The strongest ideas are bound with elastic.
An emerging conceptual fashion label, where meanings and hidden relationships become clear through warped mirrors.
Project Services
- Strategy
- Branding
- Art Direction
Famile Elastique
- Gabriel Lindsay
Conceptual fashion designer Anna Bisperink returned to Europe from time living and working in Dakar, Senegal with a plan for a slow couture line inspired by multi-purpose use, and fabrics that improve as they aged.
This nascent brand is anchored in Senegalese notions of sustainability, in anti-colonial sentiment, and in a push against the passive and disposable nature of clothing. Like Anna's vision for her clothes, the aim was to be daring, mesmerizing, luxurious, fluid, enduring, and metamorphosing.
At its heart is the rich and subversive idea of the elastic family itself — a Senegalese term for the family you choose to build around you. The relationships and connections at the heart of the family you make, or the family you choose to build around you, only make sense when you shift your perspective just so.
The work, which debuted following Anna’s intensive time in the Fameus incubator in Antwerp, forms the foundation of big ambitions for a long-term fashion brand.
A letterform as adaptable as fabric.
The Famile Elastique mark is a fluid, contrasting and artistic “F”, by Julian Priez, derived from a historical blackletter warped on a cylindrical concave. The base form, chosen after thousands of fonts and experiments, serves as a platform for different ways of seeing — in its warps and concaves, it becomes a re-usable and adaptable tool for re-making sense.
An interplay of textures.
The underlying visual strategy for Famile Elastique juxtaposes bodies, environments, and clothing in unexpected but consistent ways, with the logo itself both holding everything together.
The type, meanwhile, weaves the textures — a bitmap typeface nodding to cross-stitch, embroidery, and loom-based works. The neo-grotesk text font, BB Studio, features exaggerated dots and periods echoing the technical aspects of the craft of stitching.
“Otherness’ work really enhances and crystalizes the meaning and content of the project. It was so much more than I expected. The way he intertwines his visual work with a meticulously thought out concept, that stands in dialogue with the way the clothes are designed, and turns that into a brand image is really impressive.”
Anna Bisperink, Founder
Famile Elastique
