Mountain Kingdom releases limited edition heritage blankets with JK5

By

Obi Anyanwu

Published
Sep 11, 2016

Mountain Kingdom, the official international representative of the Basotho Heritage Blankets, announced on Thursday its first blanket in the MK Moderns collection. New York City artist Joseph Ari Aloi, also known as JK5, designed the limited-edition blankets in collaboration with Mountain Kingdom.

 
The “Twin Sunset Rise Eternal” collaboration blankets are available in a blue and pink colorway and a black and orange colorway that both resemble sunsets. Both blankets are made with traditional Heritage quality that dates back 100 years.
 
Originally developed as an alternative to traditional leopard skin or “kaross”, the Basotho Heritage Blanket is a tightly woven Virgin Merino Wool and Dralon fabric that can withstand that harsh winds and rains of the Lesotho mountains in Southern Africa. The Basotho Heritage Blanket was presented to King Moshoeshoe in 1860, and he took to it so much that he wore it instead of his traditional leopard skin kaross. Now in 2016, the heritage blankets are receiving a modern update with the help of world-renowned artists, designers and brands like Alot.

“2015 was an exciting year for the long anticipated return of a certain mythical space saga that my imagination a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,” says Aloi, “Just weeks before I got invited to be a part of this project, I had been experimenting with the deconstruction of letterforms with the cultural power of two suns. I created several iterations, exploring a variety of arrangements, compositions, and dynamics. This is the chosen one that has taken its first step into a larger world...”
 
Aloi is a painter, illustrator, calligrapher and designer that has collaborated with companies like Nike and Kidrobot and brands like Comme des Garçons, which his work served as the inspiration for the brand’s fall 2015 menswear collection. Their collaboration continued and soon his designs were featured on an entire floor of Dover Street Market in New York City. Aloi has upcoming collaborations with children’s clothing brand Lucky Jade and footwear brand Number 288.
 
The Twin Sunset Rise Eternal collaboration is available for preorder on the Mountain Kingdom website and at select retailers worldwide. The collaboration is limited to 150 blankets in each colorway, and there are signed, hand-numbered artist editions of 25 in each colorway.