Katrien Soeffers (°1977) lives and works in Antwerp.
After graduating from the Royal Academy for Fine Arts, she got a postgraduate degree at AKV|St-Joost in Breda in the Netherlands.
The inspiration and the subjects of her art arise from images and details from her surroundings. She transfers these images into illustrations, series of portraits, prints, paintings and silk screen paintings.
She has always had a passion for prints, either on clothes or on wall paper or even on a vase. She likes flowers, art, black and white contrasts, fashion, making drawings, coffee, colours, travelling, collages, wall paper, furniture and photography.
Katrien has a typical style of drawing with graphic black lines, fresh colours and a warm atmosphere.
We met Katrien through a mutual friend. Clinch scarf SC041: ‘Portrait’ is based on one of her drawings.

www.katriensoeffers.com

‘Galerie Zuid’ is an art gallery near Clinch. One day, a striking and eye-catching work by the Spanish painter Xavier Visa is displayed in the window. The gallery manager, Stephane Van Kerckhoven, doesn't seem surprised when we walk into the gallery to ask him if he thinks the work of art would stand out well on silk. Stephane  thinks along and contacts the artist. Things can be as simple as that… Everyone is enthusiastic, which results into two magnificent works of art by Visa on a Clinch scarf: ‘Sienna’ and ‘Walking Crowd’.
Xavier Visa lives and works in Barcelona. He studied classic painting at the city’s Academy of Art. Although his semi-realistic art continues to become more abstract, he keeps painting with respect for tradition. Visa takes pictures of daily life in the city with an old camera. It is the atmosphere of these photos (unfocused and often poorly exposed) that he brings across so well with oil paint on canvas: blurry and mysterious images of anonymous people in unrecognisable cities.

Xavier Visa is represented by Galerie Zuid.

Paris, February 2010.
We are moved by a big mural: a powerful and very expressive portrait of a woman.
During the next couple of days, the image stays lingering in our minds, we cannot stop thinking about it.
The mural is the work of a Parisian artist, Yseult Digan, who has been known for years in the ‘Street Art’ scene. Her artist name is Yz and her work can be found in the streets of metropolises like New York, Paris, Berlin, Hong Kong, Brazzaville and Moscow.
They are fascinating images which she brutally implants in the middle of the inhabitants of a city. In one of her projects, ‘Diary of a Parisienne’, she cooperated with the poet Céline Malraux.
Antwerp, September 2010. Clinch and Yz finally meet.
The result: ‘NO GREY’, a pouch and a scarf for Clinch with the image of Yz and the words of Céline Malraux, a most extraordinary combination.

www.openyoureyesproject.com

Although he is still a ‘young’ Belgian strip cartoonist / illustrator, Brecht Evens (°1986) already has an entire body of work to his name and he is already renowned internationally. With his fourth book 'The wrong place' ('Ergens waar je niet wil zijn'), he won the very first Willy Vandersteen Award, a new and prestigious Belgian – Dutch comic book award. The awarded book was selected from about 300 titles and has been published in French and English.
The theme throughout his works is 'human relationships'. He shows people partying in big groups and at the same time, he illustrates the loneliness of the revelry: people who are not capable of making contact. Evens’ comics are big drawings without the traditional balloons and restrictive frames. His style is picturesque, executed in ecoline, pencil and poster paint.
Being a Belgian brand, Clinch always wanted to work with a Belgian artist, and that is what brought us to Brecht Evens. The explosive and modern style from his last book 'The wrong place' moved us. The result: two beautiful pouches, each with two unique illustrations reinforcing each other by their theme.

brechtnieuws.blogspot.com

The self-taught French-American artist Candida Romero was born in 1966 in the middle of art, literally.  She was born in the former studio of Chaïm Soutine in La Ruche, Paris. La Ruche is a building designed by Gustave Eiffel for the world exhibition of 1900. For more than a century now, the building has been home to the studios of famous artists: Simone Dat, Marc Chagall, Ossip Zadkine, Fernand Léger, Diego Rivera, Paul Rebeyrolle, Brancusi and many more. Candida was raised in this extraordinary environment. To this day, she still has a studio in La Ruche: the studio formerly owned by Chagall. Apart from that, she also works from Corsica, where she has been working for years on the restoration of a monastery. Since 1995, Candida has given several international (solo and group) exhibitions. We first got acquainted with her work in 2006, when we saw her book ‘IN FOLIO’. We contacted Candida this year and this has led to an inspiring cooperation. The result is one to be very proud of: two extraordinary pouches with an extraordinary story.

www.candidaromero.com

Robert Ryan makes gorgeous story-telling illustrations from cut paper. With fine scalpels he cuts his visual fairy tales in one piece, filled with herbaceous borders, loving couples, phrases, animals, hearts and bells. Enter this world, and you will find a wealth in feeling and meaning: love but hate as well, hope or despair, light and darkness. Rob himself calls them 'tiny works of meaning and mystery.'
Rob was born in 1962 on Cyprus, where his Irish parents then lived, and started to draw from an early age. He now lives and works in England, where he cuts his own work and prints it as well - Rob has an MA in printmaking from the Royal College of Art - and also makes commissioned work for clients such as Vogue, Paul Smith, Liberty and other publishers of books, magazines and music. And now for Clinch as well, which, as a starting brand, is particularly pleased and proud with his co-operation.

www.misterrob.co.uk

Minakani is a Parisian design studio specialising in textile designs for fashion and home furnishings, founded by Frédéric Bonnin and Cécile Figuette. Together they create good-humoured designs, which play with naive innocence, poetry, travel impressions, retro elements, fun and fantasy. The versatility of their work has found favour far and wide, resulting in Minakani designs being used in creations from Cacharel and Kenzo, Dim and Wonderbra, to H&M and Topshop to name but a few.
We discovered Minakani's work at a trade show in Paris. The designs appealed to us and we immediately got on well with the creative duo, leading to a cordial co-operation ever since.

www.minakani.com

We're inspired by anything! An inspiration you can feel in our own designs. Sometimes the idea is well thought-out and elaborate, sometimes it's a whimsical association we've turned into an image.