It’s UGG Season!! AKA a celebration of our community and the self-expression that connects us all. We couldn’t imagine a better person to work with than artist Karabo Poppy, who honors the beauty of everyday life, community representation, and connection in her artwork.
Born in Vereeniging, South Africa, Poppy noticed a limited representation of African aesthetic in global media and in art, which was primarily shown as being animal or music focused. Though in her everyday life, she saw the aesthetic alive all around her: in daily commutes, street vendors, taxi rides, business districts, and lunchtime conversations. As she put it, “that’s where our aesthetic organically lives”—in the everyday self-expression of her community.
Like us, Poppy recognizes how true self-expression connects us all. When we invited her to create works of original art to help us celebrate our ~favorite~ time of the year, UGG Season, she visualized self-expression through these amazing & unique characters. Take a look:
“I try to represent people from that community through my stylized illustrations, giving them visibility and celebrating their lives and jobs that are often overlooked.”
She wants to make art that doesn’t just serve her, but the kind that benefits the people around her as well. (It’s just one of the things we admire about her.) By representing her own community in her art, it’s her way of affirming to the world that, yep, they deserve to be celebrated on a large scale. This approach demonstrates why self-expression is important.
And that sentiment really is what meshes so well with our goals for our annual celebration of UGG Season. We all deserve to be seen and inspired by each other. And we love to see it happen each year.
In the UGG Season characters specifically, Poppy wanted to convey a group of friends from diverse backgrounds and different interests, that are all united by one thing: a love for UGG. These characters may not interact with each other daily but together, they create a harmonious community.
Always here to add a little fun mystery to the conversation – do you recognize anyone familiar? Poppy says she created one of the characters inspired by herself, even wearing an outfit like how she’d style UGG IRL.
These characters were just one element of Poppy bringing UGG Season to life through her representation of community. She also reimagined one of the most important parts of our Classics in her own illustrative style: The Twin Seam.
The Twin Seam represents our inside-outside design theory, revealing the inner workings of how we make our looks. Our Classics are known for their softer-than-soft sheepskin, but sheepskin is an inherently challenging material to stitch. Our Twin Seam emerged as a straightforward way to join two pieces of it together creating clean lines and closing the fabric tightly in a sleek way. Just like self-expression connects us all, the Twin Seam connects our Classics.
From an artistic perspective, Poppy immediately saw our Twin Seam as a pattern she could turn into a design.
“When I look at an UGG Boot, The Twin Seam acts as the breaking part of the whole boot but actually is what brings it together,” she said.
We’re a bit biased, but we think this is the most thoughtful way someone has interpreted our Twin Seam, well, ever.
“When you’re looking at an expressionist painting, they’re meant to be looked at in a distance, and then you kind of squint your eyes and you’re able to see the picture. I saw there were a lot of dashed lines living together and then creating a pattern within that. Each one is unique from the other, but then when they come together, they work well. That’s how I see the Twin Seam.”
Even though it’s clear to us that art is part of who Poppy is, she didn’t always recognize that side of herself. It was actually her dad who had seen it in her all along. While most kids were learning to write their names in first grade, Poppy was exploring with illustrative typography. Until the12th grade, she was planning to study to become a doctor.
After a conversation with her art teacher, though, Poppy realized a creative pursuit was her calling.
“Something just clicked in me … that I would much rather want to pull myself into something that I feel is underrepresented, and if that doesn’t work, I guess medicine could be my backup plan. But now when I look back, I actually see that this was supposed to be the journey from the beginning.”
We are so grateful to be just one small part of Poppy’s creative journey. With her vision, a whole new meaning of self-expression, celebration, and storytelling is now embedded in UGG Season. Thank you, Karabo, for all your beautiful work <3.
To follow along Karabo’s creative journey, check her out @karabo_poppy, and follow @UGG to see all the ways she brought UGG Season to life.
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