Riot's limited wearable art ballet collection featuring April's oil canvas, Breathing

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Written by Imogen Sullivan (March 2026)

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Riot Garments brings Glasgow based artists’ work to life, creating unique clothing with a conscience. Riot’s Respire Relevé brings April’s oil canvas Breathing, a piece exploring the idea of presence as part of a collection based on the urban landscape into the wearable world, amplified through movement and further expression. 

 

Riot Garments scouted April’s work in the hopes of collaborating due to April’s large expressionist pieces. Riot wanted to see the large, colourful oil strokes move through a room and reflect light from ever-changing angles. A ballerina had asked Riot Garments to make her a colourful, long, flowing practice skirt, and when April met Riot’s excitement about the project, the first collaborative collection began its process. 

 

The two artists took specific segments of the large oil canvas titled Breathing into CAT as The Glasgow School of Art and printed them onto soft, lustrous chiffon for the limited wearable art collection launched this spring. 

 

Riot Garments took the fabric into her studio and used her skills within the bridal industry to explore and manipulate the fabric, playing with the printed oil paint strokes and blocks or absence of colour. Riot’s Finnieston studio catches the setting sun, and the fabric would warm and glow in the dawn. Truly in her element as a fashion designer and a seamstress, she describes it as a pleasure working with April’s work.

 

Then the limited wearable art ballet collection was taken to a 20th-century ballet studio in the heart of Glasgow’s West End to be photographed on the dancers, where the two watched as the artwork moved across the room, the colours in flowing conversation with the dark wood of the space and the light coming through the arched windows as the music played.

 

Riot Garments and April are overjoyed to launch their first collaborative limited wearable art collection and are excited for the response. They would love to know how the collection has been received by you, so stay in contact and keep watching for more.