Scarflace

Ah… the beloved fashion hybrid word that doesn't do much other than cause giggles and reduce syllables.  In the case of this particular 'scarflace' – a scarf and a necklace rolled into one created by jewellery designer Lucy Hutchings and illustrator Athena Procopiou – the hybrid qualities is even more accentuated as the collaborative project was born out of The Adam and Eve website, an internet birthing chamber of creative collaborations that I've only just discovered recently.  Lucy Hutchings' has constructed a metal grid that has been sewn onto Atheta Procopiou's peacock-inspired printed scarf which in turn is then weighted down with the caged gemstones that features in her own line of jewellery.  This also handily solves the problem of flailing scarf in wind or in my case, scarf flying off my neck when a tube came wooshing past causing scarf to land ON TOP of the train – don't ask me how this happened but there was some serious LOL-ing on the platform.  

This little project is but a one-off pre-ambler to both Hutchings and Procopiou's work which I've never had the chance to talk-up properly.  I'm therefore loving the two-birds-with-one-stone nature of this 'scarflace' (even if the hybrid word does present itself with some misleading qualities… no, it's NOT SCARface…).

Athena Procopiou has just recently launched her first collection of scarves which is entitled 'Cranes'.  The prints are in some cases quite literally derived from the lines of cranes which now dominate London's landscape (thanks 2012…) and in other cases, it's the general urbanscape of the city that permeates the monochrome square scarves.

Lucy Hutchings, who I has quite an addictive jewellery aesthetic – chunky gems blocked up into Tetris-esque, graphic formations – is also another on that has somehow slipped through the blogging burrowing hole even though I've physically had a lot of fun with Hutchings gemtastic cuffs and pendant necklaces.  Somehow, she also manages to incorporate this plastic tubing, the type that I think IV fluids are fed into the body through a drip, into her jewellery and not make it look like a science experiment gone awry.  

Killing another wee bird, I thought I'd point out that the The Adam and Eve site itself is also a good hour's worth of archive-browsing if you're up for it; photo stories a-plenty (I'm now obsessed with Nick Knights' David Chipperfield-designed house in Surrey…) and interesting hook-ups that make you want to delve deeper into the individuals' own work.  The attached e-shop also sells any physical products of past collaborations/projects as well as chosen pieces by the contributors of the site – including the aforementioned scarflace and bits and pieces like some extremely tempting forest-printed socks by Karst, an Elke Kramer cuff, some Nina Peter fingerless gloves and a minimal Mimco bag… again, worth a looksie…