Interactive Densely Populated Prints: Comme des Garçons’s Artist Series |

We have seen in previous posts how specific comics reappeared in some of the current fashion collections. Indeed there seems to be a real comic/illustration and fashion trend at the moment.

Comme des Garçons recently launched for example a capsule collection of men's and women's T-shirts featuring prints by German illustrators Andreas Ganther and Ali Mitgutsch, cult pixel art group e-Boy (Kai Vermehr, Steffen Sauerteig and Svend Smital) and British Martin Handford.

All these illustrators share something very important: their work revolves around densely populated scenes.

In the case of Ali Mitgutsch’s books, people call them Wimmelbilderbücher or teeming-picture-books, while the e-Boy group creates sharp pixellated images of (Logorama style) digi-scapes inspired by real cities and videogame graphics combined with futuristic architectures.

Comme des Garçons’ capsule collection also celebrates the 25th anniversary of Martin Handford’s Where's Wally? (US/Canada title: Where's Waldo?) books.

First created in 1987 by British illustrator Martin Handford, the books follow peculiarly dressed (distinctive red-and-white striped shirt, bobble hat, and geeky glasses are his trademarks…) traveller Wally/Waldo, blending into a crowd of people engaged in different activities.

The main challenge for the reader is finding him, but it often becomes pretty difficult doing so among hundreds/thousands (depending on the book/scene) of figures including cavemen and battling monks in sets as disparate as cake factories and band competitions featuring further confusing red-and-white striped objects.

The main aim of Comme des Garçons’ “Where’s Wally/Waldo?” designs – men's and women's T-shirts and scarves with a very apt scene depicting a department store (see third image in this post) – seems to be almost “Wordsworthian” as the illustration printed on the garments prompts grown up fashionistas to remember the child inside them and "interactively" use the print to find the main character.

One of the Waldo shirts comes with red sleeves, an almost slightly nerdish reference to the main character's attire, but the real tribute stands in the garments covered in prints of crowded spaces with Waldo hiding here and there together with his friends Wilma, Wenda, Woof and Wizard Whitebeard and arch-nemesis Odlaw.

The collection is currently available at the Dover Street Market boutiques. This is actually not the first time such a collaboration appears in the DSM stores: a few months ago the London and Ginza-based boutiques released the Black Peanuts collection, including vinyl figurines, Eames Molded Plastic Chairs, and garments and accessories paying homage to Charles M. Schulz’s characters.

The Artists Series was also timed to appear with Comme des Garçons’s designer Rei Kawakubo receiving the CFDA lifetime achievement award last week.

While such tributes to illustrators and artists are perfectly honourable, you're warned, a long-sleeve T-shirt for men/women may set you back $280/$260, so if you ever want to pay homage to any of the artists featured, you can just buy some of their books/posters/prints or you can maybe try and spot Waldo/Wally in the games on its dedicated sites. Your fashionable self may suffer, but you will definitely have endless hours of fun trying to look at the tiniest details in these densely populated images.

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