It’s not that Babbar likes to put himself forward. “I don’t want to be the face of the brand — I’m not interested in that,” he told me in his soft-spoken way. That’s perfectly fine, of course. That attitude didn’t hurt Martin Margiela or Keijiro Komori either. I do feel that hearing Babbar talk about his brand in his own voice makes it come to life like little else can. ITOH has been around for almost ten years, but since it has been building slowly, chances are you haven’t heard of it before. It’s time to change that.

Babbar and I jumped on a call, and here’s our raw, almost unabridged conversation.

Lukas Mauve: Could you tell me about the origins of ITOH, Amit?

Amit Babbar: We started back in 2017. I myself have been working in fashion for more than twenty years, mostly for Japanese clients. Whenever I used to go to Japan or Europe, I noticed that nobody took India seriously, especially Indian fashion. That’s mostly because of the idea that “Made in India” means the product is cheap. My desire to prove people wrong pushed me to create a label that would show that India should be taken seriously when it comes to quality, construction and fabric.

From the start, our focus has been on high-quality fabrics. I felt this was missing in Indian fashion. Most India-based designers try to distinguish themselves through embroidery, bright colors and other “extras.” We wanted to keep it simple. Around 2018, we launched our first collection and started doing retail at a store in Mumbai.

Lukas Mauve: What was your next step?

Amit Babbar: I showed ITOH at Pitti Uomo in 2020, where it resonated with quite a few clients. Yet, pricing was an issue for most of them: a brand from India with a €90 or €100 wholesale price was a bridge too far for them. Some European, American and Asian buyers did see the quality, but seemed hesitant to work with us, also because of concerns over consistency of production quality.

Lukas Mauve: So what you were up against in the beginning were mostly preconceptions about Indian fashion?

Amit Babbar: Yes, including preconceptions about aesthetics. I don’t agree with the idea that India is only about embroidery and color. Look at the 1950s and 1960s and you’ll see that Indians, even maharajas, wore white and blue beautifully. As I see it, it’s just that Rajasthan has always sort of mesmerized the West, and people, including Indian designers, have continued to riff on that.

I have a lot of issues with how the West sees India, but I don’t only blame the West for it. Indian designers have played along with what was being asked or expected of them for many years. If embroidery was celebrated, they did embroidery; if people wanted colorful flowers, that is what they would get. Honestly, almost no one in India was being niche or different in any real sense.

Lukas Mauve: Did buyers actually ever say these things to you?

Amit Babbar: I’ve had a few very big buyers at Pitti Uomo ask me why I’m doing what I’m doing with ITOH. “It looks more Japanese than Indian,” they said. “It doesn’t have any embroidery.” It’s a pretty condescending attitude towards India and Indian designers.

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Ex nihilo nihil, they say — but still, look around you and the opposite seems to be true, especially in fashion: designers, labels, writers, bloggers, influencers coming into (and, truth be told, going out of) existence as if they don’t care about defying a universal metaphysical principle.

Since that first conversation with John, I’ve been following him as he turned De Dam Foundation into a label, one that boasts stockists like Rising Star Laundry, Rendez Vous and &son as well as three Paris showrooms so far. He, for his part, has followed me — or so he tells me — reading and responding to what I write. This kind of connection matters, not least because its blurring of the personal and professional has become crucial to what menswear is right now. It’s important to keep your critical distance, as Louis Cheslaw said. Yet not to the extent that you lose touch with the human reality that makes the clothes you and I like so good.

When I tell you I’m a fan of John’s work — and give the full disclosure that we’re friends, too — there’s no need to suspect the former is true only because of the latter. If it were a word, I’d say we are professional friends which, in some way, is what you would hope any friendship is like: you care enough to always tell the truth, because you wish nothing but the best for each other. Let’s say I thought the armhole on a coat John has made was too wide, I’d feel comfortable to tell him — just as I’m sure he’d let me know if I would write something terrible.

My point is that John and I have been growing together — is this a terrible thing to write, John? — and that, from my perspective, it’s been great to witness first-hand what his commitment to De Dam Foundation has led to. I don’t use that word, commitment, lightly. If following John has taught me anything, it’s that running an independent label is hard. I mean, just think of John’s June and July: he’s producing Fall/Winter 2026, doing Spring/Summer 2027 showrooms in Paris and Tokyo, choosing fabrics and buttons for Fall/Winter 2027, conducting research for the theme of the Spring/Summer 2028 collection, and shipping orders for his webshop — all alongside his 9-to-5.

Last week, I traveled to The Hague by train to visit John at his home as he was packing four enormous suitcases to travel to Tokyo for fashion week later that day. Instead of talking about his big vision for De Dam Foundation — Duchump has done that beautifully here — we got into the down-to-earth realities of running it and making its Dutch-culture-and-weather-inspired functional garments really good, even better and, who knows, maybe one day, financially viable. After we exchanged some thoughts on the Paris heatwave, but before we really got started, John already dropped a bomb.

John Ro: …I’m moving my Paris showroom, by the way. The space I have now is nice. It has a lot of glass and it’s really light and open. Did I tell you there was a buyer who literally found out about the brand when he walked by? He didn’t see the info on the front, so he zoomed in on this knit sweater lying on the table, took a picture of the label, and later reached out to me. That was pretty cool.

Lukas Mauve: Why did you decide to move?

John Ro: …it was actually quite terrible because I found out the space I’m in now was already booked for next January before I had found something else. And all the good spaces for a reasonable price — 2k or 3k, say — were sold out. So I was like, holy shit, what do I do now? This was on Tuesday, my last day in Paris. I had been waiting a bit longer because I thought, maybe if this season goes better, I can go to a bigger space.

The days before I had found a few nice and affordable spaces online, but when I reached out to the owners most of them said, sorry, this is not Paris Fashion Week price. And then they went on to double or even triple the price for the week. I can’t do that. In the end, I was thinking to myself: should I go Airbnb next time or should I join another brand with a bigger space? Luckily, this guy who owns a gallery in the Marais, right next to Centre Pompidou, responded. It’s not too far from DMSR, Kensuke [from Reverberate] and Sine & Cosine.

Lukas Mauve: You said you wanted to wait to see “if this season goes better.” Do you already have a sense of how things are going, in terms of sales, while you’re having buyer appointments?

John Ro: No buyer places orders on the spot, so you always have to wait and see. Honestly, I like to believe I can feel it when an appointment goes well, but I also know it says very little — afterwards some buyers are like sorry, we don’t have the budget right now, or they just go silent, which is definitely the worst. Sometimes it’s the other way around: the appointment was so-so, but a few days later the buyer does place an order.

Lukas Mauve: The first time you showed in Paris was in June last year. Now that you’re three seasons in, do you feel more comfortable doing it?

John Ro: It’s definitely become a bit easier. When I did the first showroom, I was very nervous. I didn’t really know what to say. Of course, I asked friends for advice. Probably the most valuable thing they said was that I just needed to do it. Even when no buyer shows up, it’s like a box that you’ve ticked, to show that you’re serious about your brand. One day, I told my wife hey, I want to go to Paris, but I don’t really know what’s going to happen.

Luckily, friends introduced me to buyers, and some even showed up, including Ben from &son in New York. He even reached out before Paris, asking whether I did wholesale. I was like no, I’ve never done it before. I didn’t even know how the margins should be calculated. But soon enough, I figured it out, and &son has been a stockist ever since.

Lukas Mauve: I believe your deadline for SS27 orders ends today, right?

John Ro: Yeah, it does. I’ve been checking my email a few times already today. I feel good about it, though. I’m working with a couple of great stockists, and will be adding a few more soon — like And Father Store and Saath Saath, a great new store in Los Angeles that’ll open soon.

Lukas Mauve: Something that strikes me is that independent designers can be extremely discerning when it comes to working with buyers and stores. Some even have a list of conditions in place. Can you explain why that is?

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I covered the “New Yorkers in Paris” showroom, where Small Talk, Archie, Csillag and Silphium presented their Spring/Summer 2027 collections. The next day, I shadowed Hampus von Hauswolff and Eric Nordstedt, buyers at Stockholm’s Nitty Gritty, as they moved between showrooms in the blistering heat. Niceness was a highlight, especially Takahiro Ito’s outfit, anchored by a worn-out plaid shirt from an early collection (see below). On Saturday, I sat down with Ryo Kashiwazaki, founder of Hender Scheme, to talk about his collaboration with Artek, the Finnish design firm founded in 1935 by husband-and-wife duo Alvar and Aino Aalto.

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Honestly, that was all the news I could handle. The apartment I was staying in had neither ventilation nor air conditioning, and the temperature inside was around 39°C. During my late-evening writing sessions, both my head and my laptop overheated, which was bad because I really needed both.

Like last January, working with deadlines kept me grounded in Paris. I remember Clément Douillet from Maison Douillet once telling me that I’m always in an existential mood during fashion weeks. He isn’t wrong. I can’t keep myself from asking: What am I doing here? Still, I’ve found myself asking it less and less. Is that a good thing? I’m not so sure.

Once you stop asking that important question, you start self-identifying with where you are and who you are with. And with that comes the danger of taking things for granted — or worse, assuming that you and everyone around you naturally know what Paris Fashion Week is all about.

When I started this newsletter, what I enjoyed most was accepting my ignorance about fashion, clothes, and style, fully committing to it, and following it wherever it took me. Now that I’ve been doing this for two-and-a-half years, I sometimes catch myself writing from a different place: a place of “knowing,” which can feel less honest, less true, less real. Let me be a bit more specific. There’s nothing wrong with knowledge itself, of course. But it is wrong to become attached to it and lose touch with the ignorance that made it possible. Call me paradox-headed, but for me the ideal is to write knowledgeably from a place of not knowing.

