Mr. Slowboy x Baracuta SS22
The natural progression for fashion’s favourite illustrator
If you’ve taken even a passing interest in menswear over the last few years, you’ve undoubtedly encountered Mr. Slowboy’s work. Mr. Slowboy (whose real name is Fei Wang) has built a career in drawing small vignettes of daily life for a variety of gentlemen. Combining talent and humor seamlessly, it’s no wonder that Mr. Slowboy has found a sustained career, which seems to only be growing year after year.
Last year, Wang published Mr Slowboy: Portraits of the Modern Gentleman, which reproduced 192 pages of some of his best work, both from his commissions for brands such as Barbour to his private sketches. These scenes show the unique lens through which Wang has been able to story-tell through simple drawings. We have gentleman ducking under umbrellas, taking selfies, and even one gentleman using his cat as a sort of toy shotgun, the words “Bang bang” scribbled above his head.
This was just one more achievement on the already impressive CV for Mr. Slowboy.
Others, of course, include his partnerships with heritage brands. Taking a look at his Instagram or website will show that his roster of clients has included such names in the menswear industry as Alfred Dunhill, the Armoury, Drake’s and Barbour. Here, we see Mr. Slowboy’s penchant for working with brands that reflect an aspirational – while still attainable – kind of living.
It’s no wonder, then, that Mr. Slowboy’s latest collaboration would be with Baracuta. Both have aesthetics deeply embedded in British sensibilities, this capsule collection gives us a taste of how an equal partnership can exist between an artist and a brand.
Mr. Slowboy x Baracuta is a colorful interpretation of three of the latter’s classics. Starting with the G9 jacket (the original Harrington, I do believe), Wang went for bold splashes of color as a nod to his own life as an artist. The interior pocket of the jacket is where we see some of the signature Slowboy humor, where a man holds a giant tube of toothpaste on the pocket. Other items in the collection include paint splashes as well, including a relaxed blue Oxford shirt and a cream bucket hat.
It’s collaborations like this that show investment in personality and foresight into growth from a brand. Kudos to Baracuta for building a partnership that doesn’t feel like a stale merger between two companies, but a vibrant coming-together of design and craftsmanship to create a limited capsule that appeals multi-laterally and multi-generationally.
My only complaint? I want a FW 2022 capsule – and I want it now! In the meantime, you can shop the collaboration here.
