REPRESENT

Evolution of Graphics

FW26

Graphics built on a collision:

Military uniform on one side, punk rebellion on the other, and the graphics are where the two actually meet.

Eagles, lions, flags, gothic lettering, religious imagery, insignia and handwritten notes, all crossed out, layered over each other, distressed and printed until they look like they have been worn for years.

The Fall Winter season takes symbols of establishment, authority and tradition, then refuses to treat them with any respect.

"The collection is rooted in a mash up of military uniform and punk rebellion, taking symbols of establishment, authority and tradition, then messing with them," says Toni Purdie, head of Mainline design at REPRESENT.

Built for fall winter, washed blacks, dirty neutrals and faded colours sit naturally next to the military pieces, the distressed denim, the heavier outerwear and the cocooned silhouettes that run through the season.

A graphic tee underneath all of that is not a base layer, It's another layer of story.

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Drawn, not designed:

This season started on paper. Co-founder Michael Heaton was hands-on with the artwork throughout, physically drawing, writing and pulling references together before the design team worked with him to push it further.

"Mike was really hands-on with the artwork this season. A lot of it started with him physically drawing, writing and pulling together different references, then myself and the teams worked with him to keep pushing it. We wanted it to retain that rawness," says Purdie. "Nothing too polished, nothing that felt like it had just been perfectly built on a screen. You can see the hand in it."

That approach is most obvious on the Heavier Than The Heavens tee, which carries an original hand-drawn Michael Heaton artwork, a doodle-style graphic combined with embroidery detailing. The long sleeve version runs the same artwork across a double-layer construction with a fade-out wash.

Built through time:

Getting a graphic to feel so raw and still work as product took patience. The first rounds were too tidy and others had the right ingredients but fell apart once they hit the garment.

"Particularly with the bigger artworks, there's a fine line between something feeling chaotic in a good way and it just looking like loads of graphics stuck on a T-shirt." says Purdie.

Scale, placement, colour, print technique and the level of distressing all went backwards and forwards. The real problem was a technical one.

"The challenge was keeping all the imperfections of Mike's original artwork while translating it technically into something we could reproduce properly. We didn't want the production process to clean the life out of it."

That is why the finished pieces hold up at both distances. Up close you get the scratches, the broken lines, the handwriting and the inconsistencies. Step back and you start to see the full picture.

"It feels like something you could have found rather than something we've just designed for AW26."

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Printed, dyed, distressed:

The finishes are doing as much work as the artwork, and nearly every technique here was chosen to take something off the graphic rather than add to it.

Pieces are garment dyed before anything else goes near them, which is where the Eagle tee gets its Desert Sand wash and the Resent Hoodie its softness.

Discharge printing and spray sit the ink into the cloth instead of on top of it, so the graphic reads as part of the fabric rather than something applied to it.

After that it becomes a question of how much to remove: A fade-out wash on the Heavier Than The Heavens long sleeve, distressed nibbling at necklines, cuffs and hems.

The Reverse Resent carries two graphics in one piece and is worn either way. Underneath all of it, the Resent tees sit on an organic cotton and hemp base.