From a young age growing up on the northern beaches of Sydney, surrounded by innovative friends, George Gorrow was destined for a creative future.
If he wasn't at school he was down the beach. He says back then his world was very small and his idols were very close. He had a unique group of guys to look up to. Some were punks, some classic surfers, some eccentric bikers, some were young Johnny Depp-style guys.
"I was lucky enough that one of the guys was a leading creative graffiti artist and, at an early age, I looked up to what he was doing. We were doing graffiti together and I sort of followed in his footsteps, then studied underneath him and that kind of led me to the path I was on. I think I was 14 when I knew what I wanted to do."
Originally, Gorrow wanted to become an artist. But then he discovered fashion, which he says gave him way more freedom to explore different media with more platforms on which to present his work.
In 1999, with a couple of friends, he co-founded iconic, notorious Australian fashion and denim label Ksubi.
"With fashion, you could do graphics on T-shirts, paintings, fashion shows, live installations, retail outlets, video, virtually any kind of medium you could do. So I always thought being an artist you sort of had to pretty much focus on one style and do that one style."
Now, after departing from Ksubi, the label he'd been at the helm of until 2012 as creative director and head of denim, he is venturing down a new creative path.
Last year, when he was living in New York and was out for dinner with an art collector friend, he met rising New York curator and gallerist George Benias and artist Bast.
"I just gelled with them just quite easily and quite quickly. They are a quite eccentric bunch of guys, you know, and George is sniffing my shirt saying, 'What scent or smell are you wearing?' and Bast is talking about my socks. It was just really an eccentric world and I felt comfortable and I actually just thought if I could do something with these guys it could be quite cool."
Following the first encounter, both the Georges went away for about a week then met up again and came up with the concept for Cocurata.
"Because I had been out of fashion for a little while, the thought of getting back into where I was before wasn't that appealing. If I was going to go back I wanted to do something that was different."
The idea behind Cocurata, he says, is evolving as we speak but, essentially, it is the idea of bridging the gaps between a fashion brand, the gallery and the artists.
"The artists are just as important as the creatives behind the brand and we are working with them quite tightly, running group shows with artists, very similar to that of a gallery."
Each season, Cocurata will host an exhibition and clothing collection featuring work from artists. The design of each piece of clothing is the result of a direct extraction of elements from each artist's work.
For the first Cocurata collection, which is called ''Extraction'', they worked with influential street artist Bast, who was there on the night of conception, Rostarr and Paul Insect (who regularly collaborates with Banksy).
They took the artist's work and started extracting from it and dissecting it and applying it to clothing.
"We wanted to work with street artists that had successfully made the leap to contemporary art, to showing in galleries, and all these guys are very successful at doing that."
They will be working off what Gorrow describes as an artist roster. Each season three artists (although he states there are no rules) will be featured across the collection. The next collection is called ''Abstraction'' in which they'll work with artists Trudy Benson, Steve More and Matt Jones.
They have also teamed up to create a capsule collection of 10 garments and an exhibition with Dearraindrop Collective.
This collection is one-off, hand-sewn, intricate garments that will be sold exclusively at Lane Crawford in Hong Kong.
"This is something that I feel the brand is really about, leaning more towards the art side than the fashion side. There's no real commercial aspect to these 10 pieces. Its art for art's sake. That's what I'm liking a lot."
Just in case you're wondering whether there will be a trademark like the Ts in a box on the iconic Ksubi jeans, there is.
The story behind the white crosses on Ksubi jeans came from Gorrow being inspired by the work of artist Basquiat.
He says he liked how he would use a copyright symbol on his paintings. So, at Ksubi, they experimented and came up with their own signature.
"We came up with a T in a box, then one day just out of boredom we put two Ts in a box onto some jeans then dropped them off to some stores. Then some other stores saw that they had jeans with two Ts in a box and they only had one T in a box and they complained, and they said, 'Why do they have the deluxe version?' and then we had to give two Ts in a box and that's how that stuck. Funny how things work out.''
Cocurata's symbol is two bars that make an equals sign. The concept was two bars to illustrate the name co-curata which means to co-create.
"Between us and the artist, we came up with two bars — the top bar being for us and the bottom bar being for the artist. The bars are an equals symbol. It's interesting for me to go from a plus to an equals."
• Cocurata ''Extraction'' is dropping in to stores now. Workshop's High St store will display an art installation in the window from Friday. cocurata.com
