This year I participated in the Staticism tape swap, along with other such excellent artists as Cannibal Ritual, Bruising Pattern, She Walks Crooked and more. My entry was for October. The result was Duvetica Diadema Princess: a two-tape set housed in a double library case. The cassettes themselves are a marble lilac, with the four respective sides – Duvetica, Diadema, Princess and 〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰 – each coming in at 15 minutes sharp.
Duvetica Diadema Princess is a tribute to Duvetica’s 2019 Diadema jacket, a down jacket that comes in 6 colours: black, white, pink, lime yuzu, light grey and dark blue, although their availability has differed regionally (incidentally, for 2020 a plum version seems to have been added, which has the Duvetica patch on the left arm rather than on the chest; additional note added 20/10/2020: the fabric in the 2020 black version seems slightly more matte, as far as I can judge from the pictures on various webshops, such as here, which would mean that the 2019 version is clearly superior! Also, the yellow is now sunbeam yellow and tends more towards orange than the lime yuzu, which leaned more towards green). The three variants I find the most amazing, the black, pink and lime yuzu, are in my collection. They are without doubt some of the finest down jackets ever designed, finally putting Duvetica – whose previous collections I found generally unremarkable – up there with the likes of Moncler. Interestingly, of course, Duvetica was founded by two former Moncler employees, Giampiero Vagliano and Stefano Rovoletto, who initially launched the brand exclusively for the Japanese market before they expanded to the rest of the world. Still, the brand’s ubiquituous presence in South-East Asia surpasses its general popularity elsewhere, as evidenced by its recent popularity in South-Korea, with its jackets gracing the shoulders of numerous social media-ites and those of actors and actresses in TV shows and at public events.
Four tributes to the Diadema jacket were released prior to this double tape, each consisting of two tracks of 8 minutes each and dedicated respectively to the black version (Duvetica Diadema), the lime yuzu (Duvetica Diadema (Colour Variation 1: ▢)), the pink (Duvetica Diadema (Colour Variation 2: ▢)) and the white (Duvetica Diadema (Colour Variation 3: ▢)). These were only released digitally for now, but will likely see physical versions in the near-future.
Duvetica Diadema Princess was released in an edition of 12, one each for the participants in the 2020 Staticism tape swap. Each tape was accompanied by a Moncler Opaque patch and shipped in a matte pink/purple bubble envelope to the participants. A thirteenth copy of this tape, in a special edition, was sent to a close contact. The 〰〰〰〰〰〰〰〰 used both in the artwork and for the track title of the closing track, incidentally, is a small tribute to one of the most excellent down jacket accounts on Instagram, @jacketpablo. It was the direct or indirect source for several images used across the different Diadema releases.
Duvetica Diadema Princess is not available online as of yet, but may be in the future. Of course, most other Opaque releases (including the other Diadema releases) can be streamed or purchased on the Bandcamp here.
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