{"id":35587,"date":"2025-11-11T00:28:22","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T00:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/35587\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T00:28:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T00:28:22","slug":"axel-arigato-makes-u-s-push-unveils-collaboration-with-brooklyn-based-artist-alvin-armstrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/35587\/","title":{"rendered":"Axel Arigato Makes U.S. Push, Unveils Collaboration With Brooklyn-based Artist Alvin Armstrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON \u2014 Solidifying its presence in the U.S. market,<\/a> Axel Arigato will unveil a capsule collection with Brooklyn-based artist Alvin Armstrong on Thursday, featuring a range of ready-to-wear pieces inspired by the vibrant colors in his artwork, as well as Squish, a brand-new, oversize sneaker model.<\/p>\n

According to Axel Arigato<\/a>\u2019s creative director, Jens Werner, he has always admired Armstrong\u2019s bold and expressive use of color in his artworks, especially \u201cThe Listening Skies,\u201d the original painting that inspired the collaboration between Armstrong and Axel Arigato.<\/p>\n

More from WWD<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat struck me most is that Alvin is self-taught, like myself. We share a mentality of learning by doing \u2014 no boundaries, just the urge to create and explore. He wanted to buy a sewing machine and start experimenting with making garments, and that curiosity mirrored my own creative journey,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo when I stepped into my new role [as creative director], I wanted to expand Axel Arigato\u2019s connection to the wider art community beyond music, and Armstrong felt like the perfect person to collaborate with,\u201d Werner added.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Listening Skies, the original painting that inspired the collaboration between Alvin Armstrong and Axel Arigato<\/p>\n

Having spent his early years in California, as well as Japan and Hawaii, where his father was deployed with the Navy, Armstrong\u2019s artwork often portrays Black subjects in motion, celebrating their grace, strength and presence through a more worldly point of view.<\/p>\n

With art creation, Armstrong said his process involves living, thinking and feeling, exploring different ideas and things he comes across visually.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery day I enter the studio, I turn on some jazz, I burn some Palo Santo, and I get to it. I am kind of ritualistic in that way. When I am in my space, I close the door and just let my feelings pour out.\u2026I create as I go along based on what I am seeing, what I am feeling, the overall composition and the overall story. The emotion and energy that\u2019s present while I\u2019m painting is focused and fleeting. Each painting is one of one in that way,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The capsule collection marks Armstrong\u2019s first venture into fashion, a sector the artist confessed he had been interested in early on in his practice as a painter, specifically about the process of how things are made.<\/p>\n

For research, he delved into Axel Arigato\u2019s past collections and history, as well as other menswear fashion archives, before starting the co-creative process together with the the brand\u2019s team.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs an artist, I\u2019m eager to learn and push myself, and it was the same with this process with Axel Arigato. I think that comes through in my choices of color and shape. I didn\u2019t hold back on making things extra boxy, plush, and comfortable. The color palette I use in my work is really diverse and vibrant, so it was a challenge to limit myself in this collection,\u201d Armstrong said.<\/p>\n

The oversize inside-out striped crew with a dropped-shoulder design and ribless cuffs and neck is his favorite piece from the capsule because of how it came to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew I wanted to play with the inside of the jersey crew material that\u2019s used across the industry. I wanted to highlight texture and feel, so I designed it to use the side that\u2019s normally on the inside of a crew sweatshirt as the outside surface, which initially confused the sample factory,\u201d Armstrong recalled.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Squish sneakers from Axel Arigato<\/p>\n

As for the Squish sneaker, Armstrong said the style was a bit chunkier at a time when a lot of the footwear silhouettes on the market were more minimal, with flat soles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Squish stands out aesthetically to me. Once we decided to collaborate on a shoe, I was struggling to find a specific silhouette in the brand\u2019s archive that felt right for me and for this collaboration. At that point, Werner started showing me some of the future silhouettes that were coming down the line, and when he showed me the Squish, I liked the shape right away,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Werner said the idea of the Squish came from wanting to encase the leather upper in a rubber outsole, as if the two forms had been literally squished together.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a classic Axel Arigato silhouette, but more of a distorted evolution of what we\u2019ve done before,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we began collaborating with Armstrong, there were clear parallels in our creative language, and we wanted Squish to resonate in the U.S. So naturally, he felt like the right partner for that. His work is so much about proportion, shape, and color, and that connection to his art naturally informed how we approached the Squish design,\u201d Werner continued.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Squish sneakers from Axel Arigato<\/p>\n

Last fall, Axel Arigato opened its first store in the U.S. at 273 Lafayette Street in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City.<\/p>\n

Werner said the store has seen growing sales in the past few months, and through New York-focused partnerships such as the upcoming one with Armstrong, the brand hopes that it can connect further with on-the-ground creatives via authentic cultural exchange.<\/p>\n

Best of WWD<\/p>\n

Sign up for FN’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014 Solidifying its presence in the U.S. market, Axel Arigato will unveil a capsule collection with Brooklyn-based…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[20974,20975,20972,98,100,99,20976,20973,9,24,63,20977],"class_list":["post-35587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-alvin-armstrong","tag-armstrong","tag-axel-arigato","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-capsule-collection","tag-jens-werner","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-squish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}