CHECK JACKET — INSTINCT

This jacket begins at the shoulder. The shoulder pad is there not to exaggerate the silhouette, but to build the jacket’s frame.
The body is finished in a box silhouette, and the sleeves are set forward so that, with the arms lowered, they fall naturally to the front. The shape of the lapel and the position of the notch were adjusted by degrees, to express something feminine and, at the same time, supple with a core.
A lustrous cloth was chosen for the lining, so that turning back the cuff reveals its color against the outer fabric.
The buckle at the back is stamped “ATELIER Èaphi.” The buttons carry “Èaphi” as well.

-Material-

Linen has been with us for thirty-six thousand years.

Flax fibres found in a cave in Georgia are the earliest record of cloth in human hands.

In ancient Egypt it was placed among a pharaoh’s grave goods and used to wrap the dead, held as something sacred. Civilizations rise, fall, and rise again, and each time people return to linen. Not because it followed a trend, but because it is essential.

This fabric is a yarn-dyed check: the thread is dyed first, and the pattern and color emerge as it is woven. Unlike piece-dyeing, where finished cloth is dyed afterward, the color reaches the core of the fibre — and it is this method that gives the pattern its clear outline.

It absorbs and releases moisture well and settles further the more it meets the skin: a little stiff through the first year, and by the next, learning the body.

Beyond that——someone’s time comes to live in the cloth.

-Voice-

Picasso turned to ceramics in the 1940s, late in his life.
He carried the free line he had built up in painting straight onto the surface of the clay. Not planned in advance, but in dialogue with the material, the hand moving as it would. This jacket was born the same way.