Sophie Cagniart
French textile artist and designer working between
art, craft and the wearable.
Sophie Cagniart is a French textile artist and designer whose practice explores the transformation of existing textiles through traditional craft techniques. Working primarily with discarded and everyday materials such as cotton, linen and denim, she creates textiles, garments and objects through processes of dyeing, embroidery, weaving, stitching and reconstruction.
From fashion to textile art
Her relationship with textiles began through fashion. After graduating from ESMOD Roubaix in 2017, she developed her independent studio practice in the Netherlands, where she spent eight years exploring clothing, textile design and craftsmanship through Silent Wave Indigo.
Working between the wearable and the object, she gradually developed a practice concerned with the tension between art, craft and the value attributed to handmade work.
The value of making
A garment can contain hundreds of hours of work without appearing to carry them. Stitch by stitch, gesture by gesture, time becomes embedded in the material, yet much of that labour disappears once the object is complete.
This tension between what is visible and what remains unseen has become an important part of her practice. Sophie Cagniart's work questions how we perceive and value handmade objects, particularly when craftsmanship exists within something ordinary, functional or wearable.
Moving beyond the wearable
Today, Sophie Cagniart's practice is expanding beyond clothing towards textile works, objects and installation. She continues to work with discarded materials and traditional techniques, but increasingly uses them as a means of exploring texture, transformation, memory and time.
Rather than separating her past from her current work, she considers the years spent working with clothing, craftsmanship and the body as the foundation of her evolving artistic language.
Working with what already exists
"I am drawn to materials that already have a history. A worn sheet, a faded piece of denim, a fabric marked by use.
I like the tension between the ordinary and the intricate: simple materials transformed through techniques that were often developed through necessity rather than ornament.
For me, the beauty lies in that contrast: between the raw and the refined, the familiar and the unexpected, the material's previous life and what it can become."