The story of this scarf is above all a journey. It begins with a friend's trip to Japan, Toyoma prefecture, in the small village of Ainokura. She is Swedish; I met her when I was on an internship in Gothenburg, she was studying science at the Chalmers Institute of Technology. Her boyfriend is Japanese, who came to Sweden as an exchange student: they live one year in Japan, then one year in Sweden to choose the country where they want to settle down, and choose Sweden. Since then, every year, they visit the Japanese family and I follow their adventure, from a distance, discovering little by little parts of Japan I never heard about.

The village is traditional: thatched houses, surrounding forests and mountains, beaten paths through fields. Thousands of miles away, the village looks serene through a screen of pixels.

I discover a Japanese village that could very well have dated from the Edo period and yet its exoticism touches me less than its very familiar presence. The obviousness strikes me strangely: I find in this village at the other end of the world, a small village in the Jura, Nanc-Lès-Saint-Amour. Both out of time, they have more in common than the cities that surround them.

His photos cross my memories and the design of this scarf sprouts: an armful of buttercups, a floral Proust's madeleine, worked with Japanese lines.

See you soon for another story about gardens, flowers and elsewhere!