Chromat’s Spring 2022 collection, created in collaboration with artist Tourmaline, was billed when it debuted on the September “runway” at Riis Park beach in Queens, New York, a historic gathering place for the LGBTQIA+ community, as a “future-forward bodywear” and “swimwear for girls who don’t tuck, trans femmes, non-binary and trans masc people who pack, intersex people, women, men and everyone embracing Collective Opulence Celebrating Kindred.”
Artist and activist Tourmaline (who directed “Joy Run,” the film Chromat screened last September during New York Fashion Week) has said that a product collaboration has always been a goal for her and McCharen-Tran — it’s one of the first ideas that came up when they talked about working together.
“To me, it felt like the perfect moment to expand the beauty of what Chromat is already doing, turning thoughts into things, new ideas about, ‘We, too, can feel beautiful and powerful and lush and alive, at the pool and the beach,'” Tourmaline says. “So I reached out and said, ‘Let’s do this and ensure that even more of our community can feel fab.'”
McCharen-Tran remembers, “I was asking her, ‘What do you love about this process?’ And she said, ‘Thoughts turning into things. It’s been so cool to make objects about our ideas, about our philosophies on life and what we want to see in the world.”
The collection is officially available for purchase on Chromat’s website now.
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Photo Credit: Ovidiu Hrubaru / Shutterstock.com