“… When he had put the last touches to what he had begun, Daedalus the artificer balanced his own body between the two wings and hovered in the moving air. He instructed the boy as well, saying “Let me warn you, Icarus, to take the middle way in case the moisture weighs down your wings if you fly too low or, if you go too high, the sun scorches them. Travel between the extremes.”
OVID Metamorphosis, BK VII, 183–235
The artworks from the Daedalus & Icarus series strive to deliver color and texture without the use of paints or pigments. As with the garments in the LM.RT collection, these characteristics are not treated as surface attributes only, they are soaked deeply into the fibers and yarns of each fabric.
For Maher an ambition to make worthwhile men's garments is more than enough and he would never claim the title of artist. On the contrary, this work was approached with a spirit somewhere between material and color experimentation and a sort of sketch process for exploring narrative and emotional themes. Areas of the work that appear amber colored are created using raw amber fragments from the Danish coastline. Antique brocade and damask effects are created using actual antique garments. Copper is expressed using genuine copper leaf, and so on. Garment-making processes like cutting, stitching and waxing textiles are also employed.
Although we are trying to avoid formulas or gimmicks, there are a few subtle links between these artistic experiments and specific techniques, materials and details within the AW26 range. Partial surface sections of one artwork were photographed and digitally printed onto washed silk dupioni to create the melting sun applique on silk-Tencel® tee shirts and panel prints on the Mismatch Shirt. The textured melting sun motif also takes the form of hammered metal badges which accessorize each of the 4SB tailored sportscoats.
One of the reasons we were excited to individually machine fasteners out of Ultem® was that besides being the world’s strongest/lightest polymer, this highly specialized material only comes in two colors, ash black similar to the actual ash used in these artworks and amber-gold nearly identical to the Danish amber featured in some of the work.
For us Daedalus is a stand-in or archetype for the designer in Greek mythology and whether it's applied to culture or clothing, his warnings regarding the easy temptation and hidden dangers of extremes seem as relevant in our current algorithmically charged times as they did in his.
