River Island launches street art collaboration with Felipe Pantone

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jul 14, 2017

Major UK fashion retailer River Island continues to be one of the most interesting chains out there when it comes to collaboration as the company links up as frequently with creative artists as it does with designer names.

Its latest project sees it tapping the world of street art for a collaborative design project this summer.

The mass-market chain is calling on the talents of influential Argentinian-Spanish street artist Felipe Pantone for a capsule collection that features two artworks created exclusively for the range.

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Pantone first came to prominence as a graffiti artist at the age of 12 and has since earned a fine art degree. His work straddles conventional graffiti, typography and abstraction and fuses bold elements of graphic design with highly evolved geometric shapes.

The artwork for this particular project has been placed on denim jackets and comes with matching loose-fit jeans.
The artist said he has been mulling a fashion project for some time and was approached by River Island at just the right time. “Art raises questions and design creates solutions,” he said. “I wanted to bring these two forms of expression together to create something that is as much about statement as it is about utility.”

It’s an interesting partnership and the retailer said it was inspired by “the back-print denim jackets of 1980s b-boy culture.”

In practice that means two jackets cut to be very roomy in mid-stonewash and white, both of the washes and cuts being instantly identifiable with the 1980s.

River Island also said Pantone’s artwork has been “built up using cut and paste layering of printed fabrics, reflecting the three-dimensional nature of the artist’s newest works.”

The collaboration will be available globally via the retailer’s website.