Simeon Farrar – where Fashion meets Art

The boundaries between art and fashion have always been subject to a little blurring.  Simeon Farrar is an artist-come-designer who manages to achieve complete harmony between the two.

Farrar started his career as an artist, studying Fine Art at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham.  After graduating in 1997, he followed this vocation but in a versatile manner which lead him into exploring different media and techniques. 

In 2004, his experimentation took him firmly into the world of fashion after he decided to make some T-shirts.  His success was almost instant and his creations were exhibited at London Fashion Week; it was an experience that Farrar described as “the biggest learning curve of (his) life” and even though he didn’t even have an order book, he went on to receive a lot of interest from buyers and on to win the NewGen award three times.

“I just saw t-shirts as canvases,” Farrar said in an interview with meetthedesigner.co.uk: “they were just more space for my prints.”  The Shoreditch based designer prints or dyes his array of shirts, jumpers, bags, T-shirts and scarves by hand and quite often washes the prints before they are dry allowing the colour to run into the fabric and making each piece truly unique.

The prints are all very intricate and have that rough around the edges feel but still maintain the dainty prettiness, which make them so attractive.

Farrar finds inspiration in urban spaces: “My work is about the city but in my work the city is a metaphor for this reality.  The city is where I feel the truth of this reality the most.”

“Everything in front of me, all is subject matter, all is inspiration.  The streets, the music, Hip Hop, Jazz, the faces, the individuals, the beats, poetry of letters, numbers, lives people, there is no end to the forms of expression.”

Another source of inspiration for one of his collections was children’s nursery rhymes.  Combining the tale of the three blind mice with Kate Moss’ face resulted in Kate Mouse, one of Farrar’s most famous designs.

It was also the Kate Mouse T-shirt that Farrar sold to raise money after the earthquake in Japan.

His clothes are stocked in prestigious stores that include Liberty and Net-a-Porter and while he is currently moving back to his roots in art, his fashion venture continues to be a huge success.  After all, who wouldn’t want to wear a piece of art?

 

Katia El-Fakhri