Textiles Meet Taxidermy in G-Star’s Denim Gorilla Collab
Dutch denim brand G-Star is no stranger to artist tie-ups. Over the years, the label has worked with creatives including furniture designer Maarten Baas, industrial designer Marc Newson, photographer-filmmaker Anton Corbijn and musician-slash-fashion creator Pharrell Williams.
In its latest mashup, G-Star teamed up with taxidermy artisans Darwin, Sinke & van Tongeren on an art piece that features a larger-than-life gorilla form covered entirely in denim. The striking statue is on view at the artists’ Art Zoo Museum in Amsterdam, which opened in June in a 17th century canal house that was previously the Bible Museum. The museum is designed as a modern interpretation of a Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities.
“At G-Star, our values are rooted in creativity and denim innovation,” said Gwenda van Vliet, chief brand officer at G-Star. “Our passion for the arts runs deep, and we’re committed to giving artists like Darwin, Sinke & van Tongeren a platform to experiment, bring their unorthodox ideas to life, and inspire us to develop new directions in product development.”
Darwin, Sinke & van Tongeren 3D printed the gorilla figure in detail—down to each muscle and vein—which was then covered in 56 square meters of denim. Suitably titled the Denim Gorilla, the 3.5-meter-tall (approximately 11.5 feet) figure was almost two years in the making. Hand stitching the fabric took more than 700 hours, with the total sewing distance totaling 3,000 meters.
Darwin, Sinke & van Tongeren’s namesake founders Ferry van Tongeren and Jaap Sinke initially met while working in the advertising industry in the ‘90s. Ferry first became interested in taxidermy and after training, he went to work at the National Museum of Natural History in Leiden. Jaap then joined him in splitting from advertising, and the pair founded their company in 2013. They added Charles Darwin’s name to theirs to honor the naturalist.
Nodding to G-Star’s heritage in making denim that molds to consumers’ bodies with 3D shaping, the gorilla is muscular. Fittingly for a fashion collaboration, he is also posed like a model, diverging from typical natural history museum figures of the great ape. This follows the taxidermists’ tendency toward placing their animal subjects in unnatural poses that tell a story and humanize them.
“When G-Star asked us, we were impassioned to create an awe-inspiring artwork that combines denim and the anatomy of the Silverback gorilla: big, tough, powerful, strong, masculine and feminine all at the same time,” said Jaap and Ferry.