Fashion has never been just about clothes. The politics of design influence the shapes, sizes, and conditions in which clothes are manufactured. Today, designer Jonathan Anderson is launching a line of t-shirts that benefit Visual Aids, an organization that was founded in 1988 and that spotlights the work of HIV+ artists, Dazed reports.
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The line is part of the Loewe collection, and it features screen prints of images by American gay rights activist, filmmaker, writer, and artist David Wojnarowicz. There are 400 shirts of each design, or 1600 shirts total, and each costs $99. Anderson collaborated with P.P.O.W., the gallery that represents Wojnarowicz's work, to carefully select the images that go on the shirts. Most of the images are stencil pieces he made, though one of them is a photographed self portrait of his face submerged in sand. Wojnarowicz was diagnosed with AIDS, and his work was political, heavily critiquing the government and advocating for social justice.
Jonathan Anderson told Vogue that he sees the line as part of a cultural brand, saying, "I've been on this crusade, kind of, to build instead of a luxury brand, a cultural brand. Cultural brands have to have responsibility, but that doesn't mean that they have to be boring."
Buy the shirts here.
Image via Loewe
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