Burro fashion shoot archive

Fashion designers Su and Olaf Parker have launched a new website at www.burro.co.uk. Burro was the subject of CHELSEA space #18, Burro: I Feel Alright, curated by Donald Smith in collaboration with the designers in January 2008.

The site is packed with visual information including comprehensive views of the collections, videos of catwalk shows, a “museum” of images and an archive of projects including the CHELSEA space exhibition.

In fact, CHELSEA space Director, Donald Smith, features more than once in the Archive section of the site thanks to a relationship with Su and Olaf Parker that goes back to their days at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts in the early 1980′s where donald studied painting whilst they studied textiles. Donald says that he was well ahead of the game and bought his first Olaf Parker design, a tie, in 1985 when Olaf was still a student.

The iconic No Alla Violenza T-shirt designed by Burro

As their website explains, in late 1989 Su and Olaf designed the first No Alla Violenza t-shirts to promote a peaceful world cup for Italia 90. Initially some retailers rejected them on the grounds that the message was ‘too deep’, but they were stocked by shops like Duffer of St George, Bond, Geese, Psyche etc and over the next few months they were sold in huge numbers. The anti hooligan message was taken up by serious football fans and cool club and music people alike, and when the world cup was over the designers used the extraordinary profits from this now cult classic to launch the Burro label and its perfect ‘Plectrum’ logo.

They opened the first Burro store in Floral Street in September 1993 and invited Donald Smith to exhibit his paintings there for the launch. Subsequently he exhibited in-store every two years and developed a series of site-related projects including a joint event with the musician Jah Wobble. He also occasionally organised exhibitions there by other artists and introduced the late Sir Terry Frost to Burro which led to a very successful exhibition and a print textile collaboration between Su and Olaf Parker and Sir Terry. Burro and Smith also collaborated on a multi-media installation for the Fast Forward exhibition at the Kunstlerhaus in Vienna in 1999.

From the start Burro was always more than a purveyor of fast fashion; the clothes themselves were innovative, gaining much respect and a firm following, but combining the designs with music, arts, events, and creative collaborations, the Burro label became a byword for creative cool and the shop became a social and cultural hub.

Burro designer Olaf Parker with writer and curater Paul Gorman at the opening of Gorman's Barney Bubbles exhibition at CHELSEA space in September

It was Su and Olaf Parker who introduced CHELSEA space to Paul Gorman who curated our last exhibition, Process: The Working Practices of Barney Bubbles. Gorman features Burro in his style bible The Look Adventures in Rock and Fashion and the connections do not end there as it was another Burro founder member, Olaf’s brother Tim Parker, who worked with us on CHELSEA space # 28 Into The Woods: An Exploration of iittala and our 2010 Summer Window show on Alvar Aalto.

Alvar Aalto Savoy Vases at CHELSEA space this summer with thanks to Tim Parker, iittala, and Skandium