Flowers + fashion
In his latest series New Serie, Chilean artist Jose Romussi adorns images from fashion magazines with intricate hand-stitched floral and geometric designs. Naturally, it’s the botanical images that caught our attention, not least because of the playful juxtaposition of traditional floral embroidery and stark modern fashion photography, which makes for striking and thought-provoking results.
The colours, textures and natural subject matter conspire to awaken the images and bring them to life. In one image, wildflowers twist and grow around the model, creeping up around her neck and face like vines around a tree-trunk. In another, the model wears a three-dimensional botanical crown of hand-stitched white flowers complete with wispy strands of cotton cascading like delicate tendrils of hair.
Nike meets nature
Perhaps best known for the lavish outfits he has hand-stitched for the eccentric Icelnadic pop queen Björk, artist James Merry has now turned his attention to classic sportswear logos, from the Umbro diamond to the Nike swoosh. The renowned embroiderer, who is originally from Gloucestershire but has been residing in Iceland with Bjork since 2009, adorns the iconic logos with the sinewy stems and delicate petals of wildflowers, giving the unlikely garments an organic twist.
He said of the botanical sportswear series in an interview with i-D magazine:
“At the start of this year, I had been stuck in New York for a bit longer than I am usually comfortable with. I was really missing Iceland and being in the countryside, so I guess it was some kind of silent protest of mine—to take something that was super urban and machine-made and barren (my old Nike sweater), and fertilize it, forcing it to flower by embroidering a glacier flower and moss on it.
“I guess these embroideries are similar to the drawings in Anatomies, in that they both focus on a very particular point of transformation—the moment when one thing turns into something else. I'm obsessed with that.”
Will you be joining the floral embroidery trend? Share your creations with us on Instagram.