Maybe, yes, it is a good thing not to get too existential about Paris. After all, and I’m speaking from experience here, it does make you more interested in reality than unreality, in understanding than in skepticism, in enthusiasm than in solipsism. Instead of wondering whether any of this is even real, you find yourself wondering what this reality is made of, what keeps it going, and how it changes.

While knee-deep into this reality-embracing mood, I figured this might be the meaning of that weird-yet-omnipresent phrase “real clothes.” It’s not that the clothes small makers create are more real than others — I wish they were, yet how could they be? — but that they’re a portal into a reality that’s actually humanly pleasant to accept as real.

If that’s true, it’s true on two levels. These clothes, these good clothes, give physical expression to that reality and they’re also magical tools for bringing it into existence — somewhere, sometime. Think of Camiel Fortgens’ Paris presentation, which took place in a typical Paris bistro. It showed clothes, for sure, but in doing so it also realized a way of presenting them — as part of everyday life — that doesn’t really exist in the realm of the ordinary yet. For me, that’s why I like wearing Fortgens’ clothes, too: I love the frayed edges and crooked seams for how they look, but I love what they are and could become even more.

Also? At Paris Fashion Week, I opened my eyes, looked around, talked to people, and noticed some things I’m eager to tell you about. No system-level analyses, just casual observations.

Self-referential

Mark from Archie, Onea from Silphium, and Floortje from Camiel Fortgens all told me, independently of one another yet in almost exactly the same words, that their Spring/Summer 2027 collections are deeply self-referential. If that means anything, menswear labels seem to be in a moment of pause of reflection right now, more interested in getting to the core of themselves than reinventing who they are. The result is smaller, more focused collections that refine or perfect — rather than change or overthrow — what many of these labels have been doing so well for the past decade.

Experimental

Then again, the opposite also seems true: menswear is definitely in a playful, slightly experimental mood. It’s why Hampus and Eric visited the Niceness and Unlikely Dry Goods showrooms, both full of brightly colored, graphic-heavy takes on ‘50s and ’60s staples. It’s why Camiel bought a bunch of Birkenstock soles and made his own “unlicensed” version of the iconic sandal. It’s why Carter Young is doing a grungy waffle thermal crewneck. It’s why Small Talk’s heavily embellished collections are buzzing. I mean, even Evan Kinori is into striped polo sweaters now.

Maybe everyone read BoF’s “Why All Menswear Looks the Same” piece and collectively decided to prove it wrong. The real explanation may be, paradoxically, the very same self-referential mood: many labels have found out what they’re about and good at, and can now start finding out what else they can do.

Plaid/Checked Patterns Everywhere

One expression of that playful mood is plaid. Different kinds of checked patterns (preferably in kelsch) are literally everywhere at the moment: from Oliver Church to seventyfive, from Working to Unkruid, from William Frederick to Auralee, and from Saager of Neighbour to Hampus. Make of that what you will — what else is new? has plaid ever gone away? — it does mark a noticeable departure from the plain brown, natural-dyed shirts that have defined much of the 2020s so far. I, for one one, never stopped loving Kurt Cobain. Honestly, if you want to prepare for next year’s spring and summer, you’d do well to study his wardrobe, including his choice of shirts.

Where are the Good Shoes? And: What Are They?

By now, we have a pretty clear sense of what good clothes are, whatever that might ultimately mean. Noah Johnson even made an index of it. Walking around Paris, my gaze turning downwards, I found myself wondering: what are good shoes? We don’t seem to have a shared — or even intuitive — sense of what those might be. There were plenty of ugly-cool shoes in Paris, but much more than too. Eric wore Nike. Hampus wore Chamula. Cole of Csillag wore vintage loafers. Floortje wore Birkenstocks. Chris from Duchump was mad about Sine & Cosine. Some folks I met at the Jan-Jan Van Essche party on Friday wore Petrosolaum. And I, for one, was breaking in my Paracias and B.O.T.O.s.

What on earth should we make of all that? You tell me. Well…? Hence my thesis: there are lots of good shoes, but there is no such thing as good shoes.

I’ll leave it at that, thank you.

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I mean, who else do you know who’s a contributing editor at GQ, has written for major publications like The New York Times, New York Magazine and the Financial Times, knows the inner workings of popular culture as well as he knows your summer wardrobe, and still takes the time to sit down and have a proper conversation? Who else in fashion media can claim the level of authority he has and still feels like a bloke you’d meet in a London pub at 11:15pm?

Exactly.

I may be biased. Louis was one of the first to ever reach out to me to ask for my opinion about a trend he’d spotted long before anyone else was talking about it. That was back in November 2024, when he’d just started his menswear column for Laura Reilly’s Magasin. Not long after, he suggested we grab a coffee in Paris — at Dreamin Man’, mind you — just before my first fashion week there. “Mentor” wouldn’t be the right word, but those gestures mattered, because they encouraged me, kindly and quietly, to keep going.

I reached out to Louis a couple of weeks ago, around the launch of his very own newsletter, Wardrobe. He had contacted me about it beforehand, asking questions about the increasingly crowded Substack landscape, none of which I could answer, but all of which I enjoyed thinking about.

They made me realize how much this landscape has changed already since early 2024. While I don’t buy the common criticism that everybody has a Substack nowadays; after all, registering one is very different from keeping one alive. Still, there are a lot of them now, from BBSP to Wimpy, Duchump and Big Pants Waste Precious Fabric. I admitted to Louis that this growth has made me anxious at times, and not just because many of these newsletters are growing much faster than Present Forever. Louis, of course, comforted me. (In a rather different way to the person who once tried to do the same by saying, “Yours is just very European.”) At the same time, it was obvious from the get-go that Wardrobe would become another gravitational force in this online menswear universe.

For one thing, Louis has a plan (which he’ll lay out below). He knows it fills a real gap and, given his years of editorial and writing experience, he also knows how to execute it well. Case in point: in the months leading up to Wardrobe’s launch, he traveled across the globe to prepare a series of in-depth interviews, some of which have been published — with the likes of Christoffer Lundman, Chris Kontos and Luke Derrick — and others to appear over the coming months.

Lukas Mauve: You’ve been on the road a lot lately, Louis. How’s it been?

Louis Cheslaw: Yes, I went to the U.S. twice, and also visited Paris and Stockholm, where I saw Christoffer from Salon C. Lundman and Hampus from Nitty Gritty. Some of it was for family reasons, some to make sure I could get a strong start on the project.

Lukas Mauve: You surely have!

Louis Cheslaw: Thanks. I’m still coming to terms with the frequency and understanding what people actually want to read. But I’m also giving myself the first year just to do a bunch and see what feels right.

Lukas Mauve: Why did you take the leap and start Wardrobe?

Louis Cheslaw: One part of it was just a love of the world I’d begun to know so well. I’ve been lucky over two or three years of writing about the industry and traveling a lot to have made real relationships with some designers and their teams. And those relationships lead to ideas and a sense of what’s happening behind the scenes.

But also, my background is in journalism, not in textiles and crafts. And without that formal training, there’s a limit to how much you can actually know about the clothing you’re recommending. People are spending real money on these clothes, so I felt that I needed to introduce more of an educational component to my reporting for myself as well as for the reader. The idea with Wardrobe is to continue to cover the designers that are relevant, that are interesting, but to ask them slightly more thorough questions, digging a little deeper into what they do.

Lukas Mauve: You don’t just want to recommend good clothes to people, but also make them understand why it’s good.

Louis Cheslaw: I didn’t start Wardrobe to do recommendations — it was more to slow things down a bit and make more room for stories beyond product round-ups. That said, finding great items is always going to be part of the aim, it’s just about those recommendations coming up naturally, rather than forcing them.

Lukas Mauve: You recommend different things in different roles. How do you combine those while staying true to yourself?

Louis Cheslaw: Of course, the different roles I have come with different considerations to think about. It’s what sets my role as a contributing shopping editor for American GQ apart from Wardrobe, which I’d say is my personal project. There’s a kind of profit-minded structure to GQ Recommends, though I really appreciate how the editorial staff there have never pushed me to include a brand that I’m not particularly into.

Some people might think that starting Wardrobe is a sign of me ultimately wanting to move away from that work. Actually,

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There are different kinds of opaqueness when it comes to menswear designers, even among those who are runway agnostic. Some indulge in self-mystification. Others rarely give interviews or prefer complete anonymity. The most mysterious category, however, is another one: designers whose presence in menswear feels permanent yet strangely peripheral at the same time. You know the name, but can’t remember when you first (or last) heard it. Perhaps you’ve never really looked into it. But you also know it’s stocked by the right stores and therefore likely worn by people who dress well — though you rarely, if ever, seem to encounter them yourself.

For me, Frank Leder belongs to this category. (Other names I can think of from the top of my head: Jan Machenhauer, Hannoh Wessel, Ludovica Diligu from Labo.Art, and Daniela Gregis, maybe.) A graduate of Central Saint Martins, London, Leder launched a womenswear line more than twenty-five years ago, around 2000. In fashion terms, that’s an eternity. Since he transitioned into his eponymous menswear label, he’s also remained extremely steadfast in his focus: slow fashion rooted in German history, folklore and traditional craftsmanship.

Leder, who’s in his early fifties now, was fabric-first before fabric became the defining language of contemporary menswear — artisanal before every self-respecting label began working with a Japanese mill, and process-oriented long before process became the word used for describing how good clothes get made. Leder even used the Fraktur typeface when the graphic designers who’ve made it cool again were barely in college.

The oddness of Frank Leder, as a label, can be seen in how disparate the stores are that carry it. It’s found at places like Neighbour and Nubes, as well as obscure Japanese boutiques specializing in conceptual avant-garde. The same is true of the pieces themselves. Some, especially the more relaxed ones — like this ‘Zip Washed Wool Jacket’ — sit comfortably among Comoli and Kinori. Others, often sleeker and more narrow-shouldered — like this ‘Wool Vest’ or this ‘Officer’s Coat’ — I’m unable to place.

