Rust to Rust

An evening dress printed with the image of a rust covered steel wall. All lookbook photos by Julia Chesky.

I always look forward to seeing Jonathan Cohen's new collection every season, and finding out what completely random item or material he managed to transmogrify into an incredible print.  For Spring 2012, he started with an image of a rusted over steel wall, and then slowly built off of that theme of gentle decay with images of rusted bike gears and a set of ivy covered lockers.  None of these things are immediately recognizable until they are explained, and a small nail head or the handle of a locker is spotted amongst the otherwise abstract looking image.  Even though the fabrics are digitally printed photographs, they have been manipulated to have a washed-out, painterly effect, rather than the uber-realistic feel of most digital prints.  The painterly effect of the digital print pieces were also mirrored in a hand-painted leather dress, which mimicked the photograph of the ivy covered lockers. In the lookbook photographs it is hard to distinguish which is the painted version, and which is the printed one, and the entire collection plays around with these faded perceptual boundaries.

The hand painted leather dress.

This print is a photograph of a rusted over bike gear.
 

-Tiffany