FIGMENT

Surface design for BLACK by Black Coffee A/W 2015

Client: Black Coffee

Status: Completed

Industry: Fashion

Region: South Africa

Brief

FIGMENT is the inaugural collection of Black Coffee’s new diffusion line, BLACK by Black Coffee. The collection launched at Autumn/Winter season of South African Fashion Week, bringing Jacques van der Watt’s creative vision to ready-to-wear. FIGMENT maintains the label’s core principles of loyalty to local traditionalism with the approach of modernist fundamentalism. Construction is paramount, and attention to detail subtly blends into beauty and innovation.

The collection takes inspiration from the Surrealist art movement, FIGMENT challenges perceptions of the familiar. To help bring to collection to life, I collaborated with Jacques to develop illustrations inspired by surrealist motifs. I additionally altered and adapted licenced artwork to work within the context of the collection as fabric prints.

“Inspired by the works of surrealist René Magritte and the master of impossible reality M.C. Escher, FIGMENT challenges perceptions of the familiar.”

Reference and Research

Collecting

Working closely with Jacques I researched the Surrealist art movement and its role and influence in the fashion world.

Jacques took particularly strong inspiration from the works of René Magritte and the master of impossible reality M.C. Escher.

He provided me with a wealth of imagery that I augmented and organised.

Refining

Organising the reference material, I identified several recurring image motifs. I sorted all the references according to these motifs and, together with Jacques, identified several that could be developed into strong graphics to carry the concept of the collection. The two that lent themselves most strongly to the illustrative work were the eye and flocks of birds.

Process

An initial sketch
To begin to construct the graphic, I created the foundation of the eye.
Every time I looked at Dali's elephant caravans, I could not help but think that the legs looked like eyelashes. so I isolated the caravan to try to incorporate it into the eye
To create the lashes, I flipped the isolated caravan and cut off the bodies of the elephants, leaving the legs. I then warped them to get them to look like eyelashes
the iterative process
After going through several options and test prints, I arrived at this final execution. The lashes were greatly simplified and thickened to read from a distance. The initial inspiration from the caravan legs is still evident but greatly simplified.