Likewise, there’s the campaign photography. Some of it captures a German-ness much in the way Conkers and John Alexander Skelton capture different kinds of English-nesses: slightly nostalgic, perhaps, but down to earth and pretty appealing. Other bits feel uncomfortably old-world, with models positioned in front of gothic manor houses or standing among displays of stuffed animals. It’s all as fascinating as it’s strangely unsettling.

Frank Leder’s longevity — and wide range, he does soap, wall paint and sculptural objects too — also means he has given dozens of interviews over the years, often touching on the origins, nature and evolution of his label. That’s why, when I contacted him a few weeks ago, I wrote that I didn’t want to do just another profile interview. Instead, I proposed to ask him a couple of questions about the here and now. It speaks to his character that he kindly accepted on the same day. What’s more, his responses weren’t the cut-and-dry kind you sometimes get. They felt considerate and honest, offering an unusually close look into his day-to-day practice in Berlin. He even took the time to take some shots in and around his studio, for you and me to get a sense of where that practice takes place.

The first questions I asked Leder were actually for a feature about Nubes, the store formerly based in Berlin and now settling in Ireland. (They’ve recently collaborated on a shirt made of deadstock German bedsheets.) From there, the conversation expanded naturally: sourcing vintage buttons in Bavaria, drawing inspiration from Alpine towns, the feeling of being in his Berlin studio in springtime, and his perspective on the explosion of good menswear over the past few years.

Lukas Mauve: You wrote that you just returned from a trip to southern Bavaria. What have you been up to there?

Frank Leder: I went to meet a friend of mine, Peter. He’s retired and lives in Rosenheim, a small market town near the Austrian border. He’s constantly on the lookout for vintage fabrics and buttons across Southern Bavaria, Czechia and Austria. He visits flea markets, old tailor workshops and small factories — especially in smaller Alpine towns — to help me uncover the materials I build my collections around.

I would say around 40 percent of each collection is made from vintage fabrics, though that naturally depends on what I’m able to find and how many pieces I can create from them. Around 80 percent of the garments also use vintage buttons, which I feel give each piece a real sense of depth.

Lukas Mauve: Was there a place that particularly struck you?

Frank Leder: I went to Augsburg to visit the Fuggerei. It’s the world’s oldest social housing complex still in use, founded by Jakob Fugger in 1521. It provides affordable apartments for needy catholic citizens, in exchange for a symbolic rent of roughly €0,88 per month, an agreement to pray three times a day for the founders. This historic “city within a city” still functions as a living community today. Visiting places like this often gives me inspiration for a new color palette — or sometimes even an entire collection.

Lukas Mauve: The notion of “tradition” seems crucial to everything you do. What does it mean to you?

Frank Leder: For me, tradition is about a different rhythm — like that of a tightly knit community, where people help each other out, rather than the anonymous and often impersonal atmosphere you find in major cities today. It is also about remembering and carrying forward knowledge about craft, as well as about a certain pride in quality and daily labor.

Lukas Mauve: And what about vintage buttons — why are they such an important leitmotif for your label?

Frank Leder: Vintage buttons carry a certain aura from the past, whether through the materials they’re made of or the fact that many of them are no longer used in contemporary manufacturing — materials like Bakelite or casein.

What strikes me is that buttons are often overlooked in contemporary fashion, which I find strange, because they are the first thing you touch when you open or close a garment. They essentially define its interaction with the body. I would even say a button is like a portal into an entire story: a manufacturing process, a material history, a world that no longer exists.

There were once entire regions in Germany where button factories operates, each specializing in distinct techniques. Some of these buttons can be extremely valuable — silk-covered ones with woven patterns, known as passementerie buttons, came from a factory destroyed during the Second World War. Today they can cost up to €100 each, if you are able to find them. I have used them on tuxedos and evening wear.

Lukas Mauve: You’re back in Berlin now [late April], from your Bavaria trip. What are you working on at the moment?

Frank Leder: Yes, I’m back in my studio this week, alone, as the rest of the team is still on holiday. We have just finished delivering the Spring/Summer 2026 collection to our stores, are currently collecting orders for Fall/Winter 2026, and beginning to source fabrics for the following Spring/Summer season.

Being alone in the studio allows me to focus more intensely on the design process for new samples, which I’m interweaving with other ongoing projects. Alongside building a new collection, we also work on more site-specific commissions — for example, uniforms for a restaurant here in Berlin, as well as pieces for private clients.

Lukas Mauve: What’s Berlin like for you this time of year?

Frank Leder: This time of year is always wonderful — the return of the sun after the long, dark months. I still like the city, even after living here for over 20 years [after his return from London — LM]. But I never really grew to like the harsh winters. Escaping somewhere else not really an option, however, as it’s one of our busiest periods…

Lukas Mauve: Looking at all the different projects you do — clothes, bath products, wall paint, furniture — I’m wondering what made you decide to lead such a polymathic professional existence?

Frank Leder: My way of working is probably quite unique, yes. I have ideas and

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Before we start: what’s up with the Tyrolean shoe craze? Not so long ago, Jan-Jan Van Essche collaborated with Petrosolaum on the ‘Tyrolean’. It was a match made in heaven that surely couldn’t be topped. Or so you’d think. Now that Footworks has burst upon the scene, there are the ‘Tyrolean Boots’ which — Hampus from Nitty Gritty tells me — are some of the most comfortable shoes out there. And that’s not all. This week, Neighbour posted snapshots of Footworks’ latest collaboration with Comoli. The result? A shoe called the ‘Tyrol’. There’s more. Regal Shoe & Co. makes the ‘Tyrolean’, and Needles recently released ‘The Tyrolean’, with so-so purple laces.

You could argue that these are just variations on Paraboot’s Michael — the quintessential Tyrolean model, launched 81 years ago, with its U-shaped “piped” seam across the toe, thick rubber sole and Norwegian welt construction. You could even say they’re just riding the never-ending wave of the Michael’s popularity, itself perhaps part of the even bigger and longer tide of functional-yet-weird, ugly-yet-cool footwear. That’s all true. But let me say this, and not just to ruffle feathers: some of these models might actually be better. As a matter of fact, they actually are.

Anyway, what I’m really here to talk about is the conversation I had the other day with Moritz Gottlob-Schönenberg of Cologne-based Gottlob. I first wrote about Gottlob in February last year. Not longer after, Jack Stanley profiled the label, and its world of joyful-German-handmade-yet-affordable goods, here. That was around the time Gottlob’s bracelets pulled off the impossible feat of being if you know, you know and omnipresent. They were literally everywhere at Paris Fashion Week last summer. Some people even mistook them for access passes to an event they’d missed out on. And they were right, to some degree, if by event they meant the good life.

Since then, Gottlob’s world has been gradually expanding, while Moritz himself remains the genuine, nice guy he always was. Beyond the beaded bracelets, there’s now everything from necklaces and brooches to bag and wallet collaborations. On top of that, Moritz and his team have opened a shop in his hometown of Cologne, which also functions as the label’s office and studio. Moritz and I jumped on a call to catch up and — it turned out — talk serendipity, work in progress, Oscar Isaac, drug dealers, doing what feels good, and the benefits of not really knowing what it is you’re doing. Moritz also kindly shared images of forthcoming releases, including a collaboration with the German footwear masters at Brütting.

Lukas Mauve: How’s life in Cologne, Moritz?

Moritz Gottlob: Very good. Very busy. I’m in my shop now. There’s still a lot to do, but it’s nice to have a proper place in the offline world — to sit down and reflect. There’s more time to breathe, to stare at the wall or stand on the street and think: “Why haven’t I done these rings I always wanted to do? It’s just one email away.”

Besides, it’s good to interact with random people walking in and to be part of the neighborhood. I mean, there’s this Italian delicatessen store around the corner I’ve been going to since I was three.

Lukas Mauve: You’re saying doing nothing is important to doing what you do?

Moritz Gottlob: It’s kind of cliche, but I was listening to this German podcast with a well-known psychologist. He talked about the idea that if you have a nap at lunchtime, you kind of have two days. You have the morning-day and the afternoon-day. That’s so true! I usually crash at two or three. I’ve got a hammock in the back where I chill for 20 minutes every day after lunch before going back to work.

Lukas Mauve: I’ve been talking to a lot of store owners lately, and my feeling is that running a store, especially in the early days, involves not just hard work but also a lot of waiting, sitting around and hoping for the best. How’s your experience been so far?

Moritz Gottlob: Obviously, Cologne isn’t like London, where you would have a lot of creative people walking by the shop everyday. But for me, it’s nice to be this outsider here. And you know, I didn’t open the store to be profitable or make money. If I can just cover my rent, I’m happy. I’m not tied to being here either. I remember in the beginning someone messaged me, saying “I’m in front of the shop now but no one’s here.” I was like, shit, I have to jump on my bike and cycle there as fast as I can. But it turned out everyone was like “it’s fine, I’ll just come by another day. I don’t have to have it right away.”

Lukas Mauve: You don’t feel people ever have this sense of cop-urgency when it comes to Gottlob?

Moritz Gottlob: Well, okay, some people do have that. As you know, we work with this idea of a lucky charm. I don’t necessarily believe in luck, but I do believe in serendipity, where if you move and do things, other things start to move too, if that makes sense. Anyway, there was this girl doing triathlons and one day she texted me “I need to swing by now. I’m flying to Mallorca tomorrow for a race and need to take a bracelet with me.” I hope she did well.

Lukas Mauve: Gottlob has had such a positive response over the past year. What was that like for you — overwhelming, stimulating, or a bit of both?

Moritz Gottlob: You know, I used to work at big corporations where you could give a good presentation and then, for the next four months, just drink smoothies in the cafeteria while everyone still says, “good presentation, man.” That’s different now. When I saw the first orders coming in I was so excited. I don’t know if this is actually allowed, but I would look people up to see where they lived, and go: “Why is someone in Wyoming buying our bracelets?” I guess what I’m trying to say is that, right now, Gottlob feels accepted, feels legit.

