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Although spring itself keeps darting in and out of view from week to week, the design studio keeps moving and the new late Spring capsule collection is now being unpacked and prepared for presentation.
Fresh graphics and colors and a new design idea or two are making their way into our world and, as Mr. Kirby demonstrates below, it all began with a modest paint roller and a hand-cut stencil.
THE UNASSUMING PAINT ROLLER
An ordinary paint-roller can be a more expressive creative tool than we sometimes think.
MAKING IT NEW
Soaked in whitewash and placed in the right hands, the roller can create a fresh blank canvas where there used to be clutter and confusion.
EMBLAZENED COLOR AND SHAPE
Combined with skillfully sliced stencils, the roller becomes an artist’s brush or a writer’s pen. Applied with purpose and restraint it can paint like a pop-artist or create patterns like a fabric mill.
ROLLER STRIPES
Rollers combined with stencils create endless graphic possibilities, but a lone roller grasped in a steady hand can produce new stripe effects as well. The studio was piled with rollers of different widths and pots of ink as we played with the effect leading to the new roller-stripe pattern.
END OF DAY
We also took a little inspiration from the old practice of American factories in the 1950’s who used whatever fabrics were left after a day’s worth of production to piece together the final shirts using up all the scrap and color end-runs. Our friend Rin Tanaka –San of My Freedamn fame (and who helped us open our Tokyo shop a couple of years back) covers this history nicely in volume 6 of his series.
As much as we love the bonkers vibe of the originals, for our homage to this practice we took things down a notch. Along with classic new solid colors and neutrals, we’ve included a couple of variations featuring restrained touches of fresh color along varsity-style neck banding and the tips of our signature 7-point pockets.