Reykjavík Grapevine - 21.04.2017, Page 36

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Pull Up Your Socks!
Artists and athletes batting for the same team

Words: Eli Petzold Photo: Varvara Lozenko
As last month’s DesignMarch put
the freshest ideas in Icelandic
design on display, artists Tanja
Levý and Loji Höskuldsson pre-
sented a project inspired by a field
that may seem at odds with the
world of art and design. In their
playful new clothing collection
Upp með sokkana (“Pull up your
socks”), Tanja and Loji—who both
have backgrounds in design and
sports—combined seemingly dis-
parate domains, designing out-
fits for a hypothetical Icelandic
national team of sports and arts.
The inspiration for the col-
laboration came while Tanja and
Loji were watching the open-
ing ceremony of the most recent
Olympic Games. “During the last
Olympics, we were watching the
national teams walk into the
stadium wearing fancy clothes,
and the Icelandic team walked
out in tracksuits,” Loji recalls.
“We’d read an article about the de-
signers working on the
national team outfits
for each country,” adds
Tanja. “There wasn’t
anything special for
Iceland, so we wanted
to take on the project.”
The other athletes’
outfits spoke to the
spirit of their respective
nations. Tanja and Loji wanted to
design a collection of sportswear
that similarly spoke to the Icelan-
dic ethos. “We don’t want to work
with the flag or nationalism,” ex-
plains Tanja. “We were inspired
by mundane elements of Icelandic
life. The jackets have the arrows
that you see on the wind forecast.
And they’re made of reflective ma-
terial, so you’ll be safe when run-
ning during the dark winter days.”
For their line of swimwear, the
designers took inspiration from
brauðterta, a “sandwich cake”
made of bread, shrimp, mayon-
naise, vegetables, and ham. “I
don’t like the taste, but it looks
like an art piece,” says Tanja.
Normcore & health goth
As it stands, the collection is
mostly comprised of generic
sportswear—tracksuits, sweat-
pants, headbands and the like.
However, the duo are eager to de-
sign costumes that fit the needs
of specific sports: basketball,
handball, football, perhaps even a
judo kit. “I’d love to design shorts
for Gunnar Nelson,” Loji jokes.
The pair do have one celeb-
rity collaborator. Athlete Ólafur
Stefánsson reached out to Tanja
and Loji after they cited him as a
muse in an interview. A member
of the handball team that took
the silver in the 2008 Olympics,
Ólafur is beloved not only for his
athletic prowess, but also for his
philosophical, creative outlook
on life—an engaged, interdisci-
plinary attitude that Tanja and
Loji think encapsulates their own
endeavour. Ólafur met with the
duo and provided useful, theo-
retical insight into the project.
“He added us on Facebook,” says
Loji. “That was one of the best
moments in my life. We gave him
a jacket with his name on it.”
In addition to portraying the
national spirit in their collection,
Tanja and Loji hope to break down
the perceived barrier between arts
and athletics. With recent trends
such as normcore and health goth
enshrining the pedestrian char-
acter of sportswear, the
designers are excited to
see this division shrink.
“Lately, you’re seeing art
students in sports shoes;
not in Converse shoes any-
more,” Loji says. As they
see it, the collection need
not be for athletes alone.
Rather, anytime Icelanders
represent the nation abroad, they
could wear this uniform—perhaps
singer Svala Björgvinsdóttir, this
year’s Eurovision contestant, or
artist Egill Sæbjörnsson, who is
representing Iceland at the Ven-
ice Biennale. “We’re all on the
same team, right?” Tanja smiles.
SHARE: gpv.is/loj06
“We’re
all on
the same
team,
right?”
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