Soon after the relaunched of the leather crafting company of their great grand-father Jacques Hopenstand, Renaud and Rémi decided to create a unique project of wearable Art pieces. 

With its Project A, the leather goods company J.Hopenstand offers international artists the opportunity to collaborate with the brand by revisiting its flagship product, the reversible belt.  

To name this exclusive project, the letter A was chosen, as it embodies both the beginning of a story and a hymn that brings together Art and Artisanship.  

The idea is to give their belts as a support of expression to contemporary artists they admire and give them carte-blanche to create a unique buckle and choose the matching leather. Each belt is then edited in very limited series of 20 pieces numbered and signed.

Each new collaboration opens new perspectives and a different approach on the project, thus the two brothers decided to invite very diverse artists and not to focus on one specific technique or craft to enrich even more the collection.

Wearable Art has the fascinating characteristic to be at the edge of painting, sculpture and performance and to radically change the viewpoint on Art as not only the observer can move freely in space but also the piece itself.

In this most recent collaboration, J.Hopenstand’s  savoir-faire  meets the aesthetic of John Armleder. Generally characterized by a sense of deep interconnectedness between life and art, and the appropriation of objects and quotes; Armleder’s work is filled with references that elude the modernist vernacular as well as any form of classification. Together with J.Hopenstand, the Swiss artist explores new boundaries as he adjusts his own aesthetic to a belt. The series “Loasaceae”, with its minimal yet avant-garde design will trigger curiosity. 

Image: John Armleder belt for J.Hopenstand – “Loasaceae”