The news from BLK DNM is all that's fit to print. "I always wanted to do graphic, but I didn't know how to do it," Johan Lindeberg said at a preview of his Spring '14 menswear collection. He is taking baby steps with a new series of printed silk scarves, soon to arrive, featuring his own photos of white roses, the label's emblem. But the more jarring revelation from the previously solid-only collection is text. Several T-shirts and hoodies were lettered with FREEDOM. "Freedom is a word that I've been screaming for many years," Lindeberg explained. "Even my daughter said, 'I started screaming freedom when I was 2 years old.'"
In a line premised on evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, growth, even a small introduction like a printed T-shirt can send tremors. The rest of the men's story of the season hewed to familiar lines—the usual BLK DNM trio of leather, denim, and tailoring—with some more inky blues in the color palette, and a new, slightly longer, swingier leather jacket (Leather Jacket 65, in company numerology) added to the mix. But FREEDOM was the new message. Some standard shapes (a bomber, a blazer, a topcoat) were even done up in sheer organza so that the text could be seen through them. And now that the plug of silence has been pulled, the shouting may continue. Lindeberg has already lined up a new collaboration, with the New York-based Norwegian artist Gardar Eide Einarsson, on a selection of items printed with Einarsson's text-based pieces.
