Kvadrat’s Colorful Fabric-Covered Pillows Popped Up Across NYC

This spring, New Yorkers encountered an unusual sight on city streets: ginormous colorful pillows propped on sidewalks and against bollards and buildings, bringing a rare softness to the concrete jungle. The cushions were part of a guerrilla campaign that showcased the NYCxDesign Award–winning Kvadrat Febrik fabrics Myr and Mylla: double-jacquard upholstery textiles by Stockholm’s Note Design Studio, knit from polyester yarn derived from plastic bottles.

Nubby and organically irregular, the surface of Myr evokes the topography of mangrove wetlands or the pitted surface of coral. Mylla is altogether smoother, but both SKUs feature a core of high-bulk filling yarn punctuated with nondirectional stitches. (Myr simply has wider spacing between the stitches, allowing the filling yarn to bulk up and create a voluminous, almost quilted braille-like texture.) From a distance, the fabrics’ saturated yet murky colorways appear solid, but up close the two-tone mélange becomes clear. It’s all imperfectly perfect.