“Let’s go gross”: Gary Card and 4FSB go head to head

If there’s one accessory that’s defined the headwear of culture-adjacent twinks this decade, it’s the infamous graffiti tag cap by 4FSB (Jamie Bull), the North London-based fashion designer and artist with a penchant for gore, bleaching and offbeat dyeing techniques.

First appearing on the heads of scene‑y artists in and around Dalston Kingsland, Jamie’s hats have gone on to become a poster-piece for cult boutiques such as Tokyo’s Radd Lounge and Oops, as well as FKA twigs’ local favourite, Fantastic Toiles. Just this January, Timothée Chalamet wore one to the Paris premiere of A Complete Unknown, while Doja Cat and Arca have been part of the ​“4 Fuck’s Sake, Babes” club for years.

Until very recently, the artist has solely presented his hats – as well as his ghoul-printed T‑shirts and hoodies – using a series of AI and iPhone applications. The resulting micro ad campaigns feature cracked-out images of maggot-infested models and yass-ified aliens. But a new collaborative project with set designer, model-maker and artist Gary Card showcases Jamie’s work as we’ve never seen it before. The result: grotesque figurines stacked with misshapen mouths, bug eyes and fleshy skin, each one rocking a freshly painted 4FSB cap.

Granted, Jamie’s no stranger to collaboration, despite his singular aesthetic. During the SS25 season, he art directed Lueder​’s show and worked behind the scenes for Martine Rose. He’s also accustomed to a variety of disciplines, having written and shot photography in the late noughties for Super Super magazine.

Elsewhere, he’s shown artwork – a stretched and printed recreation of his bedroom’s curios (a dummy-sucking devil, a bike-tire mirror, an alien mask) – at Paris Internationale 2023 with Goswell Road and Tom of Finland Art & Culture Festival 2022 with Ridley Road Project Space, all while holding down his own fashion practice. Weirdly, though, despite the pair frequenting the same scenes and clubs, brushing shoulders throughout the halcyon days of nu rave, Boombox and Ponystep, he’d never worked with Gary.

Doubly weird because the two are a natural fit. Gary, after all, is renowned for gargoyle creations and a creepy-cute sensibility. The 43-year-old is also lauded in Planet Mode for his close relationship with Comme des Garçons – he often does the head-pieces for Rei Kawakubo’s shows – and for his early commissions for a young Jonathan Anderson and Charles Jeffrey.

But for some time now Gary – like Jamie – has also been staking his claim in the art world. In 2019, he centred a Phillips auction show entitled Hysterical, and in 2024 he had a wildly attended solo exhibition in Hong Kong, People Mountain People See at Oi! Gallery. And while Gary’s work errs towards the sweet and zany – less a ​“snuff-film aesthetic” (as his studio manager, Jason Zhang, appreciatively describes Jamie’s recent oeuvre) – the two artists have met in the middle for their first collaboration.

Thanks for having us, Gary. How do you make your heads?

Gary: They’re all actually original Dover Street [Market] heads that I [made for the shop and] didn’t like. I took my three least favourite ones, smashed them in and modelled over the top in a style that I thought was more Jamie: exaggerated, gross, more extreme. Basically, it’s my masking tape-technique that I’ve been doing since I was a kid. I ravel it up like a Rizla and make little masking-tape sausages, and build on top over and over again. The finish is all resin. I put a little resin dye in it, paint it on and it separates because it has a reaction to the masking-tape adhesive. That’s what gives it that strange porcelain quality where the masking tape hasn’t let the resin settle.

You each have a unique aesthetic. How did you brief each other?

G: It was funny. I was like: ​“Let’s go gross.” And he was like:, ​“OK, let’s go fucking gross.” Then he showed me heads on sticks.

Jamie: Literally, decapitated heads! But then, obviously, they were a bit too extreme! [So] he wanted to put a mixture of both our aesthetics together and came up with these guys.

G: I was like: ​“Let’s tone it down a little.” But I think our aesthetics match because we both love manic faces, really wide mouths, crazy-looking psychopaths.

J: And they’re kind of gnarly, but there’s also humour in it.

G: Meeting in the middle.

The midpoint between gore and gargoyle?

G: Gore and cute, I would say.

J: They’re kind of silly.

G: There’s definitely a cartoon, mischievous quality, as well as being a little bit horrific, which is my sweet spot.

J: My mum said they were gross. She was like: ​“What are they doing that for?” She literally doesn’t understand anything that I do.

G: The same with my mum

J: She said: ​“If I don’t like it, it must be good.”

How did you guys meet?

