Basso & Brooke the fashion label run by collaborative
team Bruno Basso and Christopher Brooke, is a pioneer in digital textile
design. They are most famous for their fashion line but have applied their
prints to various different ventures, including bags, scarves, caps and
lampshades. They have also begun a furniture range in conjunction with Harrods
that features their vibrant prints. Therefore
they are influential to me for not only their inventive use of digital
textiles, and its use in their fashion designs, but for their application of
pattern to many different products and objects. It is important to me that pattern design can
have multiple uses, and they do this with great success.
They use their own patented digital printing equipment that
prints beautifully on a multitude of different fabrics from leather and wool to
silk. Their prints are often wild, brash and clashing digital collages of
everything from hand drawn illustrations, historical works of art and photography
to found textures and papers. Their designs are often completely covered by
these prints, and on both simple cut and complex tailoring. The patterns on
their own can often feel very artificial and slightly over the top, but when
placed on their designs, they become a wonderfully vibrant, sophisticated and
intriguing piece. Basso & Brooke are
also well known for using digital methods to re-create shape and embellishments
that would have classically been done by hand.
