Porcelain POLO shirt by Li Xiaofeng

LACOSTE challenged Chinese artist Li Xiaofeng to create two different polos for the  2010 Holiday Collector’s Series. For both, he had to adapt his work methods slightly. For the limited edition printed polo, he chose blue and white shards with lotus and children designs from the Kangxi Period (1662 – 1772 AD) of the Qing Dynasty (1644 – 1911 AD). The lotus grows from mud underwater to emerge as a flower, symbolising purity and rebirth. Images of babies represent fertility, as during that period the high infant mortality rate meant that people decorated ceramics with babies hoping they would be blessed with children. This particular type of folk ceramics reflected the Imperial taste at that time and was only used by the upper classes, as techinically the painted blue background on a white base that delineated the figures was more complex to produce. Xiaofeng shaped and polished the shards as usual, but instead of drilling holes and linking them with wire he photographed each (251 for the men’s polo and 304 for the women’s) and placed them one by one in a life-size digital pattern of the polo’s front, back and sleeves. He chose a dark blue ribbing for the collar and sleeves on the men’s polo and a light blue for women. The final touch was the addition of a white LACOSTE crocodile logo, the rarest breed in the brand’s collection. The printed Porcelain Polo is limited to 20,000 pieces for both men and women and comes packaged in a silk pouch stamped with the red seal LI XIAOFENG LACOSTE logo above. via yatzer.