The inspiration behind A Softer World at Milan Design Week
For Milan Design Week 2026, STEPEVI presents A Softer World, an immersive installation by textile artist Alfhild Külper. Inspired by memory, comfort, and the need for softness, the project creates a space for pause and reflection. We sat down with Külper to talk about the collaboration, her process, and the emotional world behind the work.
How did your collaboration with STEPEVI begin?
I was contacted by STEPEVI last year. We started talking, and I quickly discovered that we share a mutual respect and appreciation for fine natural materials, sustainable practices, and meaningful, people-centered creation.
I love the way STEPEVI provides a very high-end product and a unique approach to custom work, creating a kind of personal softness tailored to each individual. I also really admire their sustainable practices and how they are building and supporting the community in Turkey.
How would you describe A Softer World?
With our shared soft mission, we are creating a dreamlike textile forest installation, a magical visualization of how to treasure and reuse every last little fiber of STEPEVI’s fine materials.
It’s a wild spring garden made from factory cut-off wool threads, which will slowly be “harvested” and, thread by thread, felted into a large tapestry. Visitors will enter a world of softness, where the hard edges of reality begin to blur.
They are invited to sit, pause, and remember their own soft spots — to let them slowly return while watching the meditative process of tapestry-making. Visitors can also take part by choosing the colors of a happy memory and felting them into the artwork, becoming part of a wall of soft spots, a growing wall of joy.
What was the inspiration behind A Softer World?
Building a softer world is at the core of my practice — creating physical representations of the soft spots in our minds, the spaces we retreat to when we need to feel safe.
These soft spots are hidden, inner places that make us feel warm and held. We build them unconsciously from memories, sometimes from life-changing moments, and sometimes from small ones, like meeting the eyes of a stranger or seeing a sunset.
In a time of rising anxiety, uncertainty, and stress, we all need moments of softness. This work is about bringing those soft spaces into our environments, so we can feel and reconnect with them.
How does memory and emotion become material in your work?
My work comes from a need for a softer world. My practice began as part of a healing process, a strong longing for something physically and emotionally soft.
What started as something deeply personal has grown into my motivation and philosophy. My mission to make the world a softer place has become more defined and conscious over time.
I originally created this work to pull myself out of a dark place, to build the visual and emotional surroundings I wanted to live in. And as the world has, in many ways, become heavier, it feels even more important to offer a softer path forward, a kind path to walk barefoot, feeling warmth through the soles of your feet.
Inspired by kindness, wonder, and soft thinking, both personal and shared, I create tapestries and sculptures that gently invite viewers to reconnect with their own inner softness. Tactile landscapes of warmth, connecting us to safety, love, and transformation.
Tell us about your design process. What was the starting point?
I loosely draw the colors that come up when I think about these soft-world moments. The drawings often start very blurry, like a memory or a dream, and slowly grow into shapes.
Before I begin weaving and embroidering, I start with one of the most meditative parts of my process: yarn spinning. I make smaller yarn balls from the beautiful leftover colors of the STEPEVI Caresse collection. I do this in natural light, before turning on any electrical lights — just the repetitive movement and the sound of the wooden mechanism.
As the threads untangle into neat balls of yarn, my thoughts untangle too, and I can gently plan my day. Most of the work is done by hand in my studio in Amsterdam — by me, my assistants, and my mother-in-law. Generations of women imbuing the work with a shared energy.
Why is it important that visitors can participate and get involved in the installation?
It’s about returning to thinking with your hands and your heart, and becoming familiar with material through making.
We chose to debut this collective installation at Milan Design Week because, while it celebrates beauty, craftsmanship, and innovation, it can also feel overwhelming. We wanted to offer a space where visitors can shift from observer to creator, and meet in a softer world.
It’s an invitation to find the beauty within yourself and bring it into your environment. To inspire softer ways of living. We hope to raise awareness of the healing qualities of natural materials, and the joy of sustainable, collaborative practices.
To leave a part of yourself in something bigger, or to take a small piece of it with you.
What do you hope people will feel when they leave our Milan showroom?
I hope the healing qualities the work has for me can also be felt by others. I hope it brings the calm and quiet awe you experience in nature.
I hope people lie down on the pieces, or lean into them, feeling the wool return their body heat almost like a quiet, living hug. I hope it makes them feel safe enough to soften, to let their eyes open a little wider, and reconnect with a childlike sense of wonder.
To see softer possibilities.
The artworks will be available to purchase through Rademakers Gallery after Milan Design Week.
