Chapter 42
I’m translating the chapter now and keeping the in-universe special content in the required HTML blocks while preserving the novelistic flow.CHAPTER_TITLE: Maison & Objet (5)
At that same moment, in Seoul.
“This is good.”
“See? I told you it was surprisingly decent.”
“Most other things fall apart after a few washes, but this one holds up. I like that.”
The Haesol Textile employees were already wearing matching T-shirts in a beige base color.
At first, they had put them on simply because Mrs. Yoon Jung-mi said she’d make them out of fabric that would otherwise be thrown away at the factory, but once they tried them on, they realized the shirts were comfortable enough to work in, and they kept wearing them day after day.
Before long, most of them were even wearing them to and from work, and now they were clearly hoping someone would make them another set.
Lee A-young, in particular, stood out.
Maybe because the size fit her body so perfectly, but instead of looking like a cheap factory shirt, it made her look as though she were wearing a rather expensive designer piece at first glance.
“Oh my, that’s pretty. I wish mine fit me exactly like that.”
Some of the older women, who had originally thought a roomy, easy T-shirt was the best kind of work shirt, now looked at A-young’s closely fitted version and grew envious.
“Hehe, right? If the boss says we can use some extra fabric, I’ll ask.”
Every time her mother made clothes for the factory staff, she got a bonus, so A-young’s promise to make another one wasn’t hard to offer at all in the face of the women’s envy.
“Would that be all right? It seems like Jung-mi would have a hard time.”
“Then I’ll ask my mom.”
As she laughed and answered them, another voice came from nearby.
“Um... the one with the hood. If there’s something like that, I’d like it.”
Turning toward the speaker, she saw Ishan, the Sri Lankan young man with unmistakably dark skin and thick lips.
“A hood? Ishan, you mean a hoodie?”
“Yes, yes. I want that.”
“Hmm... I’ll have to ask the president. We need the fabric to make it. If the president approves it, I’ll try making one.”
“Thanks.”
Ishan, a so-called foreign laborer, had been living in Korea for more than three years, so his Korean was quite good.
He and A-young had gotten close after sharing a few company dinners, and by now she spoke to him casually without thinking twice.
When she returned to her desk, the promise to make it “cool and easy” started to weigh on her mind.
A simple T-shirt design was easy enough even for her, who had never formally studied much, but a hoodie was different.
On top of that, a hoodie meant to be as comfortable as work clothes wasn’t really a match for a man with a slightly broader build. And beige was even less so.
“Did I make a promise too easily?”
Frowning, A-young blamed her own loose mouth.
But what could she do?
If she tried and failed, there was nothing for it, and the president might not give them any more fabric.
So she had told herself not to worry in advance, and yet...
After leaving work, A-young found her feet carrying her toward Hongdae before she even realized it.
“Mushinsa...”
Stopping in front of the large store, A-young drifted inside as if under a spell.
She looked over each item one by one, then took out a hoodie and examined everything carefully, from the fabric to the sizing.
She ended up spending more than an hour inside the shop before finally heading home.
*
On the second day of the Maison & Objet exhibition, Haesol Textile’s GyeolBit bedding booth was still drawing fierce attention.
Requests for the high-end bedding line, displayed so strikingly from the very first day of the event, had poured in nonstop, and Hwang Seok-jae had already used more than half of the English and French business cards he had deliberately prepared.
“It would have been a disaster if we hadn’t brought enough.”
President Hwang broke into a broad smile at the popularity of their products.
His old way of working had always meant sitting in an office and wrestling with numbers, but after unexpectedly ending up on this trip to France with Seung-hyun, he was experiencing things he had truly never imagined.
“I see. Are people asking about bedding inventory or additional production schedules too?”
Seung-hyun, who had stepped away from the booth for a moment, asked Hwang.
“Very much so. Several stores are already asking us to send quotations. We’ll also need to think about how to establish a local logistics base in Europe.”
It was a scream of delight. Before the exhibition had even ended, they were receiving this many calls of interest; judged purely by sales potential, it was already a major success.
But Seung-hyun still felt a slight unease in one corner of his mind.
It came from the pressure of having to create a new pattern with a European sensibility, as Yu Se-rin had proposed.
Wasn’t that precisely why he had come to Maison & Objet in the first place, to come to Europe and find fresh inspiration?
Soon after, as the exhibition hall moved into lunch hour, the number of visitors dropped somewhat.
Seung-hyun took advantage of the lull, leaving the manager at the booth while he began roaming the exhibition hall.
He moved freely not only through the bedding section but also through the lighting, interior fabric, tableware, and home decor sections, touching and inspecting all kinds of designs with his eyes.
“Linen curtains made by an Italian company... that’s a rather distinctive texture.”
From curtains inspired by antiques to bedding patterned after African tribal motifs, the variety was enormous, as one would expect from a venue that had gathered the whole world under one roof.
But no design concept immediately suggested itself as something Haesol Textile could try right away.
Time passed, and by afternoon, Hwang called him.
“President, I’m sorry, but people are piling up again, and I’m having trouble handling the consultations alone. If possible, could you come back and help me a bit...”
In the end, Seung-hyun returned to the booth.
In fact, buyers and industry contacts who had walked around the exhibition were now personally checking the feel of the GyeolBit bedding and firing questions from every direction.
“With this bright color palette and refined pattern, it feels like royal bedding. Would more variations be possible?”
“When would overseas shipping become available?”
“Aside from bedding sets, could you make pajamas out of the same fabric?”
The reaction was explosive.
At this point, it seemed they would need to do one of two things: set up a local subsidiary, or contact a company that specialized in importing the GyeolBit brand.
