Christoph Hefti: The Missing Cat and Other Textile Stories

Christoph Hefti is one of Switzerland’s most distinctive contemporary textile designers. He spent years in the international fashion industry, working with houses including Dries Van Noten, Balenciaga, Lanvin, and Acne Studios, before turning to an independent practice built around carpets. The medium gave him something fashion could not: the freedom to choose his own materials, functions, forms, and images.

The results are enigmatic and unmistakably his own vision. Each carpet seems to tell a story, like a surrealist painting, one that feels dream-like and magical. Animal-like creatures, masks, and staring eyes appear in saturated colour, rendered in silk, wool, and long, tactile yarns that give each carpet a pronounced sculptural presence. Hefti’s process is intuitive. Ideas begin as freehand drawings and visual notes, without prior image research, and evolve through a dialogue between imagination, material, and technique. The starting point is always narrative. “I start out with a story,” he says, and the carpets, yarns, and materials then shape and complete it, leaving generous room for interpretation. The scenography reinforces the impact of the work, with coloured walls, some painted with images of animals, moody lighting and shadows.

Though the carpets anchor the show, the exhibition widens the frame to reflect Hefti’s multidisciplinary practice. Ceramics, furniture, textile prints, costumes, and performative works sit alongside the hand-knotted pieces, a reminder that his sensibility moves fluidly between design, art, and craft.

Just as compelling is the emphasis on how these objects come to be. The carpets are produced in close collaboration with weavers in Nepal, who work side by side on vertical looms using the traditional Tibetan knot technique. It is slow, communal work; each carpet grows by roughly ten centimeters per person per day. Hefti has worked with the Swiss fair trade label STEP since 2015, which advocates for fair working conditions and sustainable production in textile and carpet manufacturing.

Hefti’s creative process is also on display through sketches and sample cards that reveal the early stages of the textile designs, while a film made especially for the show documents production in Nepal. An audio station adds another layer, with the designer himself telling stories behind individual works. The scenography guides visitors along a circuit of pictorial and spatial stages where object, motif, and narrative overlap, so that moving through the galleries feels a little like stepping inside one of his tales.

A program of exhibition talks, guided tours, workshops, and an open studio accompanies the show, with offerings for families, young people, schools, and adults, including tailored accessible and inclusive formats.

Christoph Hefti: The Missing Cat and Other Textile Stories is on view through January 7, 2027 at the Museum für Gestaltung Zürich.

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