TAPESTRY CARGOS

Inspiration: My father grew up in a plaster shop in Brentwood, Maryland started by my great grandfather. My great grandfather owned a textile mill in Italy. My mother always had antique tapestries in our house and I grew up around old beauty that had

The prints are cut by hand so that ever piece is different. This style is a run of 50 pieces.

Charity Donation: 30% of the profits of this product have been donated to Free Arts - Transforming Lives Through Creativity. I have been extremely lucky to have parents who saw art as a way to make a living and pushed me to do art programs throughout my entire life. As opposed to doing a 1 off product connected to a charitable contribution I want to make giving back part of the story of all the product we make. If you can donate more please do so on their website.

Process: The concept behind these pieces was to start with something ancient and make it vintage, but add the modern elements of fit and comfort.

I started with the tapestry images and removed the natural notes from the images. Most vintage tapestry have yellowing in them that occurs through years of exposure to the sun. Once that was done I digitally printed it on brushed white cotton twill. The result is a beautiful crisp print, which I hate.

I have several vintage cargo pants from around the world and the consistent design quality is 1 color within the camouflage is dyed so the camo has a base color throughout the print. You also get wear along the seams of the garment that would turn white if the piece weren’t dyed (which I also hate). Basically I add the tan tone back into the tapestry print by dying it.

In oder to achieve this we cut a 20x20 square and wash it in the same way we’re going to wash the finished product. Once we wash it we measure the shrinkage on the width and length and convert it into a percentage. We then take the percentage and scale the pants up so that when we wash them they shrink to the correct size.

Fit Notes: I wanted to do something with a baggier silhouette, meant to be worn low on the hips. I stole most of the details off a pair of cargo pants from Amazon (you can go find them). They’re made for hunting so the have magazine holders on them and knife holders. I thought it’d be funny to make them fashionable and hopefully piss off a couple people who hunt in these pants. I changed the fit and removed the details that were unnecessary.