STRAFT
Thomas Aulagner
Ancestral craft belongs first to the land. But here, it steps beyond its origins, entering the steel geometry of the city and claiming new space.
A photographic series created in collaboration by creative director Gala Espel with photographer Thomas Aulagner and Straft – a Japanese craft design studio – offers one such passage: the mino, a traditional rain cape woven from rice straw, reimagined as a contemporary silhouette.
The journey begins in the rice paddies: among the fields, she stands as a quiet guardian of ancestral knowledge — a form nurtured by earth and tradition.
Soon, she leaves the land that shaped her. The silhouette sharpens, its softness giving way to resolve as she moves toward the industrial docks of Kawasaki.
Within the metallic architecture of the port — cranes, steel, concrete — the figure confronts the machinery and tempo of the modern world.
Straw beside steel, stillness against engines, memory beside mass-production. Captured during a road trip punctuated by visits to workshops, these images trace a dialogue between material and landscape — soil and iron, handwoven fiber and industry — and reveal the endurance of ancient craft as it steps into new terrain.
Thomas Aulagner
Thomas Aulagner is a Paris-based photographer working across fashion, sports, and documentary. His work explores movement, authenticity, and the relationship between bodies, garments, and landscapes.
Influenced by his Mediterranean upbringing, he places great importance on natural light and environments shaped by time and use. His images often emerge from travel, displacement, and outdoor contexts, where clothing is worn, lived in, and integrated into real situations rather than staged settings.
His practice sits at the intersection of fashion and documentary, with a focus on understated narratives, physical presence, and images grounded in reality.
