Products + Collaborations
I designed limited edition t-shirts with the “reds of the red caps in Renaissance portraits” palette and decided that the only way to photograph the shirts was to place them back in their original context, so I photographed a bunch of New York friends wearing the t-shirts, posed to recreate a Renaissance portrait represented in the palette—and topped it all off with a red cap.
Then I worked with Los Angeles-based illustrator Liana Jegers who painted the “sets” for a handful of images, riffing off the quirks of the landscapes in the source paintings.
Tia as Portrait of a Youth by Filippino Lippi, c. 1485.
Ziwe.
Wanyi as Portrait of the Young Pietro Bembo by Raphael, c. 1506.
Kelly as Portrait of a Man with a Medal of Cosimo the Elder by Sandro Botticelli, c. 1475.
Tia.
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I designed two palette t-shirts in collaboration with the independent fashion designer Rachel Antonoff and her team.
Have your cake and Edith, too!
First up was Antoinette's Palette tee, a sea of pale pinks drawing from the blush of Marie Antoinette's cheeks, sourced from the wide array of the queen’s portraits. The swatches on the t-shirt are arranged in chronological order. I photographed the design for the first time on Jenna Lyons.
In November 2018, I designed a second palette for RA: the Thanksgiving Palette tee, which draws from every Thanksgiving-themed painting in the American lexicon. The t-shirt features the shade of the pickles in Norman Rockwell's Freedom From Want, the wattle of John James Audubon's Wild Turkey, and Roy Lichtenstein's rendering of turkey pie.
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Along with the Red Caps tee, I made this unisex t-shirt with my palette of Tonya Harding's figure skating costumes per competition, an homage to my mother's experience reporting on the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer for Sports Illustrated.
It is difficult to be in a bad mood while wearing this t-shirt. I sold it on www.edithyoung.com. Rowing Blazers and Lolo & Friends also carried the tee in their shops. It was featured at a premium altitude in Southwest Airlines' magazine.
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In 2022, I released two new palette tees: Botero's beverages and Frans Hals's ruff collars.
Half-full vessels are a recurring theme in Fernando Botero’s paintings—sometimes front and center in a still-life, other times camouflaging into the backgrounds of his portraits or scenes. One gets the sense that Fernando Botero may have dozens of empty glasses, once filled with guava juice and Orangina, strewn throughout his home and studio.
My brother William puts the "Hans & Franz" in Frans Hals's ruff collars.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data block for my book Color Scheme was screen-printed on the back of these shirts.
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On the occasion of my book’s publication, I collaborated with Books are magic—the wonderful bookshop in Brooklyn—on a tote bag flaunting their staff picks in palette form. all the proceeds went to the art for justice fund, which supports artists and advocates working to end mass incarceration.
