"Repeat Offenders" by Ghislaine Viñas

REPEAT OFFEND­ERS by Ghis­laine Viñas was born from the designer’s explo­ration of Wolf-Gordon’s metic­u­lous and exten­sive archives, which have been kept intact since the company’s incep­tion in 1967. The three designs—Hold­ing Pat­tern, Tan­gled Up, and Vicious Cir­cle—give a cheeky nod to the cycli­cal nature of inno­va­tion, and break­ing through bad habits formed along the way.

Viñas hit on the name for the col­lec­tion after research­ing Wolf-Gordon’s archives and find­ing dis­con­tin­ued prints and col­or­ways that she want­ed to make into ​“repeat offend­ers,” a humor­ous spin on their mod­ern­ized reap­pear­ance. Wolf-Gordon’s rich his­to­ry in wall­cov­er­ing design is what first sparked Viñas’ inter­est in a col­lab­o­ra­tion, along with an explo­ration of vin­tage fash­ion and beau­ty trends from the 1960’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Viñas aimed to cre­ate a fresh take on the company’s sta­ples by ele­vat­ing or com­bin­ing ele­ments of dat­ed stripes, dots, and repeat­ing geo­met­rics to achieve an upbeat, struc­tur­al bold­ness. By sub­tly manip­u­lat­ing details, such as the uni­for­mi­ty of lines or con­ven­tion­al scale, the design­er broke with pre­con­ceived expec­ta­tions and rein­vent­ed clas­sic motifs. 

Hold­ing Pat­tern: Mim­ic­k­ing the idea of being stuck in a behav­ioral loop, Hold­ing Pat­tern fea­tures a series of cir­cu­lar shapes formed by bold lines, with gra­dat­ing tones. The col­or and scale cus­tomiza­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less in this dig­i­tal print.

Tan­gled Up: A ver­ti­cal­ly focused, rotogravure-print­ed design, Tan­gled Up has lines that rip­ple and tan­gle in a play­ful trib­ute to get­ting in trou­ble. This min­i­mal­ist ode to stripes hon­ors this sta­ple that has been in the Wolf-Gor­don archive for decades.

Vicious Cir­cle: Con­cen­tric cir­cles are inter­sect­ed by bold lines in this dynam­ic pat­tern, anoth­er rotogravure print­ed wall­cov­er­ing. Like the name implies, Vicious Cir­cle cre­ates a rela­tion­ship between the cir­cu­lar and lin­ear that draws the eye back and forth.