Filip Pagowski is a graphic artist that decided to abandon his native Poland in the eighties. After living in Paris and Barcelona, he decided to establish himself in New York, where he worked on low-budget music videos, animations, illustrations for different publications and Barneys’ window displays. In 1989, he got an interview with the editor of The New Yorker, which seemed to be a defining moment in his career. The New Yorker’s response came three years later, but Pagowski knows to wait.
FILIP PAGOWSKI, THE HEART OF PLAY
It’s not easy to create a recognisable image around the world. The logos of many of the biggest brands are the result of research on colour and market studies. Comme des Garçons PLAY’s heart is a new global icon, the symbol of a generation, however, it seems to have followed an opposite path.
During the nineties, his illustrations, which were far from the usual, became essential for The New Yorker Magazine. He was in charge of illustrating the first letter of the texts of a collection of fictional stories, advancing part of the content and setting it. His first job in fashion also happened there; the invitation to The New Yorker party on the occasion of Fashion Week.
In 1999, he receives a proposal that will definitely introduce him to the brand world, some of his first contacts at Barneys wanted his designs for a Japanese firm known for its risky approach to design, Comme des Garçons . Although the relationship came before that, Rei Kawakubo went beyond the usual models and used actors for their presentations (Dennis Hopper, John Malkovich), directors (John Waters), musicians (Lyle Lovett, John Hassell) or artists (Alexander McQueen, Basquiat). At the beginning of the nineties, Pagowski had been one of those models that stayed away from trends.
Rei Kawakubo's way of working had always been the same; she didn’t allow Pagowski to see the clothes and did not give any information about the collection away. He had to make a dozen images, of which Rei selected some to make them the image of each season. He began making illustrations that would accompany posters or brochures and shortly thereafter his works appeared directly in their collections. In the year 2000, Pagowski's lips and blades caused Comme des Garçons' garments to be removed from some stores that considered their designs to be in poor taste. Perfect for a collection that tried to recover the spirit of punk.
For their new PLAY line, Comme des Garçons needed a simple, easily identifiable visual style that had to stay away from perishable designs through a collection of t-shirts, cardigans and hoodies. To identify each of her products, Rei Kawakubo looked for a very recognisable image and recalled one of Pagowski's discards, a heart with expressive eyes, thick and unfinished.
The logo is undoubtedly the most recognisable among the different brands developed by Comme des Garçons. PLAY's success has emerged in parallel to the popularity of Pagowski's heart, which appears on T-shirts and the celebrated Converse Chuck 70 as a symbol of belonging to a group.
Filip Pagowski continues to create, but his world of illustrations has expanded with collaborations with Nike, Medicom or Levi’s and solo exhibitions. Pagowski's relationship with Comme des Garçons doesn’t end there, the heart takes on a life of its own and reinvents itself in new designs, becoming the main character of each collection.
