I have been thinking about a particular print all month — I Love Coffee — and the version of it that lives on a tee, and the version that lives on a scarf, and why they are not the same piece.
Most brands use a single image across two products to save money. That is not what this is. When I design a scarf and a tee from the same source, I want each to stand entirely on its own — a different thing for your wardrobe, a different reason to reach for it. And I want them to work together the way that things work together when they belong to the same sensibility: not matching, but answering each other. The scarf is colour in motion, something to fold and knot and wrap, something that elevates an outfit rather than centres it. The tee is the centrepiece. All art, no logo.
A scarf moves. This is the first thing to understand about designing for one. The print folds against itself; the colours that share an edge when the scarf is laid flat are not the colours the eye sees when it is tied at the neck. And a scarf is revealed across a day — knotted one way in the morning, differently by dinner, each arrangement a different composition from the same source. The image becomes a conversation between its own parts, the print on one fold meeting the print on another, never the same way twice. You can only influence how it lands, not control it. That is not a limitation. That is the whole point.
A tee holds the image still. What I designed is what is seen — all of it, at once. There is no folding, no hidden portion, no negotiation between layers. A tee is public in a way a scarf rarely is: chest height, declared, read from across a room. Where a scarf reveals itself gradually, sits near the face, asks the viewer to lean in, a tee announces.
There is a clue, almost always, in the original idea. Some graphics carry a message that wants to be seen flat — a statement, a composition that the eye needs to take in whole. Others have a movement in them already, a curl or a colour that wants to meet another colour somewhere the eye cannot yet see. Those are the ones that want to fold.
It was early winter when Michael and I were working on I Love Coffee. The kind of day that is beautiful from the inside — the studio quiet, the windows filled with snow, the light coming in low and blue and cold. Michael had a photograph he’d taken in Paris: a cup of coffee on a café table, afternoon light, no particular agenda. The kind of photograph you take because you want to hold the moment a little longer.
He showed it to me, and I knew immediately it was a scarf first. Scarves always come first. But then the tee arrived almost at the same moment, arriving whole: not the single image but a repeat of the frame, as if you had been sitting at that café table trying to get the perfect shot of your coffee and you’d spread all the attempts out in front of you. A stack of photographs dropped on a table. The scarf holds the feeling. The tee holds the memory of trying to catch it.
A good idea will tell you how it wants to live. This is true beyond textiles — songs become novels, paintings become posters, the same image finds its way into different forms because what is inside it is strong enough to ask. The form follows the feeling. The work is learning to listen for the difference.
The scarves and tees in this collection emerged from a long conversation between digital layers, fabric, and the women I imagined wearing them. Some of those conversations took two shapes.
Both shapes are here — and .
Both shapes are here — and .
