We’re only two weeks into Autumn, and – you guessed it – we’re fed up. Sun, sex and a suspicious amount of cocktail intake have been swapped out for dark mornings, sniffily colds and pints of Lemsip. Seasonal affective disorder (SAD indeed) is real, and we all have our ways of dealing with it. Here at Ten Towers, retail therapy is usually the first port of protocol. Obviously then we’re delighted at the news that the master of collabs, Kiko Kostadinov, is back with another capsule collection for us to splash the cash on. Celebrating Frieze London with a special photography project, the Bulgerian designer has turned to the seminal photography of Claude Nori, who is famed for his sun kissed snapshots of summers spent in Italy. The designer discovered Nori’s work during a trip to Japan: “I found his early work at a really obscure bookstore,” explains Kostadinov. “We originally thought it would be far fetched to reach out and do something together, but Claude and his gallery were super helpful and excited about the project.”
Kostadinov chose not to nab one of Nori’s shots of Mediterranean getaways in the 1980s, nor young-lovers starry-eyed; lapped up in a summer fling. He instead nabbed works from one of Nori’s earlier, more abstract projects: Lunettes (sunglasses), released in 1976. The two black-and-white prints Kostadinov chose sees two subjects both clad in wacky goggles in Willy-Wonka-sized proportions. Whilst one sports a blouse which appears to have a jet-pack moulded to the torso, the other toys with a ray-gun that looked like it could’ve been pulled from lost-and-found on any Star Trek set.
“There were so many amazing photographs in the book so it was actually really hard picking two,” says Kostadinov – who has layered the print on a gridded motif. “In the end the decision was based around which ones were more suited to the garments and the placement of the prints.” The two-piece capsule consists of a t-shirt and a drop-shoulder, zip-up long sleeve. Both silhouettes are outlined with reverse-white stitching and have eponymously stamped buttons at the neck of the tee and pockets of the zip-up.
Launching tomorrow, the capsule will be available to purchase at Dover Street Market London and through Kostadinov’s website. But act fast! The collection will be released in an extremely limited run – 40 t-shirts and a mere 20 pull-overs will be available before they’re gone for good. The launch will also introduce the brand’s new permanent space at DSM. The installation pieces created by Vanillajellaba for Kostadinov’s involvement in the Serpentine Park Nights have been “modified to become rails and further work is applied on the display,” confirms the designer. The early bird certainly does catch the worm, and we think an early dart to DSM is in order to secure your slice of rarer-than-rare Kiko. Plus that way, you can head straight to Frieze in your finest new purchase like a true peacocking patron.
The Kiko Kostadinov x Claude Nori collaboration is available tomorrow, October 4th, online at in-store at Dover Street Market London.