Lukas Mauve: And it’s not guys like me wearing Gottlob anymore…

Moritz Gottlob: Yeah, the other day someone sent me a picture of Oscar Isaac wearing the bracelet throughout the second season of BEEF. Joe Jonas from the Jonas Brothers wears them too, I think.

Lukas Mauve: Is it aesthetics or aura too?

Moritz Gottlob: I guess, going back to the lucky charm idea, it’s almost become like this tangible symbol of serendipity, of going out into the world and letting things happen. A couple of weeks ago someone messaged me, “I met this guy here at Coachella. He was also wearing your bracelets!” They’d never seen each other before, but connected instantly, then and there.

There was also this woman from the US who messaged me to say she had bought her son a bracelet. He was wearing it while playing an Ivy League football game, it got ripped and broke. A couple of weeks later he was studying at the library and a friend came up to him, saying: “Where did you get that bracelet from?” “Why?” he asked. “Well,” she said, “I found the clover on the pitch after the game and put it on my keychain.” Apparently, when she was young, she was the only one in her family who could find four-leaf clovers, without even trying.

I like to think these things happen because of the bracelets. That’s the idea I had in my mind from the beginning: when you wear it, good things will happen to you, whether you’re in Wyoming or Cologne. Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s nice to see Gottlob grow.

Lukas Mauve: What are you enjoying most about it?

Moritz Gottlob: I recently started asking people on Instagram to share their lucky charms with us — not necessarily the bracelets, just anything. Everything people send back is so amazing, whatever it is. It makes me feel like the idea behind Gottlob becomes more and more real, which in turn makes me curious what else the label can stand for beyond jewelry.

Lukas Mauve: You like that open-endedness — just seeing where Gottlob takes you?

Moritz Gottlob: It’s funny, in a way. I mean, in my past work life, everything was strategically planned out, with its own lifecycle. With Gottlob I’ve let go of that entirely. Helena, my fiancée, who’s an art historian, helps me a lot with the strategizing, even if it’s only by questioning things. I, for my part, just get excited and go: lets do this, let’s do that — let me email the factory. And that’s the beauty of being a small label, of course. We can do smaller runs, whether it’s sterling silver clovers — no idea if anyone’s going to buy them — or this shoe we’re doing with a German company called Brütting.

Lukas Mauve: Tell me more about that shoe…

Moritz Gottlob: We’ve actually done a small run before in black, but that was back in 2024, when Gottlob was still very young. The shoe we’re making now is based on the same model I’ve been wearing since I was like 15 or 16. It used to be the go-to shoe of a lot of drug dealers in Cologne at the time.

Lukas Mauve: …and you thought: I need those!

Moritz Gottlob: …Well, I’m not gonna lie. I mean, we didn’t sell the drugs, though we did have these fanny packs as well the shoes, trying to mimic that aesthetic. The reason the drug dealers wore them was probably that it’s quite an expensive sneaker, made by hand in Germany. Maybe it was a status symbol of some sort. I don’t know.

Lukas Mauve: And I saw you’re also working on another bag?

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The first time I posted about the Japanese label Gorsch was on 5 May 2023. A month earlier, I had set up an Instagram account under a pseudonym, without any real idea of what the page would become or why I needed a pseudonym at all. Looking back, I think I knew then — without knowing I knew — that I was becoming someone else, someone still unknown to myself.

I think I am that someone now, and no longer who I was back then, though I can’t be entirely sure.

What I loved about that image from Gorsch was the down to earth feeling of gardening — something I had never done — and, above all, of doing it in clothes that looked better than anything I owned or had ever seen. I couldn’t even have imagined that such a thing existed. Whenever I’m gardening now, wearing the beat-up overalls and rubber boots hanging in my father’s shed, I sometimes think about that Gorsch image. I haven’t created a life of gardening in Gorsch, but I do feel that the image captured a glimpse of my future-to-be.

Now that I know more about Gorsch, I realize that its founder and designer — Eiichi Suzuki — also taught me a lesson through that image. He doesn’t know this, but he will when he reads this. Gorsch, he tells me, represents where he is in life right now: nothing more, nothing less, exactly that. One day he found an old treadle machine, some tailoring instruments and three garments in an attic, and learned that they had once belonged to his grandfather. He decided to follow in his footsteps, and now spends his days in a small studio “somewhere in the corner of this world.”

Gorsch started in a village in Iwate Prefecture in 2022, but today, four years later, Eiichi remains a novice. That is his approach to garments. Since garments are his life, it is also his approach to life. I take it as a reminder that you can be a novice in your own existence as well, even in knowing and being yourself. And as a novice, you will always only be who you are becoming. “I focus on the garments themselves,” Eiichi says, “to go deeper into my own sensibility. Seven days a week, I’m exploring myself through my work.”

Those garments, available at around 20 stockists worldwide, including Maidens, Neighbour and Standard & Strange, are inspired by the people around him. For SS26, Eiichi looked at Ken Sakagami, a movement artist based in Morioka, Iwate. “What he strives for,” Eiichi says, “is complete freedom of movement, down to every corner of the body.”

Eiichi himself participated in one of Sakagami’s movement lessons. “When I tried moving my body with conscious intent, I realized how drastically different my actions were from what I imagined. In other words, even moving our own bodies as intended is extraordinarily difficult [and] I began to wonder — what kind of movement would the fabric he wears take on? What atmosphere would it carry.” That question resulted in around 40 relaxed, generously cut items — mostly shirts, trousers and jackets, and almost all made from different kinds of linen, from pure French linen to linen-cotton-yak blends.

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Eiichi and I met in the back room of a Paris coffee shop earlier this year. He was one of the designers I spoke about going to Paris Fashion Week without a showroom. The Gorsch garments Eiichi showed me were the ones he wore himself, along with a few others he carried in a bag. They were beautiful: earth-toned, slightly traditional in silhouette, with all the handmade twists and turns you could wish for. He told me about them in detail: how they’re made, why he made them the way he did, and with whom — pattern makers, dyeing artists, weaving factories, and many others, all nearby. It meant that he told me about himself, in reverse chronological order. I want to share what he said, without much editing — just his words, plain and simple, as he chose them then and there.

Lukas Mauve: How does it feel for you to be in Paris?

Eiichi Suzuki: I came here seven years ago. After that I didn’t leave Japan, so it’s been a long time. The last time I was here I was working for Frank Leder. I was his assistant.

Lukas Mauve: I didn’t know that. What was that like?

Eiichi Suzuki: I worked with him for three and a half years, living in Berlin at the time. It was a good experience overall. He’s really an artist. I mean, he’s a fashion designer, but in a very artistic way. I learned from him how to think like an artist. When I was in Berlin, I also asked some tailors to teach me how to sew garments by hand, which they did.

Lukas Mauve: Why did you leave?

Eiichi Suzuki: I wanted to start my own brand. I prepared for it in Berlin already. After 6 p.m., as soon as I had finished work, I would go back home and pursue my home practice.

Lukas Mauve: So your days were really long…

Eiichi Suzuki: Yes, long working days, but for Japanese people it’s normal — it’s not special to work from 8 to 12 or something like that.

Lukas Mauve: How did you meet Frank Leder?

Eiichi Suzuki: Well, first I’ve got to mention that I went to Central Saint Martins in London to study menswear. The curriculum focused on developing your own aesthetic rather than teaching it directly.

Lukas Mauve: …what do you mean?

Eiichi Suzuki: I don’t really know how to explain it. The teachers were giving a lot of advice on how to create your own vision or practice rather than actually teaching a technical skill. I thought this was very important in the beginning. However, since I had started later than my peers and was still relatively new to the field, I eventually began to feel that practical experience at work was more essential.

Lukas Mauve: Did you graduate?

Eiichi Suzuki: I didn’t. I quit in 2013 or 2014, when I was in my second year. And immediately after quitting I thought: what should I do now? I had started my studies quite late, and I was then already 30 years old.

Lukas Mauve: How did you cope with that?

Eiichi Suzuki: A friend asked me, ‘Do you know Frank Leder? I think this brand would fit you.” I didn’t know it, actually. But my friend got me in touch with Frank. I sent him an email and a portfolio and Frank just said, ‘Yeah, just come.’ And so I did.

Lukas Mauve: You said you had started your studies at Central Saint Martins quite late, in your late twenties. What did you do before?

Eiichi Suzuki: I was working for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I was a diplomat.

Lukas Mauve: Really?

Eiichi Suzuki: There are many categories of diplomats in Japan. I wasn’t ranked very high, just working with software.

Lukas Mauve: Where were you stationed?

Eiichi Suzuki: I was in Mexico and Bolivia, working for the Japanese embassies there.

Lukas Mauve: What was that like?

Eiichi Suzuki: I thought it was really boring. So boring. I knew I had to do something else. I even told them. Then one day I walked on some street in La Paz and I saw a tailor. I stopped to look and thought, ‘Wow, they’re making clothes.’ I didn’t really know what a tailor was. I walked in and asked them, ‘Please, could you tell me how to make clothing?’ And they said, ‘Yes, okay.’ And then I started my career.

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I like to think I’m someone who wears hats and caps. In reality, I never do. I put the blame for that distorted self-image on a storage basket in our hallway closet, filled with hats and caps that belong to me — their only hypothetical wearer. None of them are ever worn, though. Not even hypothetically.

Maybe it’s the narrow shape of my head. Or maybe it’s what headwear becomes in your thirties, when you realize you’re literally covering up. Whatever it is, something is holding me back. It’s not for lack of trying. That basket contains everything from an overdyed Casey Casey hat and MAN-TLE’s six-panel black-linen “R20C3” to corduroy caps from Evan Kinori, Norse Projects and Danton, as well as vintage pieces by labels as disparate as Agnès B. and Wigens.

