Gustaf Westman bucks the expression look, but don’t touch with his eclectic showcase of furnishings and fashions presented by youth culture media brand Highsnobiety. Once synonymous with soft and squiggly, the Stockholm-based designer expands his visual language to include spiky. This partnership folds noteworthy artistry into the zeitgeist with the Gustaf Westman Collection comprising ceramics and apparel exclusive to the collaboration, which sit alongside additional classic pieces from the maker.
The total offerings provide a peek into Westman’s evolving neotenic vocabulary and tone-on-tone colorways from objects tailored in his tradition to those more experimental in composition. Classic to his form-making are tabletop decor items like the ceramic Chunky Candle Holder and Chunky Glass Vase, which feature elongated bodies, smooth finishes, and complementary saucer bases available in campy colors akin to coral, red, pink, and even transparent for the glass vessel. Another classic collectible includes the Curvy Mirror Micro in an orange-red, light pink, and bright blue, finished in a semi-matte lacquer.
But it is the rabble-rousing sibling of the iconic Chunky Cup that anchors the refreshed lineup. What was borne from utility – its proportions informed by the physics of spillage – and made adorable through exaggerated roundness has been reimagined as the Spiky Cup. The subversive iteration is adorned all over with prickles, but the dissonance between how it presents and the pleasure derived from its use contributes to its continued charm. That whimsy is bolstered by the pink, orange, green, and purple hues, which harken to product skins from the late nineties and early aughts when toy packaging was awash in deeper, bolder shades. “These colorways are a bit more extra than my usual,” Westman admits. “I saw each cup as a character, like a superhero, so I tried to find colors that fitted the personality I had in mind for each cup.”
The apparel is particularly cheeky as hero images of the Chunky Spiky Cup are plastered across Jersey T-shirts, available in pink short sleeve and white long sleeve variations, commemorating the Gustaf x Highsnobiety endeavor.
This exclusive partnership, nay celebration, also occupies the Highsnobiety Berlin flagship location through an immersive experience in tandem with the e-commerce drop. The special display includes an inflatable pink Chunky Spiky Cup installation by Westman, realizing the design studio’s creation for Highsnobiety in an artifact of epic proportions. “I’m sort of obsessed with different scales and that the objects will appear so different in different sizes,” Westman shares with elation. “I have done miniature objects before so when there was the possibility of it being huge and inflatable it felt like a dream.”
The Highsnobiety & Gustaf Westman product offerings can be shopped exclusively on the Highsnobiety iOS App, at highsnobiety, and in the Berlin flagship, priced from US $65 with the Chunky Spiky Cup exclusive to Highsnobiety until May 1, 2024.
Photography courtesy of Highsnobiety.
