Claire Barrow’s third Xtreme Sports collection has arrived, and this time the artist/designer is taking inspiration from battles, real, imagined and historical, personal and political. She’s drawing on everything from the battle of Winterfell to the battle of Brexit, from the French revolution to the gilet jaunes, as well as the internal turmoil we all experience, to examine our current fraught situation.
Evidently we’re surrounded by tension and conflict — and it’s a drag! But thankfully Les SportsXtréme is not. Mythical beasts, knights, monsters, teddy bears and pigeons cover scarves, hoodies and T-shirts, with Claire’s signature playful naivete — it’s whimsically bleak — very now.
For the perfect launch of Les SportsXtréme Claire worked with artist and filmmaker Daniel Swan to create their very own bite-sized musical, drawing inspiration from Les Miserables. “My good friend Hali Christou and I created the song used in the film a few weeks before we filmed,” Claire tells i-D. “Even though it sounds improv, Daniel Swan and I knew how hard it would be to get right on set, so it was all pre-planned as closely as we could get it to take to set. It was a challenge, I was singing all day and having people repeat the lines after me, I sung for around 6 hours.”
“The song is only 50 seconds long but aims to be a chaotic mini musical about fighting on through pain and disappointment.”
Enjoy it below.
