Item 2016.213 - Craig Green Hand Painted Canvas Jacket

Invisible Men exhibition label:

HAND PAINTED CANVAS JACKET
Craig Green
2014

The first examples of camouflage were devised and hand painted by artists including painter Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola, who led the French army's camouflage unit in the First World War. This modern-day jacket was hand painted, and hand printed, creating a complex and multi-layered pattern to confuse and dazzle the eye.

Cotton
Archive no. 2016.213

From Inside the Westminster Menswear Archive:

HAND-PAINTED JACKET
Craig Green
Autumn Winter 2014
Camouflage’s earliest examples were hand-painted by artists such as Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola, who led the French army’s camouflage unit during the First World War. This hand-painted jacket is from Craig Green’s Autumn Winter 2014 collection, which featured layered looks composed of trousers, shirts and jackets all hand-painted in the same pattern, evoking a sense of camouflage. The print is a type of disruptive colouration, a technique that works by breaking up the outlines of a person or object with a strongly contrasting pattern; in this example, it renders the details and boundaries of the garment invisible. The spiral patterns were hand-painted with fabric paints and inks and then folded to transfer the pigments. This process was repeated several times to increase the pattern’s complexity.
Cotton
Archive no. 2016.213