Working for Yari and his Old Captain is always a pleasure and a feat. It forces you to do your best to create something captivating, smart, colourful and unconventional. Something that can also be worn with elegance.
Old Captain is a swiss haute couture company based in Lugano. Its strength are elegance and creativity. In order to create always new designs, they employ illustrators from all around the world to enrich their refined collections.
This is how the Freddie Mercury Old Captain shirt was born. It’s an homage to the singer, who returned popular lately thanks to the bio-pic about Queen.
Yari told me to create a graphic project starting from the song “Bycicle” by the popular British band. I immediately understood that stylized characters together with an abstract bicicle race could make up the perfect pattern for an unconventional shirt.
At first I chose to draw all the members of the band, but later I dropped that idea, I focused on their charming leader, drawing him in his various outfits. Always riding a Graziella.
I chose not to give everything a serius and celebratory tone. On the contrary, I decided to play with the irony of the character and his over-the-top clothes. And, I tried to emphasize the irony through the choice of the bike with the basket, as well.
Looking for the characters and portraying them on a bike wasn’t so easy. I had to do a thorough search on Freddie’s outfits in order to choose not only the most iconic ones, but also those whose colours could match best on the Old Captain shirt. The result is a very pop mix, suited both for elegance and informal events too.
Afterward, I created several background model to create the texture of the fabric. However, ultimately the white was the solution everybody agreed on. As it often happens with shirts.
