the knowledge embedded in traditional textile practices.

The inclusion of these designers shifts the exhibition from a history of technical progress toward a more complicated question: how can innovation continue without depending on wasteful systems of extraction and disposal?

In this context, traditional techniques are not presented as nostalgic alternatives to modern design. Instead, they offer potential models for understanding renewable materials, repair, local production and the long-term life of objects.

Curated by Marie-Ange Brayer of the Centre Pompidou and Lucile Montagne of the Mobilier national, with Anna Izard and Thomas Hochet, “Follow the Thread!” presents design history as a continuous exchange between hand and machine.

The exhibition design was created by Emmylou Doutres and Clément Rosenberg, recipients of the 2025 Agora Design Grant.

By following textiles from the work of modern pioneers to contemporary ecological experiments, the exhibition shows how fabric has repeatedly challenged the distinction between structure and surface. It has provided designers with a way to connect the body to the object, the object to the room and inherited knowledge to new forms of technology.

“Follow the Thread! Design & Textiles” is on view at Hôtel des Arts TPM in Toulon through October 31, 2026. Admission is free.