On the occasion of Milan Design Week 2025, KoozArch is proud to partner with the fashion brand MSGM and Berlin-based bookshop, do you read me? to host LESS NOISE. Amidst the frenzy, LESS NOISE carves out a space for reflection, focusing on the potency of publishing, through pivotal projects and intersectional conversations with designers, publishers, authors and editors who are redefining the field. Three conversations — under the titles Breaking Ground, The Laws of Attraction and Publish and Be Damned — will also be available as an audio series. In line with KoozArch’s ambition of making inspirational content accessible, we are delighted to share a series of edited excerpts from selected and critical publications.

Two extracts from the first issue of COSE journal — which translates as ‘thing’ — examine the everyday objecthood of tables. Issey Gladston examines the ways in which we redress our domestic surroundings — much as we don costumes — to suit the occasion, while Elena Fortunati observes the nonchalant table immortalised on film.

Wardrobes should be more like tables, by Issey Gladston

Furniture has always played a supporting role in my aesthetic considerations – yes, my table is important but only for her function. What I am far more interested in is the things placed on it and the people sitting around it. If the table is just large enough to fit the plates and seats of my loved ones for dinner, then I am happy. In fact, tables have been so neglected in my thinking that for the first six months that I lived in my flat, we didn’t even have a kitchen table. We ate cramped around the coffee table, or gathered on the floor. We never meant to spend so long in a tableless existence, but our make-do set-up suited our cramped apartment and because of that, the urgency to buy a table began to wane. It was only in the autumn, when we wanted to bring other people into our home and bring them to our table for dinner, that the desire to find our perfect table resurfaced.

So now, in our small east London apartment, where the kitchen and living room are combined and the sofa sits almost diagonally from the oven, we have a table. On the table’s most exuberant days, it can fit eight people. On her quietest days, she folds down to seat two people with the rest of the chairs nesting back into her bowels. Maybe it is the encroaching desire for domesticity over debauchery that occurs in your mid-20s, or maybe it is the six-month table-buying amnesty, but now I think about my table a lot more. I cover her in linen when friends are coming over, I buy supermarket flowers to sit atop her every week and I clean her every morning after breakfast. If she is still a supporting actress, then she might get the attention that a romantic interest gets.

I am not entirely alone in assigning narrative precedence to my table: in her Kitchen Table Series (1990), contemporary photographer Carrie Mae Weems elevates her own table beyond the supporting actress role, instead giving her the lead. Comprising twenty photographic prints, the project shows a wooden table lit up by an overhead light with herself, her friends, lovers and children rotating in and out of the images.

For Weems, the work responds to “a number of issues: woman’s subjectivity, woman’s capacity to revel in her body, and the woman’s construction of herself, and her own image”.¹

When I saw it for the first time, I was captivated by the repetition of the objects brought to the table; rather than appreciating her series’ value in the canon of women’s self-portraiture, I fixed my eyes on the glassware presented in it.

The same glasses bear witness to Weems and her friends laughing around the table and the embraces she gives her lover. Initially, I was confused as to why this imperceptible detail stuck with me as opposed to all the other themes tackled in the work – themes I would normally resonate with. But then I realised that, days before first stumbling across the series, I had thought a lot about the repetition of possessions. In our rampantly consumerist Western society, this feels like a sin to be avoided at all costs, especially when it comes to our wardrobes. Between 2000 and 2014 only, the number of clothes the average consumer purchased increased by 60% with the clothes being kept for half as long as a result. Constant rotation has been the way to go when it comes to our possessions and repetition is feeling like an increasingly lost art: seeing Weems’ glasses again and again in her images felt like a soothing alternative to chasing constant change.

I thought back to my own table, the linens that decorate her daily, the vases that hold the weekly flowers placed on her and the glasses that come out whenever my loved ones come over, and I realised that we haven’t entirely forgotten how to deal with repetition in objects we own, we have just displaced this practice when it comes to our wardrobes.

If our cultural conception of wardrobes lay closer to our understanding of tables, then we would be in a better place environmentally – maybe our wardrobes should be more like tables. In function, they carry out similar acts, both holding or displaying objects of daily use. At its core, our glassware and clothing are used daily to fulfil basic needs. Still, buying an entirely new set of cutlery and glasses for a single dinner seems bizarre whereas buying a new dress for a party is entirely acceptable.

The distinction between items that are “allowed” to be repeated and those that are constantly being rotated is independent from the piece of furniture they are assigned to; instead, what makes the difference is the person that witnesses them. Only our closest acquaintances will ever be invited to see our kitchen tables – no strangers appear in Weem’s intimate depiction of the table, only her close connections. The table is almost exclusively a sacred space for the presence of these people.

The reason why wouldn’t dream of purchasing new plates for every dinner gathering with our loved ones is because we don’t feel the need to impress them and, therefore, the impulse for consumption is soothed. Quite the contrary, when confronted with an event full of unfamiliar faces, the first impulse is to acquire a new outfit to bolster our confidence and make a favourable impression.

Unlike our wardrobes, which often become an arena for frenzied consumption driven by the fear of repeating an outfit, our tables tell a different story.

Here, repetition is welcomed, even cherished, as we invite those closest to us to share in a realm where material judgments fade while spiritual and intimate connections flourish.

The movements encouraging us to rethink our consumption habits and buy less clothing often fail in their request as they make it seem like a novel approach. Behaviour change is a complex issue that is only made more challenging by forcing the public to take an untrodden path. However, consuming less and valuing our objects is not a foreign request – we do this all the time at our tables. We keep our plates for years and we each have a favourite mug that we like to drink our tea out of. It would not be that different to do this with our clothing and, from that, we would buy less without even having to think about it. The challenge here lies in encountering strangers cloaked in our daily items of repeated use without feeling the urge to resort to the armour of constant newness.

What if we freed ourselves from the weight of others’ opinions and allowed our wardrobes of repetition to mirror the genuine connections we foster around our tables of repetition? By doing this, we would be encountering strangers in the state of repetition that we encounter our loved ones in. And maybe, in this increasingly polarised world, approaching strangers in the same way we do with our friends could be exactly what is needed. Our wardrobes, it turns out, could learn a lot from tables.

Bio

Issey Gladston is a climate journalist and communications professional passionate about transforming complex political and social issues into clear, accessible content and impactful campaigns. She specialises in strategising to connect with new audiences, blending her background in journalism, visual media, and communications towards culturally relevant advocacy. Issey is a co-founder of Hothouse Bookclub and also the brain behind Sexy Climate Change.

Elena Fortunati is a researcher and art historian, as well as a member of the editorial team at Dude Magazine. She also collaborates with Collater.al, conducting video interviews with national and international artists in multiple artistic fields, from photography to street art. Under the pseudonym Aupres de toi, she publishes photography, through which she has had the pleasure of participating in the exhibitions organized by If You Leave and Life Framer.

The two excerpts above were originally published as part of the first edition of COSE journal. For more information see COSE journal