Is it just us, or is a new designer collaboration announced on the daily? What used to be a rare chance to buy affordable fashions from celebrated designers (think H&M and Karl Lagerfeld or Uniqlo and J.W. Anderson), has since become little more than a marketing ploy for brands and influencers alike. But while our expectations are admittedly low for today's fashion collaborations, one recent team-up is actually worth the hype.
This week, & Other Stories launches a 13-piece ready-to-wear collection in partnership with information designer, Giorgia Lupi. As an information designer, Lupi takes complicated data and statistics and transforms them into easily digestible and thought-provoking artwork. The curated & Other Stories collection features Giorgia Lupi's drawings either screen-printed or embroidered on each of the pieces.
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Giorgia Lupi and & Other Stories was designed specifically to celebrate women in science and design — a cohort that rarely garners attention in media, let alone in fashion. "The general idea was to focus on stories about women that could be empowering and inspiring," Lupi told Refinery29. To bring that idea to life, she concentrated on three trailblazing women in science: Ada Lovelace, the mathematician; Rachel Carson, the conservationist; and Mae Jemison, the astronaut. Jemison's feature is particularly poignant as Christina Koch and Jessica Meir just completed the first-ever all-woman spacewalk last week and NASA announced that not only will the first women land on the moon in due time, the foremost person to walk on Mars is also likely to be female.
"We settled on these incredible women because they are three pioneers in previously male-dominated fields," Lupi explained. "I soon suggested we focus on their most significant accomplishments, and then as a background, to visualise information from their lives. The team at & Other Stories happily embraced this direction of the feminine component being present, but not the primary lens we use for these narratives."
"From there, we developed three primary patterns, one for each woman, that we then adapted to fit the items we had previously identified for the special collection, reinterpreting the patterns in different ways according to the type of garment or accessory." The result? A collaboration unlike any we've seen before.
Available both online and IRL at a two-day exhibit at 97 Kenmare Street in Manhattan's Soho neighbourhood, this collection is sure to be a hit among shoppers. So without further ado, check out the just-launched Giorgia Luci x & Other Stores co-lab.
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