TEX DESIGN
Tex Design is an initiative of Fedustria and Designregio Kortrijk that brings together Belgian textile companies and young creative talents. The project aims to encourage the textile sector to think more creatively, innovatively and internationally. By collaborating on experimental installations and innovative applications, companies discover new market opportunities and strengthen their image as a future-oriented manufacturing industry.
Textile companies can now register for the 3rd edition of TEX DESIGN!
In collaboration with
Every year, Tex Design seeks out a promising new designer who challenges the participating companies in terms of creativity and innovation. Together, they build a new, unique installation that focuses on material research, technology and textile knowledge. This annual collaboration always results in fresh perspectives, unexpected cross-pollination and groundbreaking results.
The results are showcased at events such as the WONDER Creativity Festival and international design weeks, where Belgian craftsmanship and textile innovation take centre stage. This creates an inspiring platform that bridges the gap between industry, design and education, positioning the Belgian textile sector as a pioneer in sustainable and creative collaboration.
Previous projects:
ASCENDANT 2026
ASCENDANT is the result of Tex Design, a Fedustria initiative that connects Belgian textile companies with creative talent, in collaboration with Designregio Kortrijk and POM West Flanders. This year, designer and artist Charbel Abou Zeidan was selected, and De Poortere Frères, B&T Textilia, Green Street Fabrics, Ragolle Rugs, Sofa Cover, Bekaert Deslee and the social enterprise AAROVA collaborated on the project.
ASCENDANT is on display at the WONDER Festival and can be visited from 27 October to 8 November at ONE BROEL, Guido Gezellestraat 4,
Kortrijk.
Eighteen flags rise up like monuments, suspended in a state of ascent, somewhere between pride and collapse.
Stemming from the textile traditions of Flanders, each surface bears the memory of touch, labour, dedication and strength. Flags have long symbolised nations, alliances, victories and longing; here they transform into something more fragile, almost mortal.
The textile works, which exceed the dimensions of the human body, fill the space and invite the viewer to wander amongst colour, weight, texture and movement.
Commissioned by Fedustria to showcase the very pinnacle of Belgian textile craftsmanship, and in collaboration with Designregio Kortrijk and POM West Flanders to ensure that this ambitious vision was flawlessly organised and powerfully presented. Together, we brought together six leading companies and six different techniques, weaving eighteen unique identities into a single collective landscape of soaring forms.
The installation unfolds as a tactile architecture; compelling, sensual and ceremonial in its vertical pull.
Yet within this grandeur lies the inevitability of disappearance. Smoke drifts through the exhibition as digital apparitions: ghostly flags born from scanned pieces of fabric, which dissolve like ruins after a fire.
What remains when symbols burn? What remains after glory, industry or empire have faded?
Between monument and ashes, the work opens up to renewal, where the ascent continues in new and unexpected forms.
Spell Blanket 2025
Designer Emma Cogné presents "Spell Blanket" at WONDER Festival, a series of textile works that explore the blanket as both a nomadic and narrative object; an intimate shelter that protects, warms and accompanies.
Based on a personal collection of objects, household appliances and discrete tools from the textile industry, she composes images in which the ordinary is charged with strangeness and illusion. These fragments unfold into all-over patterns whose repetition narrates everyday situations, littered with clues. The pieces combine textures, reliefs and colours reminiscent of the layered history of velvet and brocade in early Dutch painting.
Spell Blanket was realised with the support of Aarova and POM West Flanders, in collaboration with the textile companies Tessutica, Deltracon, De Poortere Frères, B&T Textilia and Van Neder.
STARLIGHT SHINE 2024
For the first edition of TEX DESIGN, we collaborated with artist Victor Verhelst and six Belgian textile manufacturers: B&T Textilia, Green Street Fabrics, Belo Velvets, Van Neder, Tessutica, and Aarova. The result is the textile installation STARLIGHT SHINE. The installation was first shown at the WONDER Festival 2024 and then travelled to the Pinacoteca Civica museum in Como, Italy.
The STARLIGHT SHINE textile pavilion integrates all the characteristics inherent in Verhelst's work. From its digital canvas, the installation invited viewers to experience a physical, immersive journey that unfolds the 'process of a car wash' through the lens of the 'TRIPPY VEGAS' universe.
As you moved through the installation, you were surrounded by intricately crafted tapestries, each produced in collaboration with leading Belgian textile manufacturing companies, using leftover yarn from their production. The walls, floors and various elements were not just surfaces, but narrative layers, each representing a different stage of the transformation process - from the initial 'cleaning' to the final 'polishing'.
With 'STARLIGHT SHINE', the juxtaposition of digital elements and tactile craftsmanship challenged you to see both technology and tradition in a new light.
