First Look: River Island x Felipe Pantone

British retailer River Island is launching a global capsule collection tapping into the world of street art with a collaboration with street artist Felipe Pantone.

The capsule collection will see two of Pantone’s artwork, created exclusively for the range, featured on denim jackets, complete with matching loose-fit jeans.

The influential Argentinian-Spanish street artist was inspired by the back-print denim jackets of 1980s b-boy culture and his artwork has been built up using cut and paste layering of printed fabrics to create a three-dimensional representation of his street art on the two oversized denim jackets.

Commenting on his debut fashion collaboration, Pantone said: “I have wanted to work on a clothing project for a while, so when River Island approached me it was perfect timing.

“Art raises questions and design creates solutions. I wanted to bring these two-forms of expression together to create something that is as much about statement as it is about utility.”

Pantone was introduced as a graffiti artist at the age of 12 and has since graduated with a fine art degree. His work straddles conventional graffiti, typography and abstraction and fuses bold elements of graphic design with highly evolved geometric shapes.

The River Island x Felipe Pantone collaboration will be available globally now via the retailer’s website, with the denim jackets priced 65 pounds each and the matching jeans 50 pounds.

Images: courtesy of River Island