G: I saw a flyer for All You Can Eat [a nu rave party launched in Soho in 2006], and it was Jamie’s face – massive, dilated eyes, big head, with a beanie hat and I think a psychedelic background. I was like” ​“Who is this nutter?” All You Can Eat was our version of Leigh Bowery​’s Taboo.

J: It was just after electroclash – a bit of a more of a ravey vibe.

Coming back to the hats and heads – how did the 4FSB tag hat first come to be?

J: I had the plain bases, and I was playing around with bleach and how to develop the design. It evolved from that. I kept learning how to do different techniques and different paints.

G: What was the impetus though?

J: I mean, I always wear caps. I just wanted to have some that I could do myself. And then influential friends who are artists or designers or DJs started wearing them. There was no plan.

Timothée Chalamet wore one recently.

J: Yeah, I knew the stylist. She kept asking me [for one] but I didn’t have any.

Jamie, you work in this very online space. When you first started making the hats, how did you promote them?

J: I was using images [of them] and then putting them on [digital] characters as a way to display them. So it’s not just the hat on its own. Then people would use them for shoots.

G: One of my ambitions for this was taking your aesthetic that you’ve been doing by yourself and making it physical.

How do you make the characters and faces that appear in the hats?

J: Through different apps – mainly on my phone. I might use Photoshop to touch them up a bit. But I like it when they’re not perfect. It always looks a bit DIY.

G: Like when you turn the saturation up too much, and the image gets crunchy. It’s something I can’t do because I don’t allow myself to do anything like that – it freaks me out. But when I see other people do it, I love it. That’s what’s been fun about this. How can we get from crunchy into something which isn’t quite as aggressive as what you do and isn’t quite as polite as something I might make?

Gary, you’ve worked with big clients, from Louis Vuitton to Jonathan Anderson in his early days. Do you find projects like this a fun opportunity to step beyond commercial restraints?

G: Absolutely. The only constraint for us is how much we want to make, and that’s hugely liberating. This is one of those jobs that I do purely because I love Jamie’s work. And I wanted a hat!

Gary, you surround yourself [both in the studio and your home] with objects and curios. That could be fashion, that could be comic books. Jamie, you also surround yourself with imagery and trinkets. Does that collector sensibility inform your work?

J: Sorry, I don’t understand what you mean!

G: Are you a hoarder?

J: I have lots of knick-knacks. But I also have lots of ceramics that I’ve collected, and they’re all weird characters or something dark – skulls and things.

G: Is your collection a bit like mine? I haven’t seen your collection, but the monetary value of my stuff is really little. It’s just weird shit that I like. It could be from a Kinder Egg. It’s all from charity shops and…

J: Yeah, mine’s a lot like that.

G: … and weird places. I couldn’t put a price on it. But what it means to me, [say] this weird little toy from the early ​’80s, is priceless.

J: I’ve got a mixture. I’ve got sculptures I’ve collected from different friends. I’ve also got [what] some people might think is stupid toot but to me, it’s special. I like to look at them, to have everything, just see it and go: ​“I really like that weird cat thing with a massive head.”

G: I love the still-life nature of useless toot and having piles of this stuff – weird little smiles and faces that you can spot. You know, I’m a bit of a nutter, and I sometimes rearrange all my mad shit for my amusement.

Jamie, you’re also a multi-faceted artist, and have worked with Martine Rose, Lueder and many others. Do you find variety of opportunities exciting?

J: Yeah, I like to not necessarily be told what to do. Because I love Gary’s work and there’s a similar vibe, it was a really nice thing to do. I’ve done quite a few collabs with different people – but more to do with their brand, not like an art piece.

G: I think what’s so appealing about this is that there were no stakes. This project will go as far as we want it to go.

Do you think it is going to be a long term thing?

G: Yes, I would love to do it again. What is it next? It might be on lipsticks or something.

J: Yeah, lipsticks!

There was an article for British Vogue that described Jamie’s hats as ​“graffitied baseball caps that look as though they might have been peeled off the bottom of a disgusting skip. Soiled and tattered and caked in filth.”

J: [Laughs] I’ve heard worse! Some people have said that it looks like a depressed 15-year-old did it, which I also like. It’s quite true, actually.

G: I would call it ​“swamp slut”.

J: ​“Swamp slut”? I’ll take that too.

What about you, Jamie – how would you describe Gary’s work?

J: Quite trippy, sort of cute – he’s a bit of a nutter.

G: I’m happy with all this.

J: Willy Wonka-ry. Like someone tripping on a Wonka bar,

Which makes these headpieces… what exactly are we calling them?

G: I would call them – if you don’t mind, Jamie – goons. It’s concise, to the point.

Happy with that, Jamie?

J: Yeah, yeah, they are kind of goons. They’re like weird goon characters. That’s what a goon is, no?

Yes. Long live the goons.