Material Culture Archive: exploring the connections between clothing, memory, and history.
KÜNAI Research Institute
Künai Research Institute is a Kazakhstan-based clothing brand built around a research-driven approach to design. Each garment emerges from a specific idea, context, and historical material, becoming a form through which the research continues to evolve.
The brand works with different layers of Kazakhstan’s history, from nomadic routes to the Soviet period and the years of independence. Each subject is approached as a field of study, explored through imagery, form, detail, and visual language. Clothing becomes a way of reflecting on and transmitting cultural experience. Behind every garment stands an idea; behind every visual decision stands a foundation.
The visual identity is rooted in steppe culture and Kazakh cosmology, in which the human being exists in constant relation to the sky, light, and natural cycles. The icon begins with the Aymüyiz ornament, reconstructed into a closed circular form: the image of the full moon, Tolğan Ay, read both as a source of orientation in darkness and as the silhouette placed over the eyes of hunting eagles to hold them calm and directed.
Material Culture Archive: exploring the connections between clothing, memory, and history.
