The English Muse

Hello everyone! This is Shokoofeh from A New Simple Something!
:)
I hope you are all enjoying your beautiful weekends! though it's not weekend here in Iran...

Darlings, today I am showing you some beautiful handmade T-shirts designed with Persian calligraphy and motifs by a talented Iranian designer Nima; who lives and works in New York. and since I am so proud of his art as an Iranian I am so pleased to invite you to take a look at his works at his website.

Ericsson Silver has written about NimaNY:

The concept of hand crafted clothing started when as teenagers Nima and his friends would take Levis 501 Jeans and other garments and draw, write and alter them to their taste. Some of these items were obtained in the black market ,due to the trade regulations on western products, thus making it harder and more expensive to continue such experiments. The place was Tehran, and its northern suburbs, where a large middle class had settled in; the time period was during the late 80's shortly after the war had ended.

Nima began, wearing what he was buying and altering, to the parties that took place in the underground scene of Northern Tehran. This became not only an outlet of youthful energy, but also a platform for experimentation. . Nima and his friends started crashing parties and squeezing their way into as many social settings as they could, just to show off their work. Not having any formal training in fashion design or consistent supply of material, they used what was available and incorporated them into their fabrics, items such as spray paint, studs, stitches, pins and etc.

A few years later Nima and most of his friends left Iran, and what was a large group of friends, had now been scattered around the world. After arriving in the East Coast Nima enrolled in Fashion Institue of Technology (FIT) and restarted his experimentations on fabric. He began an experiment that proved to be a key element for his future designs. That is mixing elements of the old world and drawing them onto a modern canvas. This was the printing of Persian motifs and stamps onto stretched canvases and drawing around them. But soon Nima found the canvas of an artist stretched around a frame is limiting for him. This was the cause for the return to an old hobby, print and draw onto T-shirts and wear them to elite parties, similar to what was done in Tehran, but instead it was in New York City the fashion hub of North America.

By expanding on that same idea by 2004 a production team was put together and the first series of NIMANY T-shirts were produced. This process included hand picking the garments at various stores and vintage shops, opening and re-stitching the cuts, dying the colors through a chemical process and silk screening quotes of Persian poets such as Hafez and Rumi. By stacking poems and graphics on top of each other, new gripping patterns were created; patterns that did not state any particular literal message, rather displaying the beauty of Persian typography on a garment. This first line sold out immediately and was a motivating factor for Nima to design new styles.

Today the NIMANY team are involved with every aspect of production that a piece of garment goes through, and they maintain an m.o that is important to them, which is to keep each garment individual, thus the owner of each work holds one unique piece. Today celebrities such as Heidi Klum, Nicky Hilton, Jim Carrey, Praz Micheal of Fugees and Kevin spacy wear these T-Shirts and major publications including Vogue, Maxims, New York Times have written about NIMANY.