Glow Inflatables were delighted to be involved in the launch of Christian Dior’s 2020 Winter Menswear Collection, working with British fashion designer Kim Jones and American artist Kenny Scharf.
Scharf is an influential street artist whose comic book imagery is inspired by icons of popular culture and include surreal works of an apocalyptic nature. His art was a mainstay of the New York scene in the 1980’s and has since been reinterpreted into the world of high fashion by Kim Jones at Dior. Jones was inspired by Scharf’s surrealism which manages to inject some fun and lightness into a post-lockdown world. Whilst the style is rooted in the downtown scene of the early eighties, the ‘spacey’ look of Jones’ fanciful collection brings the future to the now.
Following a successful launch in 2020, Dior installed surreal pop-ups for this year’s pre-fall men’s collection at Miyashita Park in Tokyo. The immersive and playful installation reflected Scharf’s vibrant pop aesthetic and cartoon-like paintings with their characteristic other-worldly vibe.
The team at Glow Inflatables helped to bring Scharf’s technicoloured sci-fi universe to life by providing custom foil balloons replicating some of his cartoon characters. Glow’s in-house designers created the vector graphics to match the artist’s designs perfectly. As part of the brief, they were required to give definition around the eyes and mouth parts to give the impression of them being embossed. This was executed fantastically and made a real impact in the finished articles.
The four unique balloon designs were distributed to major influencers from Dior’s head office in Paris as well as being used in the core part of their marketing promo for their 2020 Men’s collection. Here a vibrant tunnel was created using dozens of the custom-designed balloons which effectively combined Scharf’s pop culture style with science fiction.
Once again, the team at Glow Inflatables helped to create an impact proving that the only limit to what can be achieved is the imagination!