The stage curtain (iwai maku) for ten-year-old kabuki actor Maholo Terajima has been designed by
French contemporary artist Xavier Veilhan and embroidered by Montex. From May 2nd to 27th, this iwai
maku will be the backdrop for the play Oto Kiku Maholo no Wakamusha (Maholo, the Young Warrior
of Otowaya), performed by Maholo Terajima at the prestigious Kabuki-za Theatre in Tokyo, during the
Dankikusai (Danjuro-Kikugoro Festival) May Grand Kabuki event.
Kabuki is a form of Japanese theatre that dates back to the early years of the 17th century during the
Edo period (1603-1868). It was during the shūmei ceremony that kabuki actors adopted their stage
name. Grandson of a legendary kabuki actor, Maholo Terajima has been performing Kabuki since he
was four years old. He will become the first Franco-Japanese actor to be recognized by this traditional
and living art, under the stage name of Onoe Maholo I.
Xavier Veilhan imagined this stage curtain with the complicity of Aska Yamashita, Artistic Director of
Montex. “It is an honour to be associated with a great contemporary artist such as Xavier Veilhan,”
says Aska Yamashita. “This collaboration allows us to accompany Maholo, a French-Japanese like
myself, in the first steps of his career and I am delighted to reconnect with my roots while promoting
the know-how of Atelier Montex.” Now located at le19M in Paris, this embroidery atelier, founded in
1939, was acquired by CHANEL in 2011, thus joining the Fashion Métiers d’art.
Some 8,900 laser-cut discs in multicoloured organza measuring 12 centimetres in diameter have been
assembled on an ecru fabric base to form an abstract motif with a dot pixel effect. The latter has been
enriched by Onoe Maholo I’s name and his family’s crest (two embracing oak leaves on layered fans),
calligraphed in a trompe l’oeil charcoal-grey silk organza, embroidered at the edges in chain stitch with
the Cornely machine. Twenty vibrant shades of organza were combined to create the design over a
surface area that is 25.4 metres long and 5.3 metres high, pushing traditional embroidery techniques
and a more unexpected savoir-faire at an architectural scale. More than 800 hours of work were
required to create this iwai maku.
A stage curtain artwork designed by Xavier Veilhan and embroidered by Montex, commissioned by CHANEL for the first stage of kabuki actor Onoe Maholo I
