Ferrari 12Cilindri Tailor Made by COOL HUNTING: Dahye Jeong
The next artist on our narrative arc from heritage to innovation reimagines horsehair weaving
Dahye Jeong creates delicate sculptures, each painstakingly handcrafted over months from a single, unusual material: horsehair. Jeong refers to her process as “an investment of time,” the invisible material in her work, reflecting on herself as one who maintains the “sincerity of time” through her practice.
The technique Jeong uses dates back to the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910) and was primarily used to create men’s hats that functioned as symbols of social status, such as the ‘gat’, which has a cylindrical crown and a wide brim; the ‘manggeon,’ a band worn to secure the hair; and the ‘tanggeon’, a cap worn over the manggeon or under the gat, often used indoors. However, Jeong has adopted the horsehair weaving technique primarily for baskets and objects, reinterpreting the decorative vessel forms of comb-pattern pottery, another important craft in Korean history dating to the Neolithic era.
Jeong’s pattern has been woven in a new synthetic textile made in South Korea for the seats, used in a Ferrari for the first time, so the intricate layers of her pattern can be conveyed through tactile senses. Her pattern is also applied to the sunroof, as another first, casting beautiful shadows while driving and highlighting one of the key effects of her artworks. These variations are anchored in the original artwork, which is exhibited on the dashboard through meticulous engineering by Ferrari’s Tailor Made team.
As we celebrate the 23rd anniversary of COOL HUNTING, we’ve evolved from just sharing stories to creating things to tell stories about and the Ferrari 12Cilindri Tailor Made is our proudest achievement thus far. We’ve built a bridge between Korea and Italy, another between art and automotive and a third from past to future. Learn more about the project here.
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