Took From www.fastcodesign.com
Ikea—the flat-pack furniture company that's made a fortune selling un-flashy, democratic designs—is adding a splash of color to its collections with a new partnership with menswear designer Katie Eary. Dubbed Giltig, it's a vibrant collection of dinnerware, furniture, and textiles featuring the London-based designer's signature mark—loud and colorful prints.
The first in a series of collaborations between Ikea and fashion designers, Eary's Giltig collection comprises an array of boldly patterned housewares, including dishes printed with colorful fish and cats, a cushion cover adorned with eyeballs and brains, and a cooking apron sporting blood-red dentures. In a video produced by Ikea, Eary explains that her inspiration for the collection was a cross between her younger brothers and a psychedelic, burnt-out Johnny Depp from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Eary says she jumped at the chance to design for Ikea when the company came to her seeking a way to appeal to a male audience. "I started it the way I would start any collection. I just collated loads of images, anything of everything I love in the home," she says in the video. "I'm a print-based designer so obviously this is going to be a print-based collection."
The avant garde designer is known for her electric, hallucinatory prints—from X-rated My Little Pony shirts to enormous reptile-print coats inspired by Irvine Welsh’s Marabou Stork Nightmares.
For Ikea, Eary's collection is a departure from the company's broadly accessible, staunchly Swedish aesthetic. But its "fashion meets furniture" approach suggests that future collections will be equally diverse—and Ikea also recently released ablack-and-white, India-inspired collection from Stockholm-based designerMartin Bergström, with promises of more collaborations to come.