It’s official! The first collection have been a success. Everyone that sees it loves it. I never really had a formal written concept when I designed this collection. I had a concept but wasn’t articulated. How can you really put emotions, thoughts, and intuition into words? Well I had to when I was explaining it to people.

This collection is The Beginning. The start of JUZD, I went with the basic neutral colours, black, white, and grey for the shirts. Even the prints I kept it simple, elementary, the feel that as if the artist is just starting to play with the elements. The use of only red and gold reflected this genesis feel. And it is true, I am just experimenting and starting off. JUZD is being born. However even with this simplicity one can tell there is much maturity, experience, and understanding. You can tell it’s simple yet advance, the placements and prints hinted at an abstraction bordering on art than the regular printed shirts. Since we were limited by the colours and fabric and printing technique I really wanted to compensate with the graphics.

Designs that are simple yet different. Different from what you would see. Each shirt had to be absolutely different from every shirt in the collection yet maintain a sense of consistency, continuity.

This collection had to really show what JUZD is about, simplicity, elegance, organic, and aggression.

The idea was to use simple base elements, really limit the parameters of the designs. I remember how the artists that worked with me on this project bitched about the limited colours we can use and my demand for adding a piece of gold to every design. I even had many stores tell me that I would sell more if I increased the colours and choices but that would go outside of the concept. Maybe it was a bad business decision. But art and creation motivates me more than money, as does to all true artists. That is why so many of us are starving.

If you looked at the whole collection and were to tell me it’s bland because of the limited colours of the prints and fabric, I will tell “yes I know!” I designed it. It’s deliberate. However do not worry, it is the concept for the first collection not concept for the line.

Therefore the concept for this collection is The Beginning. The beginning of my journey and the beginning of JUZD.