STYLE & DESIGN
CAN YOU WALK US THROUGH THE CREATION OF A COLLECTION? In the end, good designs should stem from an idea. A peg to hang up concepts on, a mirror to reflect the results in. Also, how we interact with products and in which contexts and situations they are used strongly influences our experience of them. What’s appropriate in one context, is totally wrong in another. For the upcoming collection, the team started off with two notions: first, we really wanted to focus on the contextual appropriateness of ties—as you would similarly pick a different tool to do a different job. Second, everything centered around the notion that being a cool guy, an alpha-male, really comes down to a few (inter)actions. Most of them haven’t changed in a long time. Only how they are expressed has changed to fit our environment. For example, a cool guy is a leader. Perhaps he led a pack of prehistoric men and tamed wolves in a hunt a long long time ago, or in a battle to protect their village in the Dark Ages. Perhaps he led a philosophical revolution during the enlightenment. And today, he maybe leads his business team towards a goal. The situation is different, yet the values you want to exude stay the same. “I’m in charge, trust me, follow me, I know where to go.” We thought, let’s make an outfit that shows that in a visual way. The next step, of course, is developing that idea into something tangible. Collecting memes, so to say; what little units of universal social knowledge do exude these values? How do you ‘cook’ the ingredients into a well-tasting dish? The little experiments come in the form of sketches, which we discuss with the team. Does the idea come across? Do you intuitively feel what we want you to feel? In the end, we came up with a really cool suit, in a birdseye pattern, dark grey, with wide lapels, double breasted, nice structured shoulders—all geared towards making a man look more heroic, dominant, confident. Match a silver-silk knitted tie with that (I imagine our leader guy having short-trimmed salt-and-pepper hair
BEHIND THE BRAND and being balding, with a short beard) to complete the outfit. A nice white shirt for contrast—dark and white have always been in favor of people of authority (just look at the clergy and the politicians). Once we think we have the concept nailed down, it’s time to formalize things —getting a sketched ideal jacket to be a wearable, commercially successful product isn’t easy. A tie could be just as tricky—small decisions on weight, chunkyness of the knit, which type of blue to pick, can really tie everything together or mess it up. It’s good to have these discussions early on with our producers and suppliers— getting them to understand and become stakeholders in an idea is paramount to get it exactly right. fw framework
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