It Started With a Café — and Now It's a Jumper
If you've been around here for a little while, you might have noticed something happened in May.
A drawing I'd been quietly obsessing over - a collage of Hobart café shopfronts, all inked by hand - somehow found its way in front of hundreds of thousands of people. The comments were full of locals tagging their favourite spots, sharing memories of first dates and Sunday rituals and that one perfect flat white. It was overwhelming in the best possible way.
And more than once, someone asked: can I wear this?
So. Here we are.
The collage, explained
The Hobart Coffee Crawl Collage started as a personal project - my attempt to capture the thing I love most about this city: the way its café culture feels like a network of small, hidden spaces, each one a little world of its own.
I drew each shopfront by hand, in ink and watercolour, from reference photos taken on walks around the city. Bear With Me. Staple. Audrey. Island Espresso. Shake Coffee Roasters. Wide Awake. Pilgrim. Maxie. Whisk & Co. Each one has its own character, and I wanted to honour that - the signage, the brickwork, the windows, the little details that make each place feel like itself.
The finished collage is dense and a bit chaotic and very Hobart, which felt right.
Turning art into something you can wear
Once the idea of a jumper took hold, I couldn't let it go.
I wanted it to feel considered - not just a logo slapped on a blank. The artwork needed to translate properly onto fabric, which meant choosing the right print method (DTF printing, for those who love a behind-the-scenes detail - it handles the complexity of the illustration far better than the alternatives). The jumper itself is an AS Colour fleece in ink blue, and the Pablo Pandani name is featured right under the collage artwork, so it's part of the piece, not an afterthought.
I'm waiting on the physical sample as I write this - which means I'm in that slightly excruciating place where everything should be right, but I haven't held it in my hands yet. Soon.
Edition One
This first run is a presale. A fixed window, a fixed closing date, and then it goes to print. I'm calling it Edition One because I want to be honest: I want to do an annual series. But I know that if this community is even half as enthusiastic about wearing the collage as it was about seeing it, it's going to be something special.
The presale opens very soon. If you want to be first to know - and to guarantee you get one before the window closes - jump on the waitlist.
