MUJI x Reiko Sudo and Adrien Gardère Turn Donated Clothing Into "Koi Continuum," an Exhibition on What Makes Objects Worth Keeping

Summary

• MUJI USA is presenting “Koi Continuum” at its Fifth Avenue flagship from May 14 to June 7, a free-to-visit installation created by Japanese textile designer Reiko Sudo and French designer Adrien Gardère as part of the brand’s ReMUJI resource circulation initiative
• The work transforms customer-donated MUJI garments, collected, dyed, rewashed, and reassembled into koinobori, traditional Japanese carp streamers, that now adorn the store’s interior
• The exhibition extends the original “Koi Current” installation created by Sudo and Gardère, recontextualizing it through reclaimed materials to explore how objects carry meaning across multiple lives and owners

MUJI USA has opened “Koi Continuum,” a large-scale installation at its Fifth Avenue flagship in New York, running from May 14 through June 7. Created by textile designer Reiko Sudo of NUNO Corporation and French designer Adrien Gardère of Studio Adrien Gardère, the work transforms clothing donated by MUJI customers into koinobori, the traditional Japanese carp streamers associated with the wish for children’s health and resilience.

The material process is the piece. Garments collected from customers through MUJI’s ReMUJI initiative were dyed, rewashed, and cut apart before being reconstituted as the carp streamer forms now hanging in the store. The resulting koinobori are not replicas of traditional versions but composites of the many fabrics that passed through the process, each one visually distinct depending on which donated textiles went into its construction. The physical object that emerges carries the accumulated decisions of everyone who wore the original garments, even as those garments have ceased to exist in their original form.

Reiko Sudo is one of Japan’s most internationally recognized textile designers. Working from NUNO Corporation, she has spent decades developing fabrics that combine traditional Japanese dyeing and weaving techniques with contemporary industrial processes. Her work is held in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, among others. Since 2008 she has served as a textile design consultant for Ryohin Keikaku, MUJI’s parent company. Adrien Gardère brings a different kind of institutional fluency. His Paris-based studio has designed permanent displays for 13 major international museums and more than 80 temporary exhibitions worldwide, working alongside practices including Foster + Partners, Herzog & de Meuron, and SANAA. The 2020 Medal of the French Academy of Architecture Foundation sits among his recognitions. Together, the two designers bring a combined credibility to “Koi Continuum” that positions it clearly outside the category of retail activation.

The philosophical anchor is ReMUJI, the resource circulation initiative MUJI launched in 2010. The program collects, reuses, and regenerates items that have completed their primary use cycle, drawing consciously on a much older Japanese practice: during the Edo period, worn clothing was re-dyed with indigo so it could continue to be used. MUJI frames that historical precedent not as nostalgia but as evidence that a different relationship with objects has existed before and can exist again. “Koi Continuum” makes that argument physically rather than rhetorically. Where a conventional sustainability campaign might talk about circularity, this installation puts the reclaimed garments on display in the form of something new, asking visitors to trace the line between what an object was and what it has become.

For a brand built on the principle of rational sufficiency, the exhibition is a natural extension of the founding logic. MUJI has always argued that good objects deserve to last. “Koi Continuum” follows that argument to its next stage: that lasting means changing form, not simply enduring unchanged.

“Koi Continuum” is on view at MUJI Fifth Avenue from May 14 through June 7.

MUJI Fifth Avenue
475 Fifth Ave
New York, NY