One of Marti’s most interesting recent projects was to select and design a fabric, contribute revisions to the design of a t-shirt graphic, and translate the graphic to a banner graphic (seen below) for her 50th reunion at Punahou School, one of Hawaii’s most prestigious schools.
Punahou has a tradition of diverse and beautiful fabric designs. School spirit is off the charts, so the whole class will usually invest in some fabric and make dresses, shirts, bags, table runners, etc… from the fabric. A couple of years ago, Marti’s design with night blooming cereus, and a vignette of the school was lauded for its excellence. This time, she wanted to evoke some nostalgia with the shirt design, so she opted to revive a classic fabric, originally by Alfred Shaheen circa late 50’s to 60’s.
Since printing is digital now, there is no way to simply continue making new fabric from a vintage print unless you are willing to draw it all over again in the correct digital program to modernize the printing files. Marti did an amazing job of interpreting the original fabric design. The classic shirt print had 36 squares, but Marti changed the type of repetition and dropped the count slightly to 30 blocks.
One of her amazing talents is her broad knowledge of Hawaiian fabric designs and the trends today and over the span of her career as an art director and designer. This ability to select and adapt the classic Punhou pattern resulted in a snazzy-looking (and very generous) class!
Congratulations Class of ’68! What a fabulous reunion!