For this holiday season, Taro Yaguchi was invited to share his skill in Origata, the Japanese art of gift wrapping, at the Lower Manhattan flagship Byredo store.  Origata has been around for hundreds of years, and incorporates a lot of the same folds that you might see in origami into the wrapping of gifts.  Taro designed some unique takes on the art form specifically for the event and tailored them to the sizes of the boxes there.  Here you can see the folding process over the boxes:

In traditional origata, there are no glue or scissors used in finishing the wrapped gift, and Taro was able to adhere to those traditional guildlines here as well.

You may also notice that there are knotted bits of string for each of the gifts too.  These knots are called mitzuhiki and they also carry special meanings for origata gifts.  Different colors and styles of knots convey the relationship of the folder to the person receiving the gift, and also the tone that should be conveyed.  There are specialty knots and colors for events like weddings, funerals, or graduations and also variations to show the gift are between friends, partners, parents, or siblings.  in the case of the gifts folded and knotted for Byredo, they convey friendship and the holiday spirit.