Kári Þór Barry is a newly graduated fashion designer from the Iceland University of the Arts, whose graduate collection debuted at Harpa in Reykjavík. The work has already gained international recognition, earning third place in the Diploma Selection competition at Designblok in Prague.

This showcase offers an in depth look at the collection, including sketchbook insights, development work, final imagery and supporting research. It provides a closer view of Kári’s creative process, influences and technical approach, highlighting the vision that shaped the final garments.

Model Airdem Basil

Model: Anton Bjarki Olsen

Model: Curro Rodriguez

Model: Fannar Arnarsson

Model: Haraldur Stefánsson

Model: Tómas Lemarquis

Frivolous Cartoons by Kári Þór Barry arrives as a riotous distortion of menswear, pulling the pinstripe suit through a funhouse mirror until it swells into something uncanny. What first reads as humour quickly deepens into something more pointed. These are garments that smirk. They posture. They expose the absurd theatre of masculinity by exaggerating it until the seams strain.

The silhouettes dominate the room with bulbous volume and waistbands hoisted to comically authoritarian heights. Trousers become sculptural containers for bravado, the kind worn by animated mobsters puffed up with their own importance. Yet beneath the caricature lies immaculate tailoring and thoughtful construction. Each look performs a balancing act between precision and parody, holding the viewer in a space where elegance slips into satire and back again.

The ties, slick shoes and crisp shirts nod to the golden age of cartoons, but the nostalgia is never gentle. There is a sharpness here, a sense that Kári is not simply reviving old visual language but interrogating it. What does it mean to dress like a gangster drawn by a hand that never cared for realism. What does it mean to embody a masculinity that always was a costume.

There is something almost tender in the way the collection reveals the fragility beneath the swagger. The oversized trousers swallow the legs, the jackets compress the shoulders, the shoes verge on surrealist relics. These figures stand proud yet precarious, as if one wrong step could send the entire persona crumbling.

In Frivolous Cartoons, Kári Þór Barry exposes the strange vulnerability of the masculine archetype. It is clever, theatrical work that celebrates exaggeration as a form of truth telling. In a world obsessed with polish, this collection dares to be delightfully overdrawn.