With a palette of vivid tones and unusual materials, the designer and influencer Sean Wotherspoon It is a benchmark in urban fashion. The 32-year-old has collaborated with Porsche to design your own Porsche Taycan 4 Cross Turismo. This Art Car whose exterior is painted in a color block style was one of the most striking pieces of the last festival South by Southwest from Austin, TX.
A Porsche marketing team kicked off this collaboration. As communication experts, they brought Wotherspoon together with the designers of Porsche style. The artist visited the brand’s design studio in Weissach (Germany) several times. He also personally supervised the creation process of the work, both during the fabrication and in the finishing phase.
“When I look at something, I study how I can change it and raise it to a new level”, comment Sean Wotherspoon. “These questions are my personal challenge. It doesn’t matter if I’m working on the design of a shoe or a car, sustainability issues or a new material. The quest for innovation drives me and from the very beginning I was fascinated by the unusual materials with which the Porsche designers in Weissach work. We were inspired over and over again throughout the project and ultimately created a completely new kind of look for a vehicle.”
Initially, technology was used virtual reality to examine and consider many of the exterior color options on the car. “Inspired by a visit to the Porsche Museum, Sean had the idea for the circular elements on the doors“, remember Volker MuellerDirector of Color and Finish of Style Porsche. “His idea is reminiscent of the numbers on a round background, characteristic of classic racing cars. At the same time, this inverted color breaks up the large surface.”
To make sure the colors were exactly what you wanted, Wotherspoon sent Porsche the corresponding Pantone reference codes. The paint shop’s mix bench was used to recreate them, and then they were applied to what are known as “paint frogs,” objects with complex curved surfaces that allowed the shoemaker to professionally assess the hues under different conditions. The light room in the Porsche Design Studio can switch between daylight and artificial light at the touch of a button.
The unusual color names have a personal background. “After explaining the importance of having unique names, Sean named the paintings after members of his family”says Mueller. Thus arose the Azul Nashthe Sean Peachthe loretta purple and the Verde Ashley.
The idea was for the interior to continue the exterior concept of colored areas. Wotherspoon wanted the corduroy and the cork, materials that he also applies to his street clothes. Corduroy has a long tradition at the sports car manufacturer, as this soft, ribbed fabric has graced the seat centers of the Porsche 356 since 1952.
In the new art car, it has been implemented with the color Beis Atacama that Porsche used in the 2020 911 Targa 4S Heritage Edition. “Working with cork, however, presented a number of challenges for our finishing specialists,” Mueller comments. In the end, the laminated material, dispensed in rolls, had to conform to complex shapes such as the dashboard.
From Janis Joplin’s psychedelic 356 in the 1960s to the 2019 911 RSR designed by Richard Philips, the list of iconic Porsche art cars is long. says Robert AderDirector of Marketing (CMO) Porsche AG. “These works are very valuable for Porsche. The creative design work with artists inspires us and motivates us to continue developing the brand without changing its essence”he concluded.
More information at gente.com.ar
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