Kaylene Milner is a designer based in Sydney. She has been in love with and inspired by punk rock record covers, gig posters and old-school comics ever since she was a teenager. Now, through her creative clothing business, WAH-WAH, Kaylene reimagines her inspirations as wearable art.
WAH-WAH collaborates with bands and artists both local and international to create a marriage of the elements of pop culture that is bright, loud and proudly tongue-in-cheek. 

Zart’s Education Manager Nic Plowman talked to Kaylene about her creative business and life.

As a child, how did art first manifest itself to you? And can you recall a particular artwork/artist that you connected with first?
In early primary school, I was helping clear out a storage area in the classroom and I came across a rolled-up print of an Arthur Rackham artwork from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It was the scene where Alice is getting advice from the Caterpillar who is sitting on a toadstool, smoking a hookah pipe. I felt like I had found a secret treasure! I loved the whimsical escapism of his illustrations and I used to try and replicate them in my own hand just for fun.

What did art mean to you as a child/young person – and did it help you with a sense of identity/purpose?
My high school years were particularly formative for me. I became obsessed with discovering underground music and part of that appeal was the artwork that accompanied the album covers and gig posters. As a teenager I was particularly taken by 60s psychedelic music and the bold colour palettes and art nouveau-influenced motifs that you would see in the borders and lettering of posters. I would sit in my bedroom listening to the music and would paint my own DIY psychedelic T-shirts with fabric paint. This also fed into an interest in textiles and making my own clothing from scratch. I couldn’t afford to buy fabric by the metre but I discovered there was always a surplus of 60s and 70s paisley bedsheets going cheap at the op-shops. I’d cut and sew my own take on swinging 60s fashion that suited my body shape.

What was your experience of art/design at school? Do you have a particular teacher or a teacher moment that encouraged you as a creative person?
I had the most brilliant art teacher in high school. I always thought she was really cool because she had good taste in music and used to work at a screen-printing factory in Wollongong that made really iconic protest posters. When we graduated, she hand painted each student a coffee mug featuring an artist that was special to them. Mine had a brilliant recreation of an R. Crumb self-portrait, who I was obsessed with and wrote about for my HSC art essays. 10 years later I would go on to create a Robert Crumb knit jumper for one of the very early WAH-WAH designs.

How do you begin: Process of making of a body of work/sourcing artist, musician, causes to work with?
Each design has had a unique background story and process. In a few cases the artist or band have reached out to me, but usually I’m the one to make contact. It kind of feels a little like loosely themed curation. The process always varies depending on who I’m collaborating with. In some cases, there is a lot of back and forth with ideas and tweaking designs. Other times it has been a case of, “here is my catalogue… go forth and create a woolly winter knit”.

What is ‘design’ to you?
Design is creative problem solving. It’s about researching, testing and experimenting to create something beautiful that has a positive impact.

Are you interested in how the audience reads your work?
I want the audience to feel a connection to the garment. My whole business is based on that premise. I don’t want to just make clothes for the purpose of warmth. I want the garment to be more than that, whether it’s a talking point or showing allegiance to a band you love or knowing that a percentage of the profits are going back to the artist or a charity. This is a large part of what makes up sustainability in my practice, in conjunction with using renewable and biodegradable fibres, responsible packaging and construction techniques that reduce waste.

Nic Plowman
Education manager
Zart