Axel Arigato is big on collabs and its latest — launching 13 November — is with Brooklyn-based artist Alvin Armstrong, a multidisciplinary creative known for his bold, figurative paintings that capture movement, rhythm, and the vibrancy of colour.

That sounds like the perfect combo for a fashion-focused brand and the label said that the resulting Axel Arigato x Alvin Armstrong collab “bridges the brand’s Scandinavian minimalism with Armstrong’s expressive visual language”.  Plus there’s a UK element in there courtesy of the London design team.

Each piece “explores colour, texture, and motion, translating the artist’s signature brushwork and tonal contrasts into a series of elevated ready-to-wear silhouettes, sneakers and accessories”.

It’s obviously a big commitment for the label, taking in as many categories as it does, and is also a major move for Armstrong himself as it’s his first collaboration of this kind, “an exploration of how his painting practice can translate into dimensional footwear and ready-to-wear design”. 

He’s worked closely with the brand’s designers in London and “applied his artistic language in entirely new ways, embracing the challenges of working beyond his traditional medium of paint and canvas”.

Clearly, colour is key here and includes ochre, yellow, black, and blue serving as central shades, tones taken directly from his painting The Listening Skies, which inspired both the collection and its accompanying campaign. 

Across the collection, Armstrong’s “language of movement and expressive mark-making is distilled into sculptural shapes, textural interactions and confident palettes”.

As for the individual pieces, they include a bold oversized brushback inside-out fleece sweater with vibrant yellow stripes and accentuated frayed sleeves; a reversible chocolate brown fleece with a signature logo-lock up zipper; a 100% silk dress shirt featuring a custom reprographic of The Listening Skies; a white denim workwear co-ord featuring colour-pop button details; and a knitted balaclava that echoes the colours and lines found throughout the collection.

Meanwhile, Axel Arigato also said that Armstrong “celebrates his love of music – and its power to bring communities together – through 100 individual hand-drawn artworks capturing jazz musicians mid-performance. Expressive, painterly and entirely unique, each piece is lovingly hand-stitched onto blank ‘white canvas’ T-shirts, offering the opportunity to own a wearable, one-of-a-kind artwork lovingly and painstakingly created by the artist himself”.

And, of courses there’s a new Axel Arigato sneaker, the Squish. The “sculptural and playful” shoe “reimagines” familiar brand codes of footwear, with exaggerated curves and a ‘squished’ gum sole into a tactile upper. Handmade in Portugal from premium nubuck and suede, Squish draws inspiration from skate culture, modern sculpture, and the organic lines to create a distinctive, oversized silhouette. In this collaboration it comes in black/gum and blue/gum, and “echoes the bold, expressive and gestural lines found throughout Armstrong’s works”.