Inside a studio in North East Milan, a team is quietly creating a display for a Parisian luxury brand with surgical scissors and tweezers, meticulous folds and a whole lot of patience.
In and around the space are remnants of past projects like the Hermès “L’Appel du Large” and the Call of the Wild installation, a blossoming 3D spring garden. Each petal and each feather were crafted by hand to create a world of flora and fauna depicted through the distinct lens of artist JoAnn Tan and her skilled team — and made entirely of paper.
Tan, born in Kuala Lumpur, founded her studio in 2010 with businesswoman Cilla Winbladh. Her background includes an influential internship at Moschino, where she was exposed to the late Franco Moschino’s unbridled, bold fashion ethos. She studied at the Chicago School of the Art Institute, focusing on cartoon animation, before venturing into the world of fashion.
Cartoon animation and fashion proved a potent combo in building a business making window displays, turning everyday materials like paper into magical scenography engineered with movement and imbued with emotion. Her material of choice, she tells WWD on a rainy day in Milan, is high-content cotton paper, which feels like fabric, she explains. “Slowly I started using paper more and more,” she says, holding a nibbled apple core made entirely out of meticulously pleated paper, a technique she learned entirely on her own.
“You should say I am well versed in paper pleating and paper craft. But only a craft nerd would know what I am talking about,” she quips.
Inside JoAnn Tan’s new atelier.
Max Rommel/ Courtesy JoAnn Tan
Showcasing Collectible Design
After much success, Tan wanted to expose her work to a wider public, particularly collectors of high-end art and design. Late last year, she opened JoAnn Tan atelier, set in a 19th-century villa on Milan’s Viale Lombardia.
The atelier made its debut at contemporary art fair Miart in Milan on April 14, and through her private practice she hopes to experiment more with woven pieces, she says, holding a 14 centimeter-long bamboo yarn knitted slug in her hand that took six weeks to make. The slug was one of the artworks on display at the Miart debut, unfolding as a tribute to some of nature’s most nuanced characters: among them a 18 x 10 centimeter rabbit skull made of a mix of paper pleating and paper craft techniques, as well as a 12 x 8 centimeter cockroach made of paper cotton and metal wire, made through paper pleating and cord wrapping.
“I like materials that are simple and humble until they fall into human hands. Paper is one of them, but I like natural yarns and fabric too,” she says.
JoAnn Tan Atelier
Max Rommel / Courtesy JoAnn Tan
A Historic Craft
Paper-cutting as a form of decorative art came to the fore during the Imperial Song and Tang Dynasties of Ancient China. Jianzhi as it was known, was created for festivals, marriages and birthday banquets, with imagery rich with symbols.
The art of window dressing is said to have been forged by R.H. Macy in 1874. The practice rose rapidly and in 1894, “The Wizard of Oz” writer L. Frank Baum started a window-dressing trade publication called Show Window. From then on window dressing would attract some of fashion and arts most famous names, Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol among them. Giorgio Armani began his fashion career in 1957 as a window dresser and textile buyer for the Milanese department store La Rinascente.
Inside the JoAnn Tan studio in Milan.
Courtesy of JoAnn Tan Studio
A Global Sensation
Over the years, Tan has built a diverse portfolio of clients that balances both corporate projects and more creative endeavors. In addition to Hermès, she has collaborated with some of the world’s leading names, including Dior, Fendi, Loro Piana, Ferragamo and Pucci as well as design names like Bolon, De Padova, Ginori 1735 and Alessi. In the lifestyle arena, she’s worked with La DoubleJ, Acqua di Parma, Santa Maria Novella, Valextra, Globe-Trotter and Smythson.
JoAnn Tan studio enchanted the Milan Design Week in 2025 with a project created with Venetian designer Luca Nichetto. Together they filled a 19th-century ballroom with a menagerie of giant animals. Named Exodus, it was an extraordinary installation where design transcended function and instead became a living, breathing experience.
Exodus by JoAnn Tan studio and Luca Nichetto for Bolon.
Courtesy of Bolon
“With love, we create everyday art for everyone. Playful and unique communication are mixed together with handcrafted design to create a seamless commercial and artistic vision for each brand and memorable visual experiences that makes people smile,” Tan continues, pointing out that her aim is to incorporate her playful storytelling into the fast-paced fashion world, driven in today’s world by a corporate culture.
Among her most intricate pieces, she created a Hermès Birkin bag with a built-in maze made of painted wood. It was displayed in the Hermès store window in Stockholm in 2018 and represented the cluttered nature of a woman’s handbag.
Part of the Hermès store window display in Stockholm in 2018.
Courtesy of JoAnn Tan
In 2025, Tan constructed a tangible homage to the vision of the five Fendi sisters, fashioned in a sequential collage of family memories told in photos and figurines and punctuated with Lilliputian pieces of paper, fur and cloth assembled with surgical precision. The installation was displayed in the window’s of the newly inaugurated Palazzo Fendi in Milan in the city’s Quadrilatero shopping district. In the same vein, her flair for storytelling culminated in an enchanting holiday tale of Christian Dior’s life story, told through the windows of Harrod’s in a world of gingerbread.
A tribute to the Fendi sisters at Palazzo Fendi in Milan.
Courtesy of JoAnn Tan Studio
With her atelier dedicated to her own unbridled vision, Tan is curious to see how her work will resonate with collectors and which of them may become long-term devotees.
“These are my first art pieces. I have no idea where things would go. I literally go from one project to the next.”
