LONG SARDINE began underwater.

Not at the beach. Not on a boat. Deeper.

I was listening to OXIS and thinking about the strange visual world below the surface: sardine schools moving as one body, octopus arms appearing out of darkness, kelp forests, translucent creatures, scales, pressure, camouflage, and the things that live so deep they seem invented.

The result was LONG SARDINE, a Riffhaus collection inspired by the deep sea. And my collectors inspired the octopus sweater KRAKEN.

The KRAKEN knit sweater many refer to as the octopus sweater, became one of the central pieces of the collection.

I wanted to make an octopus sweater that felt less like a novelty graphic and more like an artifact. The octopus sits across a dark heathered knit ground, soft blue against charcoal, with its arms spreading across the body of the sweater.

I kept returning to the idea of the kraken: an enormous creature imagined beneath the surface, mostly invisible but capable of changing everything above it.

There is something I love about an animal that is intelligent, alien, beautiful, and slightly frightening all at once.

The KRAKEN is a relaxed jacquard knit octopus sweater designed as wearable art. Like all Riffhaus pieces, it began as a riff on music and became something you can wear.

The deep sea is often imagined as empty darkness. It isn’t.

THE ABYSSAL GARDEN dress came from thinking about the ocean floor as a garden: strange flowers that are not flowers, soft bodies, tendrils, anemones, coral, glowing organisms, and colors that seem impossible at that depth.

The print wraps an underwater ecosystem around a long velvet column dress. Teal, blue, green, and darker ocean tones move across the body like something seen through water.

I wanted it to feel lush rather than nautical.

This is not a seashell dress. It is not resort wear. It belongs to the part of the ocean where the pressure changes everything more color than the octopus sweater. 

LONG SARDINE was also about repetition and movement.

THE STREAM dress began with the hypnotic geometry of a fish school. SARDINE SCHOOL knit sweater turned that movement into knitwear same with the Octopus Sweater. 

SUBMERGED came from the feeling of looking upward through moving water. HERMIT, NUDIBRANCH, SEAHORSE, SCALES, and LEAFY SEADRAGON each followed a different creature down its own path. 

Our favorite the Octopus Sweater.

Together, the pieces became an ecosystem.

That is often how a RIFF develops for me. I start with a song, but I don't try to illustrate it. I follow an association, then another, then another. Music becomes a creature. The creature becomes a texture. The texture becomes a garment; the octopus sweater may have to be turned into a couture dress. 

By the end, I am somewhere I could not have planned in advance.

For LONG SARDINE, that place was the deep sea.

A little dark. A little strange. Full of life. The Octopus Sweater came with me to Main.

SHOP THE COLLECTION

Sandra
RIFFHAUS