Minä Perhonen at Loop

Minä Perhonen at Loop

We are so incredibly excited to show you the selection of brooches, buttons and fabric remnants from Minä Perhonen that Loop now has available! Minä Perhonen has been a favourite designer of Susan’s (owner of Loop) that has inspired her for many years now, so we are truly honoured to have these beautiful objects in the shop.

Minä Perhonen is a fashion and textile brand founded in 1995 by the designer Akira Minagawa, to produce clothes which do not lose their allure through lapse of time. Their clothing is designed to be incredibly wearable, and uses unique fabrics that they design themselves, often based on paintings and illustrations from Akira and his very talented design team.

After the main fashion collection is made they sometimes have bits of the beautiful fabric left. With an ethos of creating as little ‘waste’ as possible, they make other wonderful small objects. Some of these incredible pieces are now at Loop, which use cleverly-used fabric remnants to create the buttons and brooches. We are incredibly honoured to stock these accessories that can embellish your handmade knits and pieces or any articles of clothing. We are also very excited to have packs of the fabric remnants!

‘Materialli’

When Susan was in Tokyo in September 2019, she paid a visit to one of the Minä Perhonen shops! She had an amazing time, and has written about her experience…

“Materialli is one of the Mina Perhonen fabric shops where I saw that they made buttons and brooches from the leftover fabric, after they create their fashion and interior collections. I was thrilled to discover these as they go so beautifully with knitwear. I also had so much respect for what they were doing, creating more beauty out of whatever remnants were available.

I came home laden with gifts for friends, family and all the Loop staff from here. It was a month later when Hikaru Noguchi was visiting Loop to hold workshops in the shop and launch the English edition of her book ‘Darning, Repair, Make, Mend’ that she said you must go back, there is a retrospective of Mina Perhonen that just opened, and so I planned a return trip. Hikaru knew how I have loved his design in all its’ forms for many, many years.

Mina Perhonen at Loop London
Wonderful Hikaru Noguchi with her book

When Hikaru got back to Tokyo she said she would introduce Akira Minagawa to me, to try and help set up a meeting if I came back to Tokyo so we could stock these pieces. I was over the moon. In early February 2020 we went back, and thanks to Hikaru we met with Akira and his textile design team. What an incredible afternoon that was. Everyone was incredibly gracious and warm. We had wonderful discussions. It was a magic day in my life.”

Brooches

Mina Perhonen at Loop London

As mentioned above, the brooches we have from Minä Perhonen use remnants of their gorgeous embroidered and textured fabrics to create beautiful pieces to go on winter coats, knitwear or to make a favourite dress extra special!

We have several sizes of these brooches, so you can pick one that will sit perfectly on your clothing.

Buttons

Mina Perhonen at Loop London

The beautiful buttons we have from Minä Perhonen come in five different sizes, and lots of different designs. We really love these on knitwear, but as they are nicely robust they would work very well on winter coats and jackets too.

Fabric swatch packs

Mina Perhonen at Loop London

These swatch packs contain little off-cuts of precious Minä Perhonen fabrics, which you could use for quilting or as patches on knitwear (functional or not!) and even to make small toys, to use as part of visible mending or to add embellishments to your projects.

Mina Perhonen at Loop London

Loop also stocks rare Minä Perhonen washi tapes, which are based on the distinctive styles of their fabrics! You can use these to decorate stationary, to help you read knitting charts, to put photographs up on walls, and so much more!

We’re incredibly grateful to Hikaru Noguchi and the talented people at Minä Perhonen. We hope you love these little treasures as much as we do!

A reminder…

We want to remind you that our giveaway for a bundle of naturally dyed yarn and a lovely book is still running here on the blog and on Instagram. See our post from last week for details on the giveaway, and to find out how to enter! It will be closing on Thursday 2nd July, so make sure you enter before then.

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