“Immediately it was, ‘Yes,’ because to work with Basquiat’s archive has always been a dream of ours, especially coming from similar backgrounds,” says Bravado of getting the ask in December 2022. Rather than focus on Basquiat’s well-known crowns and dinosaurs, the designers opted to focus on the late artist’s lesser known work. “Our biggest thing has always been to just get in the door, execute, and keep our heads down and keep moving,” noted D’Amore. “When we received that call, it was one of those truly surreal moments where we were like, maybe this might mean something bigger at some point. It really was a true personification of that entire thought.”
Though the designers’ experience might have been surreal, the collection is solid, and there’s nothing abstract about the strong desire it’s sure to arouse at retail. They’ve achieved a really successful balance between the artwork and their own design signatures. Like Basquiat, who returned again and again to add to a painting, Bravado is known for adding treatments to garments. Also like Basquiat, Bravado and D’Amore are working towards a higher purpose: “We really wanted to take it in a way that spoke about the Black artists’ experience,” said Bravado. The designers have done that in a celebratory way by, for example, reframing or “enshrining” the artist’s figures within their own stained glass window motif.