To coincide with the deluxe reissue of Prince’s iconic double album, 1999, the Purple One’s estate commissioned a special, limited-edition fashion collaboration with Toronto-based brand Call & Response. The line is a hand-crafted collection of custom jackets, vests, and hand-dyed tunics inspired by the clothing they used to make for Prince himself.
Lori Marcuz and Cathy Robinson, the design duo behind Call and Response, designed clothing for Prince from 2011 until his death in 2016. They never met him or never spoke with him, Vogue notes, but curated boxes of clothing for him whenever one of his assistants would ask — often at the very last minute.
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“We watched a lot of footage,” Marcuz said of the new collection’s inspiration. “We listened to the album again and again, trying to remember what it was like to hear 1999 for the first time back in the day.” They also listened to Prince’s influences, including Jimi Hendrix, and incorporated elements into the pieces of those, too. “There are layers of Prince, and what we experienced working with him,” Marcuz said. In the end, it took three months to make the prototypes for the collection. Everything in the collection will be made custom for each person purchasing, and there are limited quantities of each piece.
“The entire time, [working with Prince], was almost like a blur,” Robinson said. “It was so busy and fast,” she explained. “We learned so much working with him because the learning curve was huge. We'll never be who we were before.”
Marcuz remembers one specific instance when they dressed Prince for the Grammys, making three jackets in three days for him to wear during the awards ceremony — except two of them were not finished. Of course, Marcuz said, those are the ones he wanted to wear.
“Our time with Prince was a hell of a ride,”Marcuz said. “We miss him. We miss making clothes for him. So this was, in many ways, lovely to do it again.”