Meet the Roll Up Chair in G-STAR reclaimed denim by Caroline Chao. It rolls, it hangs, it makes storage part of design.
Caroline Chao’s newest object arrives with a simple, pointed question: why can’t furniture fold like clothing. Her answer is the Roll-Up Chair, produced with reclaimed G-STAR denim and built to collapse, store, and even hang like a garment. It is part of the brand’s Art of Raw platform, which invites designers to turn denim waste into design objects. The piece launched this week, September 4, 2025.
The chair is a steel-tubed frame fitted with quilted denim rolls that fasten with signature silver snaps, a quiet nod to the hardware on the brand’s jeans. Chao engineered the rolls for density and placement so they read sculptural yet sit comfortably. The denim elements use long strips that are rolled into cushions, a construction method refined through repeated prototyping to avoid bunching.
Materials are the story. The frame draws on industrial stock and reclaimed chrome, and the assembly relies on mechanical fasteners rather than glue or welds, which lets the whole thing come apart. When not in use, the components pack down and hook on the wall. It is furniture with a stow mode.
Chao is an architect by training, with degrees from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, now based in New York. The reference points here are pragmatic ones: camping gear, military furniture, and the realities of compact city living. The denim’s own workwear lineage fits the brief.
Function was not an afterthought. Chao focused on the only two things a chair truly needs, a seat and a back, and tuned their spacing for support. It is not a desk chair, but it is sit-worthy, a fact that catches people off guard when they see the piece as sculpture first.
The choice of raw denim adds a time element. Just as jeans mold to the wearer, the upholstery will soften and develop fades, recording use and turning patina into part of the design. In that way, the Roll-Up Chair keeps evolving long after it leaves the studio.
As an Art of Raw commission, it also expands the brand’s ongoing experiment with denim as a design medium. By treating byproduct as raw material and asking a tighter set of questions about space, storage, and use, Chao lands on something that feels both straightforward and new.
