Alek.

The Alek sweatshirt, Atlantic puffin, carries the portrait of the Grandi boat mechanic printed directly on the fabric. Alek repairs outboard engines and electrical systems of small fishing boats at the old harbor of Reykjavík. He wears a sleeveless denim vest over a knit sweater with yellow, white, and red stripes, and a black bandana wrapped around his neck that he pulls up when he needs to concentrate.

In his basement apartment in Vesturbær, eight minutes' walk from the workshop, the kitchen window is slightly open even when the thermometer reads ten below. Visitors complain. Alek doesn't close it. The cool, damp Atlantic air is what keeps him awake at six in the morning while he makes the coffee he'll take in his steel thermos. In Heimaey, the island in the Vestmannaeyjar where he grew up among eight hundred thousand pairs of puffins nesting on the cliffs, the wind never stopped. Total calm unsettles him, like a room with no sound. He needs that constant movement of air the way he needs to smell salt from the kitchen.

The black bandana he wears around his neck works as a border. At the Grandi workshop, when Alek pulls it up to his nose, his coworkers know not to talk to him. It's not hostility: when he's working on an electrical circuit or a cylinder head gasket, air on his face distracts him. It's a gesture he developed on his own, without thinking about it, and now it's part of how the workshop reads him. Bandana up: silence. Bandana down: you can ask. There's a burn scar on his right hand, from the thumb to the wrist, that he looks at when he thinks. A short circuit at nineteen taught him that bare wires don't warn you.

On winter nights, when the workshop closes at three because there's no light and he has four dead hours before he can sleep, Alek cooks slow things. Lamb stew, plokkfiskur. He listens to the marine VHF frequency even when he's not on watch duty. He doesn't turn on the television. On those nights, with the window slightly open and the north wind coming into the kitchen, the apartment smells of salt and cold coffee and runs at a different register: slower, denser, quieter. It's not sadness. It's seasonal rhythm, the same that takes the puffin out to open sea for months without touching land. In March, when the days lengthen and the first boat of the season comes into Grandi for a hull inspection, something switches on again.

The sweatshirt is cotton and polyester, with the portrait printed on the front. Made to order when you buy it, so delivery takes a bit longer than a conventional store. In [all Animal Kinhood clothing](https://www.yagopartal.com/objects/) you'll find the same level of detail in every portrait. In **Fabric, fit, and construction** you'll find the material and exact composition. If you need to check measurements before choosing, the size charts are in **Size guide**. Timelines, shipping, and return policy are in **Shipping and returns**.

If you want to know more about Alek — the disassembled engine that's been on his table for months, the workshop offer he hasn't answered, the voice messages from [Otto](https://www.yagopartal.com/animal-kinhood/otto/) he listens to every one of and answers one in three — his [full biography](https://www.yagopartal.com/animal-kinhood/alek/) is published.