The luxury brand-cum-art project drop their new collection.
‘This Is Not Clothing’ is a luxury brand like no other. The brain child of visual artist Jam Sutton, the label celebrates classic artworks by juxtaposing contemporary culture and fine art. For once, it turns out this mission statement isn’t meaningless PR waffle: through ‘This Is Not Clothing’, Sutton creates original pieces of visual art and then uses them as the basis for his clothing designs.
For this season (Collection III/II) Sutton was inspired by classical sculpture and modern protest, and the collection features a series of digital sculptures created using 3d scanning techniques of real‐life models. The artwork is influenced by the Parthenon Marbles from Athens, Greece – which depict a ferocious battle between the Lapiths (legendary people of Greek mythology)and the Centaurs (half men, half horse). From this basis, Sutton transposes the pieces into a modern day scenario: replacing the Lapiths and Centaurs with riot police and uprising protesters. According to the brand, “the resulting images are a juxtaposition of classical art and the anxiety of modern culture, contrasting mythology with real‐ life events.”
In terms of the clothing itself, the collection mostly consists of sportswear pieces like sweats, shorts and long t-shirts which are emblazoned with those scanned images. It’s all in the kind of dark, Baroque streetwear vein that we’ve seen from Givenchy and the like in recent years (though, in this case, things are more Hellenic than Baroque and, make no mistake, Sutton has certainly put his own spin on these directional ath-leisure pieces.) Known internationally for collaborations with musicians such as Pharrell Williams, Azealia Banks, Steve Aoki, the designer is obviously keen to engage his audience and consumers in an interactive sense with his ‘This Is Not Clothing’ app that allows for “an augmented reality experience” by letting you unlock interactive artwork and digital sculptures by scanning the labels on the garments. After all, it’s a true 2015 brand taking some big inspiration from the ancient past.
Model: Jossi Lee