All of them are nice. None of them are exactly right. That’s why headwear is up there with bottoms as wardrobe’s most difficult category. I mean, perfect jackets, shirts, and coats — they’re easy. With perfect caps and pants, however, you know they must exist somewhere, but you also know you’ve never put them on your own head and sighed in relief.

It’s a negative way of expressing a hopeful conclusion: the perfect headwear is yet to be made, somewhere, sometime. Besides, there are real-life approximations — hats and caps that come close, that are almost exactly right, that only just fall short of fully materializing their Idea. Every now and then you hit upon one. (William Frederick and Archie, I’m looking at you.) Most of the time, you have to conclude after a few weeks or month that this isn’t the one either. And so you go on. And on, living your mostly cap-less life.

A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon the page of Finlay Vincent, the young London-based designer behind the eponymous label. A Central Saint Martins graduate, he makes fully reversible, short-brimmed six-panel caps from reworked shirts, military tents and discarded wool. Only four get made of each one, no two are the same, there are no restocks, and they’re around 60 euros. Not bad. The story behind them — his story — is even better. Here it is.

Lukas Mauve: Where are you now and what have you been up this week?

Finlay Vincent: I’m sitting in my South London studio, looking out over layers of buildings. This week it’s been a lot at the machine, sewing a new batch of upcycled caps. I was given a bit of wool by my mum’s neighbour, so I’ve been experimenting with ways to use it.

I have to walk my new Dalmatian a lot, he’s helping me slow down. My partner came in a couple of days this week to work on the brand’s photography. Also, I saw the incredible guitarist Mansur Brown this Tuesday, which was phenomenal.

Lukas Mauve: You grew up in Kenya. What was that like?

Finlay Vincent: I was born in the UK and moved to Nanyuki, Kenya when I was 5 because of my dad’s work. The culture is very different to the UK. There’s more appreciation and reusing what was around; objects would take on new purpose, like bricks becoming table legs. I spent a lot of time in the clothes markets, which I loved. But you could also see how much of it had come from countries like the UK, which was strange to see.

Lukas Mauve: Have you been back there after your return?

Finlay Vincent: I haven’t been back yet, which feels weird considering how much of me is tied to it. I lived there for 10 years, between 2005 and 2015. My brother goes quite often, and every time he does it makes me think I should just go. I will soon.

Lukas Mauve: How do you feel your time in Kenya shaped your design practice?

Finlay Vincent: I’ve been thinking about that more often recently. It shows up more in the way I think. In Kenya clothing felt quite functional, almost like a uniform, something bought to be used and lived in over time. Just caring for what you own and reusing things or creating new purposes entirely. That’s definitely stayed with me. Things should have a clear reason to exist, and not just be made for the sake of it.

Lukas Mauve: Do you remember what it is was like to return to the UK?

Finlay Vincent: When I moved back to the UK, the amount of consumption struck me. I went on to study fashion at Falmouth University, who push sustainability and more importantly, time to actually make. I wasn’t pushed to work fast, but to slow down and focus on craft, which looking back felt quite radical.

Lukas Mauve: Your next move was to do an MA Fashion at Central Saint Martins, which you finished in 2024. What was that like?

Finlay Vincent: I went there to experience the other side, so to speak. It was fast, loud and mostly about trying things quickly. Instead of following that pace, however, I pushed in the opposite direction, spending two years developing a single jacket instead of 6 looks. I didn’t get into the degree show — shock horror. But I learnt the importance of being stubborn.

Lukas Mauve: Do you look back positively or with some regret?

Finlay Vincent: I’ve no regrets. That said, the MA at CSM felt a little like a vacuum, a bubble, though many in my class really cared deeply about what they were doing, which was a big positive. I did walk out of the show, with two fingers up to the industry. I suppose I was a little angry at the time. [See 1:17:20!]

Lukas Mauve: What made you decide to launch your own label anyway?

Finlay Vincent: After graduating I was working in a shop in London, and when it was quiet I’d be there cutting things up and hand sewing. It wasn’t even with the idea of starting something, it just made the day go quicker and I liked doing it.

Then one day someone came in and saw what I was making and bought three unfinished caps off me. It made me think there was something in it. After that I started cutting down my shifts a bit and just making more. I never had money to invest or anything like that, so it was always just using whatever materials I had around me and selling things as I went.

Lukas Mauve: Do you still combine the label with a day job?

Finlay Vincent: Not at the moment. I’ve been trying to give this my full attention while I can. Saying that, I’ve been thinking quite a lot about teaching. Making all day is great, but it can get quite insular. I’d like something alongside the work that forces me to step back a bit, to articulate what I’m doing and why.

Lukas Mauve: From afar, London’s fashion scene seems to be quite wide ranging, and hard to pin down. How do you experience it?

Finlay Vincent: Honestly I don’t think I really feel part of a scene. But I’m not sure I’ve properly tried to be either. I don’t go to many of the events or anything like that; I tend to meet people more randomly and that sort of becomes my version of it.

What I like about London is more the people you pass every day. That feels more like my scene than anything organized. The characters. Maybe someone you’ll never meet but you can kind of piece together a whole life for them in your head.

There’s this lady called Janet. She’s 65 and works at Gatwick Airport during the day, goes home in the evening and is completely obsessed with some Polish artisan she found in an old book once. That feels closer to the world I’m interested in — I just don’t always know where to find her.

Lukas Mauve: What are your favorite places to visit in London?

Finlay Vincent: Bertha DocHouse in Bloomsbury for niche documentaries; Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Lates on a Friday, when you don’t really know who’s playing; the Rotherhithe Picture Research Library, which is full of old photos of clothing from every era. And my guilty pleasure at the moment is Heytea for boba tea.

For clothing, Blue Mountain School is probably the one I check in on most, alongside Jake’s on Vyner Street. I’ve also just started a small shop to sell some of my stuff above the studio in an abandoned industrial kitchen. I’ve called it “The Shop.” It has caps and bags on a sheet, with tea and biscuits.

Lukas Mauve: Could you give me a sense of what your design process looks like on a weekly basis?

Finlay Vincent: I begin by going out and sourcing materials locally, just around secondhand shops and fabric places. Then it shifts into making. By the middle of the week I’m at the machine most of the time, working through whatever I’ve picked up. At the moment I’m trying to keep it to around five caps a week, and a few bags alongside that. I like having that loose target because it gives me something to return to each day.

Fridays I try to step away from making a bit and shoot everything. That’s usually for the website, but also just out on the street taking photos of the caps on whoever I come across. I like finding characters that way, it feels more natural than setting something up and it’s also much cheaper…

Lukas Mauve: You mentioned earlier that sometimes you’re also giving some fabric to work with?

Finlay Vincent: Yes, quite a bit comes through people I know. Friends will drop things off, or I’ll be given a random piece of clothing that I wouldn’t have thought to look for. That’s usually where the more interesting pieces come from. A lot comes from charity shops, though — just seeing what I can find, and picking up things if I like the pattern. There are a few fabric shops near me in Shepherds’ Bush I go to that have scrap bins which I’ll dig through as they refill on Mondays. Also eBay sometimes if I’m looking for something specific, like old military fabrics.

Lukas Mauve: What’s the significance of upcycling, creatively speaking?

Finlay Vincent: It just removed a bit of control from me, which I like. You’re not starting from nothing, you’re responding to what’s already there. Most of the time that makes things better, because you end up with an object you couldn’t have planned. But it also means you have to be quite honest about whether something actually feels good or not. If it doesn’t work as an object and isn’t valued by someone, it doesn’t matter how “sustainable” it is, it will get thrown away like the fabric itself had been! I like that tension though. It keeps the practice from becoming too clean or too predictable.

Lukas Mauve: And how did you hit upon the design for your reversible six-panel caps?

Finlay Vincent: It started quite indirectly. During my MA the jacket I designed had a cap built into it, so the main shape sort of came from that. Then there’s probably something more basic underneath it, in that I wore six panel caps all through school.

The reversible aspect came a bit later. I liked the idea that something could shift depending on how you feel that day, whether you want to stand out or disappear slightly, and how it makes you think more about the difference in materials.

Since then it’s just been small adjustments, slowly moving towards something I myself want to wear every day.

Lukas Mauve: Last question. Where can people find your caps and bags?

Finlay Vincent: At the moment it’s mainly online, through me directly and at the shop, which I run over the weekends. I’ve tried a few stockists and stalls, including Goodhood here in London, and they’ve sold well, so I’m definitely open to that side of things. It’s just not something I’m rushing into. I’d like to be quite considered about where it ends up.

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There are plenty of reasons to jump on the vintage bandwagon — even now, as some people with knowledge of the business insist it’s over. The closer you look, the more you realize how much of what’s presented to you as new is actually old. And once that realization sinks in, your desire to get the old — rather than some reworking or reinterpretation — grows. That’s obvious. But obviousness tends to need reminding.

I’m avoiding the word “original” on purpose, of course. After all, another reason vintage, despite its supposed imminent death, feels so alive is that it can still be pretty affordable. Jake Silbert is right that “dressing for yourself” — read: finding, buying and wearing clothes that feed your soul — “comes with a price.” But that doesn’t take away the fact that menswear has a price problem. There, I said it.

That problem becomes very real once you can’t afford clothes that are meant to be worn, made by brands operating on a more human scale. It becomes even more real when you realize that the kind-hearted people making them often can’t even afford them themselves.

I love Unkruid, but I’m finding it increasingly hard to love a €1200 breezy jacket, no matter how good it is. That’s because it leaves me with questions I can’t answer: is it okay to love clothes that only a few people can give love? Is it okay to be okay with scarcity if you know its a driver of inequality?

Yes, I know 99% of clothes are simply too cheap. Yes, I know good clothes cost much money and labor. And yes, I know you could ask the same questions of haute couture, but these ones hits differently and, I’d reckon, much harder. We’re talking about real clothes for real people here.

