FIORUCCI X LAKWENA

Adding to its extensive list of collaborations with artists, for PF22 Fiorucci gift us with an exciting collaboration with Lakwena.

Fiorucci has a long and illustrious history of working with artists. In the 1980s, the founder of the label, Elio Fiorucci, invited the legendary Keith Haring to collaborate. Haring, with the help of his protégé – a 16-year-old called Angel Ortiz, who is also known by his moniker LA II – spray-painted the walls of the first Fiorucci store in Milan’s Galleria Passarella. It was in this same spirit that the brand has, invited Lakwena Maciver to team up on a capsule collection.

The starting point for Lakwena’s collaboration with Fiorucci began with a visit to the label’s archive, where she learned about its connection to the golden age of disco in 1970s New York; to people dancing, celebrating and having a good time.  And while this moment cannot be recreated, it’s this energy that she wanted to channel into the collection. Through further research, she identified more crossovers between Fiorucci and her work; between Fiorucci’s relationship with disco and her relationship with gospel – for as Fiorucci draws on disco, Lakwena draws on gospel, a musical culture that similarly centres around ideas of connectedness, spirituality and joy.

Perfect match, this collaboration is the ideal fit between Lakwena and Fiorucci's two separate worlds, creating a collection that seats perfectly in this anything-goes, hedonistic world that is Fiorucci.

Who is Lakwena?

Lakwena is a London-based artist, who employs bright colour and bold text to create paintings which, often appearing in public spaces in the form of murals, can be understood to be “escape routes, afrofuturistic portals to utopia”. These paintings are, in many ways, reminiscent of Fiorucci’s stores, which have always been filled with brightly coloured objects. 
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Currently based in London, her work has been shown internationally in cities including London, New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami, and more. Perhaps best known for her murals, her work has also appeared in public spaces from Tate Britain, Somerset House, Facebook and the Southbank Centre in London, to the Bowery Wall in New York, a juvenile detention centre in Arkansas and a monastery in Vienna.​

You've got the love (2020)

Just Passing Through - Downtown, Los Angeles, USA (2018)

Lift you higher - Bowery Wall, New York (2017)

Still I rise - Fort Smith Juvenile Detention Centre, Arkansas (2017)

Be bad until you're good - Shoreditch, London (2015)