Suivez le fil ! Hôtel des Arts: Redefining the Material

How a century of designers turned fabric into architecture, sculpture, and memory

From 27 June to 31 October 2026, the Hôtel des Arts in Toulon presents Suivez le fil ! Design & Textile. The exhibition explores how textiles quietly shaped the history of design. For years, however, people treated textiles as simple decoration. The exhibition challenges that view. In partnership with the Centre Pompidou, the Manufactures nationales, the Centre national des arts plastiques, and the Musée des Arts décoratifs, it brings together around 100 works by 40 designers. All come from the French national collections. Finally, visitors can see it at the Hôtel des Arts TPM until the end of October.

A Sixth Edition for Suivez le fil ! Design & Textile

However, the partnership between Toulon Provence Méditerranée and the Centre Pompidou began in 2020. It now reaches its sixth edition. Meanwhile, both institutions follow a clear regional strategy. Many people think national collections are only for visitors in Paris. Still, the organisers challenge this centralised view. Showing these works in Toulon is part of their mission. They want to make national collections accessible across France.

The Hôtel des Arts has presented textile exhibitions before. However, those exhibitions focused on history or craftsmanship. This time, the curators chose a different approach. They explore textiles through their physical and three dimensional qualities. The material becomes a key element for building, folding, and shaping objects.

Staging Fabric Through Fabric

Similarly, the same desire to move away from conventions appears in the exhibition design. Emmylou Doutres and Clément Rosenberg, winners of the 2025 Agora Design Grant, designed the scenography. Their challenge is to present textiles through textiles themselves. Instead of building everything from scratch, they reused and re-covered elements from previous exhibitions. They searched for a medium capable of connecting object and space. The gesture itself becomes an argument. Through the scenography, colour, form, and spatial arrangement offer another way of practicing textile design. This directly reflects what the exhibition seeks to demonstrate.

From Avant-Gardes to Radical Knots

Suivez le fil ! begins with pioneers Sonia Delaunay and Élise Djo-Bourgeois. They connect textiles with furniture and architecture. At the time, however, these disciplines rarely interacted.

Then, the 1960s mark a major technological shift. Synthetic fibres transform established design codes. Stretchable and durable fabrics enter the market. They follow the shapes of the human body. Pierre Paulin and Olivier Mourgue explore these new possibilities. As a result, jersey becomes a tool for design research.

The most radical break arrives in the 1990s. Gaetano Pesce and Marcel Wanders reinterpret textile materials. They question the boundaries between form, structure, and process, in particular, Wanders’ Knotted Chair marks this turning point. Firstly he weaves it by hand using aramid rope. Epoxy resin then freezes its fragile structure. The piece shifts from craft object to sculptural design. It opens the exhibition at the Hôtel des Arts.

This exploration continues with metal mesh. Dominique Perrault and Gaëlle Lauriot-Prévost develop this technical approach. Vincent Poujardieu and Muller Van Severen extend it further. Mesh no longer simply covers objects. It supports, structures, and shapes complex volumes. Textile becomes a language of architecture. At the Hôtel des Arts, it redefines the boundaries of contemporary design.

Two Figures Worth Discovering in Suivez le fil !

Among Suivez le fil’s forty designers, two trajectories stand out. Simone Prouvé, daughter of architect Jean Prouvé and trained in Scandinavia under weaver Dora Jung, spent seventy years moving from wool and linen to aramid fibers, stainless steel, and eventually fiber optics. A technical evolution as much as a life recorded in notebooks. And Jeanne Vicerial, whose patented weaving technique and “clinique vestimentaire” treat skin as the defining material of the 21st century.

Through these intersecting perspectives, therefore, Suivez le fil ! Design & Textile is a reminder that textile was never mere decoration. It has quietly shaped how we inhabit, build, and think about space.

Suivez le fil ! Design & Textile runs 27 June to 31 October 2026 at Hôtel des Arts TPM, 236 boulevard Maréchal Leclerc, Toulon. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 11am to 6pm; closed Mondays and public holidays.

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