That’s what I like about vintage right now: it lets you wear and experiment with good clothes without needing to be an oil tycoon, or some 21st-century corporate equivalent. The catch, obviously, is that you can only experience these things if you’re lucky. No sizing options. No “I’ll take this in light brown.” No waiting for a sale. It’s pure contingency, now or never, wrapped up in one moment of bliss or despair. That’s an exaggeration, but not too far from the way it actually feels.

It’s possible to increase your luck, though. That’s where curated vintage stores come in. There’s an infinite number of them, but one of my current favorites is Swimmers. What sets them apart is that they hit a sweet spot: highly curated, extremely well styled, and very reasonably priced. Swimmers, which opened its doors in 2017, is run by wife-and-husband duo Taylar and Samuel Capener and plays a crucial role in the emerging Salt Like City clothing scene.

It’s the go-to place for vintage finds of one particularly talented local, Bryn Bingham from Brynner’s. After years of shopping there, he still visits almost once a week, working just down the street. “They do a great job of mixing in the high-tier vintage pieces with more niche or under-the-radar styles that I haven’t seen anywhere else, like this amazing 60s/70s French smock they posted the other day,” he says. Brynn recently picked up several pieces, including a pair of 40s droploop trousers and 50s Dutch cargos.

But the store also offers him source material for the clothes he makes himself. “My work references construction methods and details from vintage clothes, and being able to touch, wear, and learn about the history of these clothes from the Swimmer’s team is really valuable,” he says. “On numerous occasions, I’ve visited them and picked up new things that found their way into my own designs.”

Taylar (32) and Samuel (30) are both from Salt Lake City, where they met at a shoe release party some years ago. She was into sewing and rock climbing, he grew up skateboarding and working at a local skate shop. They decided to stay put to be close to family and the mountains, and because Utah proved an incredible play to find vintage at thrift stores, estate sales, and small town flea markets. After selling vintage on an online marketplace for some time, they realized they could turn it into a living. They first built a website and later a small showroom. Not long after, both quit their day jobs and went all in. A big new drop of vintage gems will be online next Thursday — more info (also about early access) to follow below.

Last week, Samuel and I jumped on a call to dive into Swimmers — or swim across Diver, if you will — to discuss fantastic vintage, and where to find it, the Salt Lake city clothing scene, and a 12oz Japanese cotton jacket he’s been working on.

What first got you into clothing, specifically vintage?

Honestly, I’ve been into clothing for as long as I can remember. I grew up around older siblings and their friends who were skateboarders and musicians, all with distinct personal styles. I remember being eight years old cutting up my clothes or having my mom alter them so I could mimic what they were wearing.

What’s it like to be “into clothing” in a place like Salt Lake City?

It’s a very small city compared to Los Angeles and New York City, but the clothing scene here is definitely growing, and vintage is very big out here. My favorite vintage store that I’ve been going to since I was a kid is called Decades. It’s your classic old-school vintage store and they have everything from every era. I still go there at least twice a week.

From what you told me, the process of turning Swimmers into a full time job sounds incredibly smooth. How did you make that happen?

After selling on this online marketplace for a while we realized it just didn’t feel uniquely ours. The biggest difference in how we sold vintage online at the time, which not a lot of other small vintage companies were doing, was that we always used a model and did “on body” photos. That helped people really see how something would look when worn, as opposed to just a flat lay photo.

I think to find success in this business you really have to love old clothes and everything that goes with it — not just the finding, washing, and mending, but also the ups and downs of spending hours searching and sometimes not finding much during certain months.

Do you recall the moment you realized the thing about Swimmers that made it “uniquely yours” actually worked?

The specific moment we knew we could actually do this for a living was around 2018. We were already doing pretty well online, and my wife Taylar found a pair of nearly deadstock 50s Levi’s 501s at a thrift store. We sold them instantly for around $3000, which looking back was actually a low price even then, but to us it felt like the best day of our lives! We both quit our jobs shortly after that — I worked at a local bakery and Taylar was a nanny — and around that time we started finding some really great stuff.

You told me about how you got into clothing. What got you hooked on vintage clothing specifically?

My older brother and sister also owned a vintage shop in the early 2000s, and I spent a lot of time there trying things on. My brother would take me to thrift stores and teach me about details like “Made in USA,” fabrics, construction, and that stuff really stuck with me. I’ve literally been picking vintage ever since.

Of course, vintage is a container term for very different types of old clothes. What kind of vintage are you drawn to?

Taylar and I are typically drawn to clothing from the 1930s through the 1960s, especially workwear. I also really love military clothing — some of the best and most influential designs ever came out of the U.S. military.

All vintage workwear was designed purely for function, which explains its simplicity and honesty. Every stitch, pocket placement, reinforcement, and fabric choice came from real use. Its just because it was made so well and looks so good that it inevitably became an inspiration for “trendy” modern clothing.

With vintage military clothing, I love that same sense of purpose. They were made to perform in extreme conditions, and everything was considered in a very pragmatic way, with decisions made out of necessity, not aesthetic. I think that kind of intention creates a timelessness that people want to replicate.

On top of that, clothing from this era was made from 100% cottons, wools, and leathers that were meant to last a lifetime or more, which I’m really drawn to as well.

Are you into any modern brands that use vintage workwear or military as an inspiration? What’s needed for them to pull that off?

I definitely appreciate certain modern brands well, especially ones that approach clothing with the same level of intention and detail that I admire in vintage. Brands like Henry’s and James Coward stand out to me because of their fabric choices, construction and respect for proportion. Their garments feel considered rather than over-designed.

What I appreciate most is when modern brands don’t just replicate vintage, but reinterpret it. They take inspiration from workwear or military garments and refine the fit, fabric, or finishing in a way that feels current.

There’s been a vintage boom in recent years, with some people in the business feeling its past its prime. How do you feel vintage has changed since you started in 2017?

Overall, I’m happy to see the vintage boom. More people are becoming knowledgeable about why certain vintage pieces hold value, and that understanding makes it possible for us to sell the things we’re genuinely passionate about.

At the same time, it’s definitely made it harder to find really old, great pieces — but that’s just part of the job now. You have to adapt and source differently. I remember not too long ago people would just toss me old stuff because I was the weird guy who wanted dirty, ripped-up work jeans. That would never happen today because of the internet and the hype around “true vintage.” More people are looking for it, and there’s much more competition than there used to be, also because of a growing awareness of what certain pieces are worth.

But honestly, I’m all for it. The more the merrier. I love old clothes, and seeing younger kids get into them gets me hyped. I can get really nerdy about details — buttons, stitching, fabrics — and I’m still learning new things all the same.

Where do you typically find the pieces you’re selling at Swimmers?

We travel a lot and step at every antique store, thrift store, and estate sale we can — mostly around Utah, but we visit surrounding states as well. Since our daughter was born we haven’t been traveling quite as much, but we’re hoping to get back out on the road more this summer. We’re also lucky to have a really strong local vintage community here that sells to us, which helps a ton.

From what you say, I gather that prices for vintage prices has been soaring. Why is that?

Most, if not all, of the vintage pieces that hold significant value are largely determined by the Japanese market, really. I don’t know if they’re necessarily overvalued, but Levi’s first and second edition jackets have gone absolutely bonkers in price lately, and we sold most of ours before this major boom. Oh well!

You mentioned you can get really nerdy about details. Please go nerdy on me. What buttons do you like? What types of stitching? Which fabrics?

Okay, okay! Well, I love “Laurel wreath” buttons that were used by the US Navy during WWII. They also showed up during that time on workwear garments like chore coats and denim jackets.

Of course, hand-sewn buttonholes are another detail I really love. They were done out of necessity on early denim and workwear from the late 1800s into the early 1900s, and even small manufacturers continued doing them for a while because the machines were expensive to buy. I’ve only had two items with that detail.

I also love finding HBT, or herringbone twill. I’ve always liked HBT because it was widely used during WWII for military uniforms since the weave made it strong but still breathable. We’ve had a certain hunting jacket that used HBT in the 40s and 50s and the fabric is just so good. We also had a war-era chore jacket that was made from a white HBT that was really beautiful and it also had Laurel wreath buttons!

Lately I’ve been particularly interested in early French work jackets made from indigo linen. The way that fabric fades over time is really beautiful to me.

Swimmers is an appointment-only showroom. What’s the benefit of operating that way? And what are the downsides, if any?

Swimmers was open to the public for a while, but we realized pretty quickly that most local vintage shoppers weren’t necessarily looking for — or wanting to spend a lot of money on — something like a faded and distressed 1940s work jacket. Because of that, we switched to an appointment-only model and started focusing more on selling the older, more exciting (to us) pieces online where there’s a larger audience for that kind of clothing.

The benefit is that when people come in, they’re usually very interested and want to spend time looking closely at the garments and hearing the stories behind them. It makes the experience feel a lot more personal. The downside is that the shop isn’t as accessible as a normal retail store. But for the kind of vintage we’re most excited about, it’s worked really well for us.

Right now, we’re in the middle of renovating the Swimmers showroom. It’s been a slower process because we just had a baby girl four months ago, so we haven’t been taking appointments for the past six months or so. We did open a sister store called Diver about a year and a half ago that’s open to the public. It’s a more playful version of Swimmers — less hyper-curated and a little more accessible, with something for everybody.

You recently launched your own line of clothing as well, starting with the Swimmers 01 Work Jacket. Why would an “old clothes store” start making new clothes?

Running a vintage store means we’re constantly handling garments that were made with great care, durability and purpose. Over time you start to recognize certain pieces that feel almost perfect because the design has already proven itself over decades of use.

One item that really stuck with me was a 1940s Never Rip-Um work jacket that I had found and wore all the time. It had everything I love about vintage workwear — great fabric, simple construction, and thoughtful details — but after years of heavy wear it was starting to fall apart. It was always in the back of my mind to recreate that jacket and change a few details to make it feel a little more current.

