STRIPE SHIRT — TRACE

A shirt is meant to be built from straight lines; here, roundness was written into the pattern itself. Fine curves are set into the panel seams and the sleeve cap is deliberately manipulated, so that volume arises as structure. The silhouette breathes not because of the fabric but because of the pattern. Èaphi chose saxe blue as an answer to Picasso's Blue Period — the solitude and transparent blue that painting carried are set into the yarn at the dyeing stage. Worn, beauty intersects with memory. The opening at the back is finished with free gathers, left faintly distorted. Light falls differently with each wearing and the expression shifts with the angle — finished, and yet still somehow in motion. -Material- Picasso loved stripes all his life. He was photographed again and again standing in his studio in a marinière. Disorder within rule, freedom within order — a line is the simplest of forms. That is exactly why everything rests in how it is drawn. In answer to that question, this cloth is yarn-dyed. Color enters at the yarn stage, and the stripe is made by weaving. The contour of each line rises clearly and the depth of color stays even from the core: this is what the dyeing method gives. When the deliberately unsettled stripe mixes with the body of the wearer, breath passes for the first time through a stripe that is not uniform. The Cotton 100% cloth is highly absorbent and soft against the skin. The fibers settle with each wash, and the more it is worn the more it remembers body heat. It does not wear history as linen does; it is gentler, more discreet — a material that closes the distance with the body. An honesty that does not assert itself. -Voice- On the cloth, a line is breathing. Stripes with weight and lightness rather than straightness, a coloring faintly out of step — Picasso's breath is felt there because a trace remains of instinct moving before calculation. The boldly opened, misshapen circle cut at the back is a choice that refused precision. More than a perfect circle, a shape where the hand once hesitated and stopped lets something living through. The curve of the hem, the raw-cut edge — these are the margins Èaphi believes in: a freedom that does not explain, an honesty that does not tidy. The name breathing small at the back is not there to be shown to anyone. Only to confirm, quietly, that one is oneself.