The Art Suit

I had known fashion designer Marina Maclean for around a year when the idea of the Art Suit first became a twinkle in our eyes. The time came along for me to be putting together the F I G M E N T S show and we talked once again about the idea of a collaboration and decided that it could be done in the month or so that we had left until the big opening. 

Both of us felt that we had carved out an identity in our own respective fields but that we were still unsettled about certain aspects of the fashion and art worlds. Rather than merely grumbling, we set about creating a third identity which resulted in an au couture label which we call OMARINA. Drawing aesthetic cues from the fashions of the Gabor Gypsies, Hassidic Jews, Teddy Boys, Victorian Dandies, Cowboys and other various 18th-21st century fashion oddities, we began to draw up the pattern and design for the suit you see before you. 

Provided that the gentleman who sold us the Tweed did not have email, the whole transaction was carried out in the old-world tradition of the correspondance. The lining is 100% silk and has a repeat-pattern of my artwork entitled 'How Many Owls?' printed upon it and was executed by the people at the Centre for Advanced Textiles.  The original collage had been found at the Nature Reserve where my dad works and was intended to be a game for children to see how many owls they could spot amoungst  the myriad of field guide cut-out illustrated birds. Go on, have a go. 

The original collage, 'How Many Owls?' c.1948

Provenance ~Stornoway / Made in Glasgow, 2011AD.

Omar & Marina are OMARINA

Autographs ~ $1