Hasta La Ideas

We still curse the sense of fiscal responsibility that kept us from purchasing those splendid Jeff Koons-printed frocks that Stella McCartney-showed for spring 2006. Now older, wiser, and able to subsist for weeks on a family-size bag of mixed nuts from the dollar store, we’re not about to let her latest art-tastic collaboration pass us by. Famed artist and designer Peter Blake (or as we call him, “Sir Peter”) has created a print for McCartney that appears exclusively on a summer capsule collection she designed for high fashion e-tailer net-a-porter. As you might recall, Blake designed an album cover for a band in which McCartney’s father played.

The Blake-designed cloud print appears on a breezy silk jersey dress and shirt as well as beachy accessories such as strappy espadrilles and a canvas bag. There’s also a cloudy t-shirt (organic cotton, of course) and a coordinating pair of dip-dyed skinny jeans. From a distance, Blake’s motif smacks of Super Mario Bros., while up close it conjures the Benday-dotted skies of Roy Lichtenstein. In fact, this is Blake’s first go at clouds. “I’ve avoided them. They’re difficult,” Blake told McCartney in a conversation taped in his London studio and posted on net-a-porter. “Most of my paintings have a clear sky, oddly enough, so when you asked me to do it, instantly I thought of [British painter John] Constable. I researched Constable’s clouds.” McCartney considers the collaboration a success. “What I love is the print is quite bold and it’s quite a statement, and yet I think it’s very approachable still, which is kind of quite hard to achieve,” she tells Blake. “Well done.” Quite.

Previously on UnBeige: