Tokyo fashion designer Aya Noguchi and I had been collaborating for five years when the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear meldown disaster struck on March 11, 2011. We agreed to collaborate on a garment to raise money for the refugees now stranded in emergency shelters, both of us donating all of whatever we gained from this project.
The jersey shirts are half cotton, half lyocell, a wood pulp fabric, also known as tencel. Aya intentionally made a diagonal hem at the bottom, and blended illustrations and text from Being of the Sun with a newer drawing of a bird from a notebook of drawings she commissioned from me in 2009. She added applique daisies to the finished shirts after silk-screening on the art.
Alicia Bay Laurel 