Issue #023

Welcome to your weekly dose of TOO x TOO – Featuring Richard Quinn's collaboration with Depop, Playstation - 'Feel the Power', Fortnum and Mason's 'Chapel of Love' and Frieze art fair in LA.

A very floral fashion future  

British designer Richard Quinn has just launched a collaboration with online sale app Depop, and it’s set to be a blast. Depop, the clothes resale app is one of the most popular online global marketplaces, and in the UK 1 in 3 Gen Z and Millennials are registered.  

Quinn created the collection for Depop in his South London studio, using the leftovers from his previous runaway collections, and selling items at a more affordable price to the app’s community. The mostly flowery garments range from tights to jumpers, to accessories such as phone cases or metal water bottles.  

The designer said regarding this new project with Depop that the two brands “share the passion to encourage sustainability, empower talent and provide creatives a platform to shape the future of fashion”. 

PlayStation – the anti-romance

A military unit prepares to descend a concrete pit and once adventuring inside the tunnel, the team finds a creepy room. It is filled with metal shelf units upon which hundreds of hearts are installed, their cavities hosting cables that are connected, far up, to a PlayStation screen. Heart after heart, the camera stops close up on a beating heart that shows the four-symbol PlayStation signature on it, and the slogan “Feel the Power of PlayStation”. 

This is how Sony and PlayStation walked away from the honey-tasting romance ad or campaign typical of San Valentine’s day. Instead, they wanted to highlight the powerful emotion triggered by playing with PlayStation. Created under a touch of dark taste, the ad definitely stands out and gets to the point quite sharp. 

Going to the chapel… 

As some brands stood on the side of singles, others celebrated San Valentine and all of its romanticism, Fortnum and Mason have chosen to attract lovers for the whole month of February with their romance inspired pop-up.  

The luxury department store has installed a temporary four-storey chapel –The Chapel of Love– in their London flagship, which will remain until the end of the month.  

The small and super high turquoise pop-up is available for people to get married, renew vows, or celebrate an anniversary, before having afternoon tea for up to six people. To get your function held, you need to book a slot on the Fortnum & Mason website, and when out of use the public can make the most of this Insta-opportunity.

Kruger pops the question 

This weekend saw Frieze open in LA.

But, thanks to a new public art commission from the same Frieze art fair, the now 75-year-old conceptual artist Barbara Kruger had been exhibiting her work for the whole week before the art exhibition opened its private doors.

In fact, as an iteration of her continuous series “Untitled (Questions)”, which last year consisted of unobtrusive stickers slapped on various Los Angeles art institutions, this year Kruger showcased 20 questions —such as, “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?”, or “IS THERE LIFE WITHOUT PAIN?”— on large-scale billboards, murals, light pole banners and print across 179 locations.

This year’s project aims at catching people’s attention, and inquire them about life and self-questions, “trying to engage with issues and ideas in ways that have constituted my work for the last 40 years”, Kruger says. Barbara Kruger’s art and her signature, sans-serif slogans, have been over the years an inspiration to numerous brands and artists, and they very likely will keep being such on a global scale.