Joshua Vides for Colmar 100th Birthday

Joshua Vides and Colmar together for a capsule collection dedicated to the brand’s 100th anniversary

Joshua Vides is the Palo Alto-based visual artist who has become a style icon with his painterly strokes around the world in recent years, collaborating with the world’s top fashion brands and later devising his own, CLSC. The meeting with Colmar takes place in 2022: the connection is very strong and gives birth to a unique collaboration. Starting from the brand’s historical archive, Joshua manually intervenes on some of the best sellers, creating iconic garments with an unmistakable trait.

The concept

“I generally start collaborations without a clear idea in mind”-said Joshua Vides-“I don’t like to overthink it. I give myself the freedom to react to the stimuli of the moment and create the concept on the spot. In this particular case, I thought about what an artist has in common with an athlete: the ida of constant creativity in finding solutions, the best possible ones, to react to failure. The satisfaction of winning after failing several times, of standing on the podium and getting back up after a defeat.”

The collection

The collection for the 100th anniversary of Colmar designed by Joshua consists of ten garments that trace the brand’s history. The iconic pieces are two jackets and a padded, reversible vest redesigned by Joshua’s hands. Historical pieces, such as the jacket made in the 1970s for the Blue Avalanche, are reimagined as new and different garments, in this case a Jacquard knit of cashmere and wool. The logo was redesigned in black and red, a real revolution for the California-based artist, who broke away from his usual black and white for a tribute to Colmar and its colors: red, white and blue.