Offering a view of the world as seen through green-coloured glasses, Gossamer is a magazine and lifestyle brand for everyone and anyone – particularly people who might also enjoy lighting up a spliff. Promising to comfort its community with a “better experience” through compelling content, events and products, the masthead’s mission is simple: that anyone who interacts with the brand might open their minds to the benefits of cannabis, including “deeper sleep, louder laughs and a healthier life,” the Gossamer team says.
In addition to provoking conversations around the perception of cannabis and its users, part of the mission statement, too, is that Gossamer continues to talk about the legalisation of weed, particularly on home-soil in North America. As such, it’s not unusual for the brand’s leaders, Verena von Pfetten, David Weiner and Verena Michelitsch, to engage in cutting-edge collaborations which help spread the message, including with like-minded brands such as HBO, Studs and Beats by Dre.
Gossamer collaborates with Alex Proba on collection of mesmerising rugs
The most recent drop in Gossamer’s collaborative sphere comes by way of a partnership with Studio Proba, helmed by multidisciplinary artist Alex Proba. The result is a mesmerising collection of handwoven rugs in four distinct colourways, each drawing upon Gossamer’s visual world and the textured covers of its latest issue, titled Volume Seven: Touch. (The publication is available at hand-picked stockists such as Shen Beauty in Brooklyn, Tokyo’s Daikanyama Tsutaya, Mexico City’s Casa Bosques and at every Ace Hotel in North America.)
Released under the artist’s product label, Proba Home, each rug in the Gossamer x Studio Proba collection is hand-tufted and made to order with eye-popping organic dyes. The swirling, intoxicating designs are inspired by the fabric covers of the Touch issue, partnering red with warm pink, lavender and pale periwinkle, rich teal with cool blue, and rust with velvety brown. “As a non-smoker, a non-drug user, I can’t imagine what the visuals are like for other people,” Alex told Gossamer magazine. “But maybe it creates a world where you feel safer.”
Gossamer’s core brand colours also make an appearance in the rug designs, as do references to the publication’s fonts and other graphic devices. “We’ve added a smoky, psychedelic wave pattern as a subtle nod to Gossamer’s perspective and took cues from their typography, which is never just linear,” explains Alex, who worked on the project with Gossamer’s creative director, Verena Michelitsch. The rugs are layered with “signature Proba shapes and patterns,” the artist says, pointing to the graphic white ribbons, drips of neon orange, polka dot cut-outs and scallop-shaped swathes of baby pink, which come together to form a “cohesive whole”.
As with all products made available through Proba Home, Alex’s visual language is painstakingly transformed into bright, textural objects to love and live with. Each piece begins as a sketch before being given depth, through paper-based then digital collages, eventually becoming forms to touch and feel. But it’s a process not without its hurdles. “Patterns and textures have their challenges,” Alex says of transforming her art-making style into lifestyle products, including the dynamic range of rugs now available to order via Gossamer and Proba Home. “Bringing them to life is equally challenging, but the outcome is even more gratifying.”
As with all products made available through Proba Home, Alex’s visual language is painstakingly transformed into bright, textural objects to love and live with.
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