How did the jacket materialize?

Well, fast forward about seven years and I was talking with a friend of mine who lives in Japan and works closely with a few clothing manufacturers there. I mentioned how I’d always had this idea of making that jacket, and the conversation quickly turned into, “well, why don’t we actually do it?” From there he helped connected us with the right people. We also brought on my very stylish and knowledgeable friend Joey Johnston, who I had talked with over the years about this particular project, and it all started to come together pretty naturally.

Tell me a bit about the jacket itself.

The jacket is made in Japan from 12oz Japanese cotton serge and finished with corozo buttons. The fabric settles in and improves with wear over time and breaks in beautifully. The original jacket had a placket that crossed over at the top, but we simplified that so it buttons straight up instead.

And what’s next for the Swimmers line?

We’ve talked about exploring the same jacket in different fabrics. There are a few things we’ve been experimenting with behind the scenes — including a denim version but not just your average denim. We’re trying to take things slowly and make sure each piece feels considered before we release anything new.

The new Swimmers drop will be online next Thursday, March 26 at 12pm MT. Among other items, it contains a 60’s Sunfaded Red Track Hoodie, 50’s Faded Grey Work Jacket, 60’s Cropped Fishing Jacket and a handful of pairs of 60’s OG-107 US Military Trousers. As a token of appreciation, paid subscribers will receive early access via the password/link below.

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I spend too much time on Instagram. I don’t want to, but I do it anyway, which makes me think there’s a part of me that actually does want it. The thing is that — besides all the crap — there’s too much going on there that I wouldn’t see otherwise, and wouldn’t want to miss. Honestly, it’s not an exaggeration to call it a virtual place of discovery.

At times, it reminds me of the early days of YouTube — the thrill of finding rare footage of NBA games or Nirvana concerts that never aired where I grew up, recorded by someone on a VCR and then uploaded using a dial-up connection. Or, to go further down this nostalgic route, I remember when bookstores sold pocket-size magazines listing URLs of interesting websites, encouraging you to surf the web.

I like opening the Instagram app on my phone, scrolling through my feed, and seeing what Colbo has in store, that Oliver Church has hit upon a new fabric, or that Paul Mescal is wearing custom Carter Young. It gives me the same sensation I got when first reading the opening page of The Age of Reason: the great simultaneity of the world. All these things are happening at the same time, and they’re happening right now.

What I like most, though, is this phenomenon of highly and idiosyncratically curated Instagram pages that, I suspect, are shaping taste — mine, at any rate — more than their creators could possibly be aware of. I’m not talking about some IG-friendly, ready-made aesthetic. I’m talking about selections of images that are as aesthetically pleasing as they’re aesthetically confusing: they show you something of which it’s quite difficult, or hard, or even impossible to say why it’s so appealing, or interesting, or fascinating.

When it comes to taste-making, that’s a huge strength, an existential condition really. Think about it: you’re never going to develop or deepen your taste by surrounding yourself with only that of which you know it already fits your taste.

Right now, for me that’s pages like Jake Feinberg Show, Designing Writing, Saint-Martin Bookshop, De Architects, thv4gsb, Liam Battle, and — perhaps most of all — Herringbone Twill. Over the past few years, that last page has become somewhat of an Instagram sensation. It’s got over 57k followers now and, looking only at our shared connections, these include industry taste-makers like Gauthier Borsarello, Nick Wakeman, and Daniel Brøndt. With 3.260 posts and counting, the three guys behind Herringbone Twill are prolific IG users, sharing at least four or five one-image posts every single day.

But, you may wonder, who are they? Where do they find these beautiful, funny, slightly nostalgic, and always strangely fascinating pictures? What makes all of the Herringbone Twill imagery so unmistakably Herringbone Twill? Don’t despair, I’ve got the answers directly from the source. Here’s a first-ever look behind the scenes of this IG-era taste-making phenomenon, in the form of three separate chats with its creators: Albert Johnson, Colin Shields, and Grayson Thornberry.

Who are you? And how did you get into style and fashion?

Albert Johnson: I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and went to the University of Cincinnati to study fashion design. That’s where I met my two friends Colin and Grayson. I always had an interest in style and fashion but really decided I wanted to pursue it in high school, after inheriting my uncle’s closet — a 1990s time capsule, full of Nike tracksuits, Guess jeans, and graphic tees. I’m currently an associate apparel designer on the graphic tees team at Hollister and I assist with the Abercrombie and Fitch archive in my free time at work.

Colin Shields: I grew up in Cincinnati, and briefly lived in Atlanta, Georgia and Columbus, Ohio. My grandfather worked in menswear for most of his life, living between New York City and Cincinnati. His father had started a menswear clothing company that owned and manufactured quite a few classic American brands from the 30s to the 90s. In the 1980s, he also started his own knitwear company using strictly Icelandic wool. Along with him, my grandmother was an interior designer with an incredible aesthetic eye, devoted to classicism with a tinge of early American. Both my parents were creatives in their own right. My mom is also an interior designer, and my dad is a chef.

In my early high school years, I started working in a menswear shop in Cincinnati. Around the same time, I also learned to sew. I was already sure that I wanted to study fashion design in college, and that’s what I did. I, too, studied at DAAP [The College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning] at the University of Cincinnati, with Albert and Grayson.

Now, I work for a menswear brand in New York called J. Mueser. I do design and product development, overseeing our ready-to-wear line.

Grayson Thornberry: I was always concerned with style and the way I presented myself, from a very young age. I recall moments as early as kindergarten, talking about the clothes I was wearing and why I liked them. In one particular case, a girl at school had commented that my shirt looked girly, but I assured her that the tight, shrunken fit made me feel cool and that’s why I liked it.

I was an active kid and chose soccer as my sport. Due to its culturally stylish appeal, I was heavily influenced by soccer players and the way they dressed and did their hair. I fell in love with soccer cleats and decided I want to design footwear from a very young age. As the others will have told you, I ended up studying fashion design at the University of Cincinnati. Following my graduation in May 2023, I moved to New York City to design sweaters and accessories for Todd Snyder.

What do you remember about the start of Herringbone Twill?

Albert Johnson: From what I remember, in early HBT days we wanted a mood board to express our joint interests. Since we had class together and often needed to gather inspiration for projects, we figured it would be cool to start sharing some of that online.

Colin Shields: From what I recall, HBT was started as a fun and easygoing thing for myself, Albert, and Grayson to work on together. In a way, it still remains that.

Grayson Thornberry: The original idea was to create a place to share inspiration between the three of us while we were studying. We felt we had three different points of view that could co-exist, ultimately allowing us to understand new perspectives that would help us become better designers. We consistently posted on the account for years whilst in school as a common reference source. I was extremely grateful for such a curated book of imagery, and valued our zoomed-in lens of what we considered to be taste. For me at least, I can attribute a large part of my eye to the exploration we did through our page.

How do you feel Herringbone Twill has changed since its start, about five years ago?

Albert Johnson: Not a whole lot has changed. Our styles have definitely developed more and we have grown a similar sort of curation across multiple themes. I post a bit less than I used to as my time on Instagram is bit more sporadic now. Grayson and Colin really honed in on the style of the imagery that we are known for today.

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I like to think there’s a deep connection between truth and boredom too. It isn’t a simple or universal equation — “whatever is true is boring” — but if you don’t take our present-day world too seriously, it isn’t too far off either.

Let me explain. Some truths start out as opinions. Over time, these opinions come to be accepted by more and more people first as persuasive, then as plausible, and eventually as true. Once they’re believed to be true, those who deny them are called ignorant or stupid—or worse.

Here’s one example. When judging a designer, or even a single collection, consistency is now a crucial mark of quality. It’s no longer enough (was it ever?) to be good once. What matters is being good again and again. And again. Some buyers won’t stock a designer until they’ve they can repeatedly deliver that thing they do so well. This makes a lot of sense. But it also means you won’t be wearing an inconsistently brilliant designer any time soon.

We tend to accept what’s seen as true. Partly because we try to be rational. Partly because we have habits of thinking and doing. But sometimes it’s good for the soul to be irrational, to surprise yourself by acting and thinking differently than you’d expect from yourself. That’s why we need some Deleuze in our lives. Not too much, obviously. A little bit is enough. The point is that we need to be honest idiots every once in a while, refusing to accept what everyone takes for granted, or calls obvious, or sees as common sense.

And isn’t this also how real human experience works? I mean gut-level experience stripped of belief systems. You listen to a song and after ten seconds blood starts rushing to your head and you know it’s incredibly good. You see a painting and immediately realize you don’t want stop looking at it ever again. You read a sentence and you feel blessed to live in a world where you get to read that very sentence. Yes, it could well be that all the other songs by that band, or all the other paintings by that artist, or all the sentences by that writer, are crap. And that’s a bummer.

But then again, it isn’t. What matters is that someone — whoever it is — created this thing, and that thing exists here and now. And boom, there you have it: today’s theme. It unfolds in the form of three examples: a one-off designer chair not for sitting, made of super thin metal and crispy washi-paper, a chat with the Finnish composer of a phenomenal freak jazz song, and a long-read interview with Dodam Gwon, formerly of JW Anderson, now the designer of his own emerging brand Ddailies.

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Rather than doing another full Paris report (like this one), I’ll be following up with a couple of Paris dispatches. Don’t take this as laziness. I genuinely admire those who can make sense of Fashion Week as if it’s not the buzzing, no-time-for-lunch, highly impromptu, slightly overwhelming experience it is. Still, I also believe there’s something more compelling in trying to capture the feeling of that experience.

Today: my visit to the Maison Liaison showroom, where I met with Bill McNicol from William Frederick and Mark Clarke from archie, whose Autumn-Winter 2026 collections — exclusive images to follow below — were among my Paris highlights.

