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I built "Collection Précieuse des Machines" — a lost third volume of a real 1776 botanical book, documenting modern gadgets as if they were rare plant specimens.
The source is Pierre-Joseph Buc'hoz's Collection précieuse et enluminée des fleurs (Paris, 1776), from the RHS Lindley Library's public-domain collection. It was the first Western book to publish the work of Chinese artists: pale-blue skies, scholar's rocks, and birds and insects beside every plant. Its plates were hand-coloured in Paris by people who had never seen the flowers, so they invented the colours.
That story is why I chose it. The original artists were already drawing things they had never seen, so I asked the same imaginary studio to do it again, 250 years later. I cropped seven plates down to the drawing, built a Recraft V4 Style from them, and described modern objects as botanical specimens: earbuds as
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What if the Old Masters designed sportswear?
While taking part in the Recraft contest, I started thinking about how to mix classical painting with modern brands. I experimented with 18th–19th-century oil painting aesthetics and thought: why not take this idea further and create an entire sportswear brand around it?
Classic art, modern athletes, contemporary fashion. A little unexpected? Maybe. But that's what makes it fun! So, I created a sportswear brand concept that brings these two worlds together. The result is right below 👇
Recraft project: https://www.recraft.ai/project/ae17a521-566c-457e-9482-d4b94157111f
Archive references:
Sick art direction
Usbong is Tagalog for "bud," the moment a flower first breaks open.
I dug into Flora de Filipinas (1877–1883), a 19th-century botanical atlas of Philippine plants, through the Biodiversity Heritage Library and Wikimedia Commons. I turned its hand-colored plates into a fictional women's football club.
Every native flower became gear:
Dapdap → home kit
Banaba → away kit
Caballero → boots
Santan + gumamela → goalkeeper gloves
Sanggumay → match ball
Makahiya → the supporter's scarf
Makahiya is the "shy" plant, the one that folds when you touch it. It's also covered in thorns, and that's the whole idea: these flowers aren't soft or decorative. They bite. Worn by striker Maya Flores, #29, the collection reclaims flowers as fierce, not fragile.
Bella, this is sooo cool!!!
Momoyogusa SS27: A 1909 Pattern Book Art-Directs a 2027 Capsule
In 1909, Kyoto designer Kamisaka Sekka published Momoyogusa ("A World of Things"), three volumes of woodblock-printed patterns so flat and graphic they still look modern a century later.
I trained a Recraft V4 Style on eight plates from the Cleveland Museum of Art's public-domain copy, keeping Sekka's flat colour fields, metallic accents and empty paper grounds.
Then I handed him a 2027 brief: a streetwear capsule. His winter river became a quilted puffer, his cranes climbed onto chunky trainers, his peonies bloomed on headphones, and his dancers came back in matching tracksuits.
A pattern book from 1909, working as a fashion house's design studio.
