BlackCoffee Collections, installations and other work by SA designer Jacques van der Watt
The cerebral cortex plays a key role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness. Just as the act of memory involves constant reconstruction of elusive past events, the Cortex range is evocative of the plasticity and adjustment involved in recollection of things from the past. The ordered, latticed, dimensional patterns are reminiscent of the indexing system of the brain that sends memories out to the appropriate part of the cerebral hemisphere for storage and retrieval.
Recall is seldom unerring and often remodels the past to be rose tinted and light, even silly. So too does the Cortex range arouse sensations of gaiety. The clothes summon up pop-inspired, pixelated images just as an old movie or TV show summons up memories in a misaligned way. Intertwined ribbons and exaggerated lamp-shade hats escort one on a romp of mirth and frivolity, like a fond memory revisited time and time again.
Shown at SA Fashion Week in Johannesburg on Thursday 3 April 2014