This was our most ambitious design yet in my opinion. The inspiration for the design came when I spotted a scarf in Hermes at the Haneda terminal of Tokyo on my way back to Sydney. It had a series of scenes, some were postcard like, about 34 from memory when I counted them, of places around the world with whimsical line hand sketches, or so it seemed, one can’t know if it is all by computer these days, and it just had a wow factor, and to be honest, Hermes even now, even when I firmly believe our double prints are superior in results, even though our brilliance in colour can often be more vibrant, and our base cloth softer and more supple, still, even then, I bow to Hermes, they are the kings of the silk scarf.
That, however, does not prevent me from pursuing my own designs and continuing on in my journey and Sisyphus like push for men to wear silk square scarves, for women to adopt them too. For us to take those designs and apply them to pyjamas as a new product we have developed. I will not stop until I die, which, by the by, as you may have read already, I felt was about to happen last Tuesday. I wish to add at the end of this paragraph my brother’s ash tray which reads on an artwork “that which doesn’t kill you makes you fascinating at dinner parties”. Silver linings ?
Sometimes when I am producing a scarf I do fear I may come across as effete, not everyone gets to ski, not everyone gets to go to the places I have been, I do apologise if I comes across that way but I have been clear how much the mountains and snowscapes have influenced my work from my ambitious Alpine flora silk, inspired by hikes across the mountains in summer, to my love of woodblock ukiyo-e artworks from Japan depicting winter idylls with geisha and the like.
This design became, therefore, a big passion project and I tried to make it as inclusive as possible, though, to be fair, most of the participants came from the affluent classes of Australians who had travelled to similar ski resorts around the world.
I gathered photos from all my great ski expeditions, from friends I bumped into in Switzerland, vintage photos from my teenage years in Mt Selwyn when I first met my girlfriend, 1992, and all but me were flannel clad, Nirvana like, a real period piece, flanked by a sign for the muscle relaxing cream of Dencorub. It was the photo she sent to me after our first date. It needed to be included.
Then there was the gun skier, wife of a friend of mine, who had become one of our bigger advocates of our silk scarves, I reached out and she supplied some superb photos and off we went. I found photos from ski touring on the Kozzi range with my mountain guide Lewis, who was also responsible for taking me to places that became my summer and autumn mountain silk designs. I reached out to another wife of a friend, one I occasionally ski with when I take my daughter away in winter, she sent her favourite Italian resort. I kept going, I reached out to one of my ski instructors (and a friend) who is a big Aspen skier, I am not, but I wanted one from there, so he sent in one from Ajax mountain.
All of this I might add, only began to take shape once my new illustrator had proved himself worthy of the task after completing a series of designs prior which you will see soon enough.
His name is Talha, or Mudd, or Asif. I know, it is confusing but he’s used all three in our communication, I asked him merely to sign his work Talha. And I will continue to support anyone we work with like that, like Lucy Linton Smith whose brumbies silk has her signature on both the scarf and pyjamas.
Talha didn’t take long to prove himself and the process became super productive quickly. I was editing my photos and throwing them into my AI portal to give me my first render, using descriptions to make the images prepared initially to bring out the best print results knowing the constrains my printers face, then Talha would go about using illustrator to turn them into vectors, and where impossible, high density dpi rgb that could be.
The result should, I hope, one never knows until it is in hand, will be our most ambitious scarf yet with the most amount of time spent in the history of our scarves in bringing one design together. There are references to traditional ski posters, Hiroshige, Picasso, Slim Aarons, ukiyo-e, CS Lewis and so many more, built out over many weeks of back and forth and refinement. The final stage being the placement of all these results in a design that would give you so many different results depending on how you tied it, but more importantly, something you would gladly frame and put in your own home.
I really hope it comes out well, I will not pre-sell these, I don’t like to do that to my customers, it’s not fair until I know I achieved my result, I have a reputation to uphold, I have never sold shitty bow ties, I don’t intend to sell shitty scarves - I need to know it and love it in my hand, then it can be yours.
Keep an eye out.
Regards,
Nicholas
