Louisa Ballou Presents Its New Spring Summer 2024 Collection: Ephemera
Luxferity, 29.11.2023
Titled Ephemera, Louisa Ballou’s Spring Summer 2024 collection explores themes of impermanence, movement, contrast, and light across new fabrications including denim and knitwear to create novel expressions of the brand’s signature hand-painted prints.
The collection began with an exploration of the physicality of painting, photography, and fabric. Artists including Lucio Fontana, Ruth Asawa, and John Chamberlain served as primary references for Louisa’s process-driven studio practice that involves carving shapes from wet oil paint to create natural and geometric inspired paintings.
Colored glass, botanical photography, improvised printmaking techniques, and natural occurrences such as sunsets further informed the designer’s works of art that are eventually translated into the unique prints that animate the collection.
New materials necessitated a sensitivity to how each individual artwork would interact with the collection’s new fabrications. From cotton drill to knitwear blends, the collection is a study in tension; ultra-soft sweaters commingle with custom-woven denim to create moments of artful contrast.
Overall, Ephemera’s inspirations are perhaps the designer’s most personal: striped sweaters and straightleg jeans are inspired by vintage pieces Louisa wears regularly, and the shapes that characterize the denim offering harken back to the signature swimwear designs of Louisa Ballou’s earliest creations.
