It’s been a good month for local artists creating designs for international clothing brands. This week, Danish contemporary women’s wear label 2ndDay—a diffusion brand by lauded ready-to-wear fashion house Day Berger et Mikkelsen—debuted six pieces featuring three original prints by Minneapolis-based visual artist Brian Hart. They include a zig-zagging ribbon print rendered in a boxy sleeveless top, shift dress and pleated shorts, and four t-shirts featuring optic line prints—perfectly suited to the brand known for its clean, arty aesthetic.
Locally, Hart is best-known for his light drawing art, an experimental form of photography that involves creating images via long light exposures. He currently works by day on the creative imaging team at Target Corporation.
Hart tells me the collaboration came about a year ago after he was contacted by 2ndDay’s creative director, who stumbled across his Instagram account. “I had no idea who they were at the time,” Hart says. “They seemed like some art-photo-design-y person, so I accepted their request and followed them back.” A couple days later, he says the creative director commented on one of his posts that featured one of his original designs, saying she was interested to work with him on creating fabric prints for their Spring/Summer 2015 collection.
“It all seemed very random and serendipitous,” he says. “They were the absolute ideal clients: They knew what they wanted, they were super responsive—crucial when working quickly on a design project from different sides of the world—and they were pretty open to let me cook something up with minimal ‘reigning-in’ of the general concept.”
The collection is now available online at day.dk.
Brian Hart’s “Fired Brick” print for 2ndDay
2ndDay Printed Dress, 180€ (about $204.53 U.S.)@ day.dk
2ndDay Printed Shorts, 125.00 € (about $142.03 U.S.) @ day.dk
2ndDay Printed Tunic, 110.00 € (about $124.99 U.S.) @ day.dk
2ndDay Slim Electricweb Tee, 70.00 € (about $79.54 U.S.) @ day.dk
2ndDay Slim Optic Tee, 85.00 € (about $96.58 U.S.) @ day.dk
2ndDay Slim Optic Tee, 85.00 € (about $96.58 U.S.) @ day.dk
2ndDay Slim Optic Tee, 85.00 € (about $96.58 U.S.) @ day.dk
