It’s spooky season, and Givenchy has got your Halloween needs covered with their new roster of basketball pumpkin hybrid accessories.
Making a statement on the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week was the pumpkin / basketball bag, clutched by a silver chain and emitting debatabley threatening energy. Designed by both Matthew M. Williams and New York based artist Josh Smith as part of their collaborative collection, the bag signalled the start of the halloween season, and reportedly took over 20 artisans to complete.
However, in a separate collaboration with Brooklyn-based artist Shin Murayama, the French fashion house has also released a series of bespoke masks for SS22. These tip the threatening energy scale slightly further, coming in two colourways, equally ghoulish. Labelled as a ‘soft-sculptor’, Shin Murayama formed actual basketballs into wearable headgear and masks, hand stitching them with leather ‘thread’ to reinforce the halloweenish mouths. These were sealed with glistening Givenchy zippers, elevating the masks into high-fashion.
In the runway show, models only wore Murayama’s masks on top of their heads, occasionally even obscuring the face coverings with a hood and leaving them relatively underappreciated. It’s a fitting sentiment for the designer, who prefers relative anonymity, commenting that he’s “just a mask maker. I just helped to give shape to their ideas”.
The sculptor is well-versed in fashion collaborations, but operates away from the spotlight, having previously worked with Virgil Abloh and Keith Hufnagel on other mask-based projects. Despite not being for sale publicly, we can’t help but think Murayama’s pumpkin basketball masks would make for a great Halloween accessory.
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