Digital Objects 2
2 FAST 2 CHAIR-Y. What if the the Telfar bag was a chair? We used AI to answer this and other burning questions.
Digital Objects is a Designheads series by Sharlene Deng & David Eardley where we design AI-generated furniture inspired by our clothing brands (and more).
Art Direction by Sharlene Deng
Text by David Eardley
I was having a conversation the other day with a friend about AI — it’s rapidly changing nature, references to Ex Machina, whether or not they use ChatGPT to write their emails. It’s hard to avoid the topic in this day/week/month, with perhaps the greatest public shift in its use happening in a matter of months over the past year (just think back to the nightmarish Dall-E outputs being shared not too long ago).
When it comes to exploring mainstream AI, I’ve spent hours on ChatGPT learning its nooks and crannies, generating pulsing video using Stable Diffusion + Google Colab, and, most joyfully, making a shit ton of imaginary chairs on Midjourney.
Eventually this turned into Digital Objects, the series you’re reading now, which imagines popular and influential fashion brands (and more) as expressive and often extravagant chairs.
The series is a collab between me (David Eardley) and Sharlene (one of our art directors), and is born from many long but joyfully chaotic Zoom calls in which we generate many, many, many chairs — and pick our favorites.
What’s interesting about this process is the way in which it turns into deeper conversations about what a brand means to us: what we imagine to be a brand’s trademark characteristics, or how has a brand has transformed for the better (or worse), or how our relationship with a public persona is deeply influenced by personal experience.
There’s two things at play here worth highlighting before we dive in:
Everything designed is judged subjectively, whether it's a Sandy Liang Baggu bag or an Eames chair. Your take on something, positive or not, is your own, and deeply influenced by your own experience and identity.
In the midst of all the skepticism and mania about AI, there’s room for a different feeling: expansion. How might AI tools not replace us, but help us to more deeply explore the world and its possibilities?
For this edition, we chose three brands that run through the cultural zeitgeist and all share their own enduring appeal. It’s fun seeing how these explorations bring out our little joys, like each of us running offscreen to grab our favorite handbag for show-and-tell. Fashion or furniture: they’re loci of deep feeling and buzzing energy … and aren’t so different after all.
Diesel — It’s in the name. The raw and rough-riding appeal of the expansive clothing and accessories brand, revived in heady brilliance by creative director Glenn Martens, evokes images of denim and metal, frayed and flashing — sex, drugs, and the perfect acid wash.
LOGOMANIA — Diesel, in my mind, has always been quite graphic in the way it represents itself.
It’s a great example of logo-as-symbol, where letters function just as much as decor as they do as carriers of meaning.
WEAR N TEAR — Like something left out in the sun to bleach and wear, this chair was inspired by the way in which the brand can take something as simple as a sweater and give it life through destruction: by drastically distressing many of its pieces, Diesel creates alternative histories within each of them.
CHROMED — One of the most striking aspects of the Diesel brand reboot is the way moto culture is referenced beyond denim. Gleaming metallics have been a staple of recent collections, mirroring bikes’ polished chrome.
A staple of the new generation, Telfar is the new classic — not only in their highly seminal and instantly iconic shopping bag emblazoned with the instantly recognizable logo, but in their clothing pieces that manage to put a Telfar twist on even the most simple of garments. Telfar truly is the future of fashion.
CLOTHING AS COLLAGE — The idea of pastiche figures prominently in Telfar’s world, both conceptually — collaborations with well-known but disparate brands like UGG enhance the brand’s sense of camp and cultural know-how — while literal collage happens in their quilted pieces that mashup alternating colors and textures.
FLUFFY — Speaking of the UGG collab — it would be hard for us to talk about Telfar without mentioning this truly iconic partnership. Telfar’s roots reach deep into the worlds of camp, street style, and pop culture, and their work with UGG calls to mind the far reach of the fluffy boot brand, whose oversized footwear has graced many a celebrity foot.
THE BAG — And last but definitely the best is our chair inspired by the bag that made the brand.
Telfar’s shopping bag in every size and color has become both a key item for many a millennial and Gen-Z consumer and a subversive symbol of the changing face of fashion: a relatively simple design with a not-so-extravagant price tag, the power of the Telfar bag lies in what it stands for — community, self-expression, and “the girls who get it, get it” mentality.
Nostalgia meets play in the ever-evolving joy of Sandy Liang. Familiar forms like bows and flower blossoms are remixed in a brand that simultaneously evokes its own definition of femininity and practicality. Where else can you find Salomons next to wedding gowns?
FLOWER CHILD — I was watching this insightful Tiktok the other day by Rian that proposed that what makes Sandy Liang so appealing as a brand (and what the haters are actually opposed to) is its earnest expression of girlhood.
What draws people to the brand seems to be the way it can take simple symbols of joy and childhood, like bows and flowers, and present them just-so.
MORE IS LESS IS MORE — The brand’s bags are almost emoji-like in the way they appear as singular objects, with one that is basically just a gigantic perfectly tied and creased bow. This contexualization/recontextualization is what lies at the heart of the brand’s aesthetic and directional orientation: the power of clothing to be both meaningful and straightforwardly fun.
THE FLEECE — One of the best parts of putting this series together is revisiting the pieces that made the brand what it is today.
Gorpcore has always been a part of the Sandy Liang world even to this day (the quickly sold-out Salomon collab is a great example), but what really put the brand on the map was their fleece pullovers and zip-ups that took a profile long-ago perfected by Patagonia and gave it a new life. Girlhood and gorpcore, for the future.
As this series evolves, we’d love to hear from you — what brands would make for super cute (or dazzlingly ugly) chairs? And what other things besides brands would you like to see transformed into seating? Hit us up in the DMs or at hello@pinkessay.space.~
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