Song For The Mute Takes Inspiration From Naïve Art For S/S 21
Looking to Naïve art painters like Rousseau, Dubuffet and Wallis, the Australian label aimed to capture the joyous essence and innocence of childhood.
Looking to Naïve art painters like Rousseau, Dubuffet and Wallis, the Australian label aimed to capture the joyous essence and innocence of childhood.
In a pared-down Spring/Summer 21 lookbook featuring both menswear and womenswear, Australian label Song For The Mute have allowed their clothes to do the talking. This season, it was romance that led creative director Lyna Ty to the inspiration for her collection. Ty's long-term partner Karim Gaaloul, a painter with no formal artistic knowledge or training, creates spontaneous drawings on discarded paper or cardboard which ape the innocence of childhood art and have more formal parallels with the Naïve art genre.
Naïve art is characterised by a childlike simplicity of technique and overall vision, usually made by artists with no formal training in art schools or academies. Art in this vein was valued by modernists looking to escape what they saw as the insincere sophistication of art created within the traditional system.
'We were all born creative minds, until societal judgement is placed upon us and our imagination is diluted. This creativity is omnipresent, latent, waiting to be embraced again; if we free our minds it could take us to places unknown,' said Ty. Another artistic reference for the collection was Paul Klee's puppets which he made for his son Felix, and which were never meant for formal artistic consumption.
Song For The Mute's Spring/Summer 21 collection is non-proportional and oversized, incorporating bleached fabrics with colours bleeding into one another. Gaaloul’s drawings appear in the form of embroidered patches, entitled 'Fish,' Bird,' Dinasour' and 'Lizard.' Continuing their partnership with New Era, the collection also contains 1970s-inspired embroidered bucket hats and shoulder bags.