This past week Black Milk Clothing from a land down under released their newest collection titled Hot Mess. While it included prints from a lot of different bits of pop culture, a lot of it focused on comics. We got a chance to talk with Black Milk’s very own Cameron Parker about the new collection.
Graphic Policy: This is the first of your releases without a strong central theme. How did you choose what was going to be included in this collection?
Black Milk: Themed releases are actually a very recent thing for us – in the past, very few if any of our collections were consciously themed around one thing! What we normally do, and what we have done for this release, is take a look at the gear we have in the works that we really love (and there’s usually a lot of that!) and figure out which pieces we can have ready in time, and which pieces the community are super keen for right now.
GP: Can you talk a little bit about the overall design of the items?
BM: When we’re looking for images to use in our prints, there are definitely certain things we look out for. The best prints to work with are very high resolution, so we can move them around, zoom in, change them and so on, and they are or can be made to be repetitive. It’s much easier to fit a print to a garment if we can move it and repeat it in ways to ensure the best placement.
GP: This is not the first collection to include prints of comic book cover or interiors on your clothing. How do you go about choosing specific images/covers/interiors to be collected and printed?
BM: It’s a combination of things. The first question we ask is always “is this cool to look at, is it going to resonate with people?”. If we can get a ‘yes’ to that, we move on to more functional criteria like is the image we’ve been provided with high enough resolution, are the colours going to print well, and can the pattern be positioned well onto our garments? Finding the right images to put on our gear is definitely a process.
GP: Harley Quinn is one of the most popular characters in comics that people cosplay as, and your collection includes her as well. Why do you think that this character is so endearing to so many? Especially that she is actually a villain in most cases.
BM: The villains are always the fun ones, though! We love a bit of villainy here at Black Milk – our Joker pieces were very popular too. Harley is a very multi-layered character, especially in some of the newer comics like Injustice, and I think her complex and very over-the-top character really resonates with a lot of people. She’s a lot of fun.
Some feminine Riddlers
GP: The Riddler is a little off-the-mark of someone that is considered to be very feminine, yet it influences three of the releases in this collection. Why did you choose that character?
BM: The Riddler gear is included because heaps of people in our community asked for it! That’s the great thing about social media, we can ask the people what they want and then, if we can, we’re sometimes able to give it to them.
GP: Any more comics related apparel on the way in the future?
BM: Hopefully! We love working with the iconic images of pop-culture, and would absolutely be interested in creating more comic-book gear.
GP: Who plays a better witch – Margaret Hamilton or Emma Watson?
BM: Personally I think Billie Burke is my kind of witch!