That was when it happened.
“Hello. President Jung Seung-hyun?”
A woman spoke to him in precise English, looking straight at him.
It was hard to tell a Western woman’s age, but she seemed at least in her forties, and both the clothes she wore and the impression she gave off were highly polished.
“Yes, I’m Jung Seung-hyun.”
“Pleased to meet you. I’m Camille Dubois of Loro Piana.”
The woman who extended her hand had the grace of an elegant noblewoman, and her voice was very calm.
Seung-hyun shook her hand in some bewilderment and asked, “Loro Piana?”
“Yes. The chairman would like to see you.”
He still didn’t understand why someone from the Loro Piana brand was looking for him, but then...
“The chairman of Loro Piana is Antoine Arnault, the eldest son of Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of the LVMH Group.”
At Hwang Seok-jae’s whispered explanation, Seung-hyun finally understood what was going on.
Since a company invested in by the LVMH Group had come to France, it seemed they wanted to at least see his face and find out what sort of person he was.
“Ah, I see. When would he...”
“If you come tomorrow evening to the address on the card I gave you. Ah, and you must come alone.”
“Alone? Is there a reason?”
“The chairman is curious about you, not your staff.”
“Ah...”
“Still...”
She stroked the bedding displayed at the booth once, then continued in a thoroughly satisfied voice.
“I have to admit, Gabriel has an excellent eye. He was in Korea and suddenly sent an email recommending that we invest in the company, so honestly, it was a little surprising.”
“Is that so?”
“I also saw the sofa. It’s a relief that the bedding is getting such a good response too. At least Gabriel won’t be in an awkward position.”
From her words, it seemed that if the event had not gone well, Gabriel Moreau’s position within the group would have narrowed considerably.
Just as Seung-hyun felt a little flustered and relieved at the same time, she went on.
“Personally, I love Orientalism. I thought the group needed a part like that. That’s why I like Haesol Textile.”
“Yes... thank you.”
“And while I’m at it, let me offer one piece of advice. You’ll need one more thing when you meet the chairman.”
“Pardon?”
“Then...”
She stopped in the middle of her sentence and walked away from the booth as if nothing had happened.
He almost wondered why she had bothered to bring it up at all, but he quickly erased it from his mind.
On the second day, once the exhibition schedule ended and they were about to head back to the hotel, Seung-hyun sent Hwang Seok-jae to the hotel alone.
“I’ve got somewhere I need to look around for a bit. Go ahead and rest first.”
“Understood.”
Remembering the young president who had spent the entire exhibition thinking about something with focused intensity, Hwang Seok-jae headed off to the hotel without another word.
Now alone, Seung-hyun began walking the streets of France without a destination in mind.
After walking for about an hour, he reached the Marais district.
It was an area where Paris’s tradition and modernity coexisted in a strangely natural way; along the maze of narrow streets, small and large galleries and antique shops lined up between old buildings.
“Nothing especially remarkable here either...”
After glancing at one or two storefront windows, Seung-hyun stepped into the third shop without much expectation.
It was an old antique store with a faded sign, looking as if it had fallen behind the times long ago.
The shop inside was cluttered with dusty objects, old-fashioned standing lamps, and sculptures mingled with a musty smell.
“Bonjour, monsieur... are you here to look around?”
“Yes, just stopped in for a moment.”
Nodding, Seung-hyun looked around the corners of the shop as the owner suggested, and what caught his eye was a piece of worn, frayed textile.
It was hung on the wall like a small framed picture, but threads had come loose around the edges and the color had faded badly.
“What is this?”
“Ah, this is an eighteenth-century Gobelins tapestry. It was the kind of textile used in European aristocratic households for wall decoration or chair covers. The colors have almost vanished because it’s so old, but isn’t that precisely the charm of it?”
Seung-hyun brushed off a bit of dust and looked more closely at the tapestry.
The Gobelins tapestry was one of France’s signature weaving arts, originating with the Gobelin family in fifteenth-century Paris and designated a royal manufactory during the reign of Louis XIV.
It was an intricate tapestry art form that used vertical looms and worked from the back, creating painterly works with hundreds of shades of wool, silk, and gold thread, and its artistic value could only be described as substantial.
The classical motifs left here and there on the cloth had faded almost beyond recognition.
Perhaps because of that fading, the colors felt far more mysterious and subdued than the original bright pattern ever could have.
Moreover, the naturally worn grain that had developed over years of use even looked like an unintended pattern in itself.
The irregular texture of the fabric, damaged in places, felt like a pattern all its own, as though the traces of time had seeped into it naturally and turned it into a work of art.
“Hmm... interesting.”
All at once, Seung-hyun imagined the process by which texture created by time could melt into fabric.
It was not as though delicate embroidery was the only way to inscribe a pattern.
The combination of old-world motifs, faded color, and timeworn texture had a strange way of catching the eye and not letting it go.
That was something he had never quite thought of, even while creating all kinds of art fabrics.
The unique atmosphere old objects gained as time passed.
Restoring them exactly as they were would only make them seem “old,” but what if this blurred, pastel-like color and even the gaps themselves became pattern elements?
Ah! Could it be this...?
He was certain it was exactly the kind of something he had been searching for all this time.
“So, will you take it?”
“Yes. How much is it?”
Seung-hyun fiddled with the tapestry in his hands. His eyes were shining.
From that old, faded scrap of cloth came a quiet vitality.
It might have been nothing more than a worn-out rag at a glance, but look a little closer and it was also an astonishing work of art.
Yes, this is it. If I can rebirth the pattern engraved over this natural color palette in a Haesol Textile way...
His heart began to pound with the rush of inspiration.