An exclusive 18-piece unisex collection of sports outfits by British artist James Merry was exhibited in New York, December 10-13.
What makes the clothes unique is that Merry takes familiar athletic logos, like Nike, Adidas, or Puma and transforms them into delicate symbols by embroidering winding flowers, vegetables, and vines around them, Vogue.com reported.
Each garment for sale, handmade top, jacket, or sweatshirt was sold between $800 and $950 and visitors had the opportunity to see his process firsthand as he was embroidering and stitching during the exhibit.
Merry personally sources each vintage logo piece, and then painstakingly embroiders it himself by hand. He spends up to 10 hours a day embroidering vintage sportswear with the native flora and fauna of his adopted homeland.
“I did not know it at the time, but the sewing was definitely some kind of reaction against being stuck in a big city for longer than I was comfortable with,” said the 33-year old artist who grew up in rural Gloucestershire, in the southwest of England, in a family of artists.
“Embroidering plant life is my very polite, very English form of protest against the urban,” he added. It is a time-consuming process that operates on a minute scale. Merry sometimes spends an entire day building a few centimeters of the circular formations of thread required to mimic the textural finish of moss.