So, it’s Friday, January 23th. I started my day around 9:30 a.m. at the showroom of my friend John Ro, founder and designer of De Dam Foundation. He’s reinterpreting the wardrobe of early-20th-century Dutch modernists — all free-sized, in shades of black, blue, and grey. After that, I met Shinya Makino and his Maidens team at Man/Woman, on the pompous Place Vendôme. They introduced me to Eiichi Suzuki from Atelier Gorsch and Hiroyuki Kato from Senui, who also works at FilMelange. A few bits and pieces from our conversation in the backroom of a coffee place (€6.95 for a cappuccino) are here — more details to follow soon. My next stop was the showroom of seventyfive, Monad, and The Backroom Vendor, where I arrived more than hour late, for which I apologize once again, this time in public.

While munching a baguette, I made my way from Rue Popincourt to Rue Notre Dame de Nazareth, the new location of the Maison Liaison showroom — their best choice yet, if you ask me. When I walked in, Ben Stricof was there, obviously. It’s his showroom after all — somehow he finds time for it alongside running &son in New York. Perhaps that’s not as impossible as it sounds; I don’t know. Adam Choi Nordby was there as well. This kind-hearted man fascinates me. I mean, just look at his bio: “a Korean-Norwegian writer, lens-based artist, and mechanical engineer based in NYC.” I’ve got to chat with him sometime soon. Also, Lea Boberg was sitting at a table in the corner. I think of her as leading the next wave of tailoring for guys who believe tailoring is not for them, a group of which I consider myself a member.

But I didn’t come for Ben or Adam or Lea, of course. I came to see William (“Bill”) McNicol, founder of the great William Frederick. (Honestly, William Frederick the Great doesn’t sound bad either.) Based in Cleveland, Ohio, Bill makes some of the most wearable clothes out there — basically boxy, oversized silhouettes crafted from high-end textiles sourced in Japan, France, Ireland, Belgium, and Italy. I told him I would trade my entire wardrobe for twenty of your recent pieces and wouldn’t regret it. That may sound like flattery, but it’s genuinely how I feel. Besides, what’s wrong with flattering feelings?

The AW26 collection consists of about thirty-five items — or, broken down, fifteen styles in multiple fabrics.

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Anyway, I’ve been wanting to write these thoughts down for some time — and that time, it turned out, was now.

Fashion is always chattering — about new appointments, new collections, new drops, the latest trends. Every once in a while, something comes up that confronts it with itself and forces it to actually think.

Sometimes these things come from outside, like the heavy ethical-social-political accountability stuff. Important, yes, but not what I mean. The things I’m talking about emerge from within fashion, shaped entirely by what it is now and what it might become next.

We’ve reached that point.

First, because of worn, distressed, torn, frayed clothes — both old and new. This is the realm opened up by, and existing at the borders of, old clothes that look cool and new clothes that look old. Let’s call it the place where 1930s French hunting coats and Made in USA Carhartt Detroit jacket meet Camiel Fortgens’s fraying edges and AW26 Prada’s moldy, dirty cuffs. We’ll have to say more about this meta-phenomenon soon. Some other time, maybe.

Second, because some people’s good, nice or real clothes are other people’s boring or clothes. Call me crazy, but I’m ready to argue this rift — Blackbird Spyplane, Highsnobiety and even Throwing Fits on one side and Business of Fashion and some IG-guys on the other — isn’t about taste, or at least not only about taste. By that I mean it’s not your usual disagreement over whether this or that piece of clothing looks good. It’s about clothing’s goodness as such which, all things considered, has to do with its place in human existence.

At first glance, talk of good or real clothes may not seem very deep. You might think it’s just a simple calculation: high-end fabric plus wearable silhouettes minus corporate marketing equals good clothes. Think again!

To do that, we need to talk about Jean Baudrillard, whether we like it or not. Back in 1981, he published a book called Simulacra and Simulation. Somewhere beneath layers of jargon you’ll find the uncannily apt concept of hyperreality. It describes a world where the distinction between (tangible, visible, material) reality and its (textual, visual, symbolic) representation collapses, leading to a “real” that’s more real than real. Put step by step: representations first become indistinguishable from reality; reality then begins to fade; and eventually a fabricated reality takes its place — to such a degree that it’s preferred, because it appears and is even experienced as more real than actual reality.

How does this very French way of thinking apply to fashion? Fashion, Baudrillard argued, is hyperreal — more real than real — because it has ensured that what a piece of clothing says matters more than what it does. In other words, through media and commerce, its reality value no longer lies in cloth protecting you but to culturally signal who you are, what you know, or what you can afford. Besides, none of these things point to anything “real” behind them — just like trends respond to other trends, rather than to functional needs, and newness exists purely for its own sake, and in reference to itself, not to meaningfully break with what came before.

Others have argued that Baudrillard’s thinking applies perfectly to contemporary fashion, thanks to everything from social media to wearable technology, metaverse shopping and AI-generated/3D-printed garments. I’d call that a little lazy, and even a bit untrue.

Put it this way. All in all, for Baudrillard, the appearance of fashion is the same as the disappearance of the actual garment. Yet here we are in 2026, seeing the real, tangible, actual garment appear right at the heart of fashion. Look at Auralee. Look at ssstein. Look at Camiel Fortgens. By god, even Our Legacy’s AW26 runway show was called ‘Just Clothes’!

This doesn’t mean Baudrillard was entirely wrong. That would be a little lazy and a bit untrue too. But if Baudrillard was right, there’s a sense in which today’s fashion cannot exist: after all, it’s impossible for reality to be realer than itself. And yet it does exist, which means he must have been wrong at least to some extent.

That said, of course, contemporary fashion’s actual reality isn’t the same as actual actual reality — it can try to be, but can never fully succeed. The real garment, however tactile and wearable, will always also be a symbolic garment, pointing to something beyond the fabric, the yoke, and the seam. They didn’t emerge, nor do they exist, in some fashion vacuum. They’re not the opposite, the Big Other of fashion either. With Baudrillard, you could — no, must — say that good clothes, real clothes, whatever you call them, are inherently related to fashion. And by their very nature, they make fashion’s hyperreal look pretty, well, unreal.

A few weeks ago, this IG-guy criticized brands like Auralee and Comoli for making clothes that seemed, to him, “built to disappear.” He went on to argue that their actual meaning “isn’t in the clothes,” but in being expensive and hard to source. That was strangely on point — strange because the point he made sat right beside his own point. Yes, from the perspective of fashion these clothes are built to disappear. Their aim, however, is to make clothes not from that perspective. And yes, their meaning doesn’t lie entirely in the clothing itself. But it’s impossible for any piece of clothing, whether fashionable or not, to ever fully contain what it means.

I called it before (on 11 February 2025, to be precise), and I’ll call it again: the deep issue we’re facing here is that anti-fashion clothes are officially fashionable. Or, phrased a tad more philosophically: they’re now caught between having become what they’re not and no longer being able to be what they were.

So, what’s next? What’s left for us to do when the clothes we love are caught in a full-fledged ontological loophole, slowly — unavoidably? — turning into what they oppose, the more and longer they oppose it? For now, we can, or perhaps even should, adopt Kant’s strategy: accept that there’s no ultimate reality in which clothes exist independently of fashion, but embrace the necessity of believing in that reality anyway — and act accordingly.

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Auralee kicked things off on Tuesday. Last year it was still possible to write that Ryota Iwai was having a moment — and to be surprised by the fact that, despite the brand’s modest size, it stood its ground next to luxury powerhouses and designer veterans. It’s a bit different this year. With both a global fanbase and media presence now firmly established, Auralee is no longer the stuff of dreams. It’s what fashion’s reality is made of — in its colors, its layering, and even in its criterion of absolute wearability (or, as critics call it, boring dullness).

That’s true in a pretty real sense. As Peter Han — former menswear designer at Margaret Howell — said in last week’s feature, soms icons have recently passed away (Armani, Valentino, etc.), and others are gradually retiring (Van Nooten, etc.). It means we’re right in the middle of a generational shift. Auralee is unusual in this context, though what’s unusual today may well be tomorrow’s usual. There’s the small handful of younger designers who honed their craft and are now circulating between the big houses, of course. Iwai, by contrast, rose to prominence with his own independent brand, after a decade of under-the-radar, ‘underrated’ status, and without celebrity endorsement or the scaffolding of a legacy house.

It makes you wonder whether — no, even feel that — Auralee is paving the way for small, process-first designers to start from scratch and eventually go big. (To some degree, Our Legacy did that too — save for the occasional dip in fabric quality, and save for the LVMH investment.) I mean, there’s a lot of talk about Auralee entering the global scene, but very little about how it’s been breaking from it, let alone how others might move through the resulting cracks.

Look at me go, though — predicting the future of fashion. What do I know! Or, phrased as a question, which seems more grammatically correct anyhow: What do I know?

I know I arrived in Paris around noon today, and then walked from Gare du Nord to my apartment on Rue Faubourg du Temple. There, I met up with photographer Sven Minnis, and together we walked the twenty minutes to my first appointment: New York-based CSiLLAG (pronounced: Chill-äh-g, which translates to star in Hungarian).

Cole Star started his label back in 2015, when he made six colors of moleskin fatigue pants for a then newly opened Noah store on Mulberry St, New York. Shortly after, he started a seven-year tenure at Martin Greenfield — the legendary Brooklyn master-tailor who crafted suits for everyone from Eisenhower and Obama to Sinatra and DiCaprio. Around that same time, he was introduced to Emily Bode, working closely with her on her first few collections.

With CSiLLAG, he’s going all-in on informal tailoring and low-key luxury. The collection — presented in an antique dealer/collector’s home — is as small as it’s deeply considered: three or four pairs of trousers, about five shirts, and two tops. That’s not much, but then again it is. The fabrics are incredible, and every single piece makes you feel posh in the only right sense of that word: owning the ground you’re standing on. My favorite was a pair of blue/purple-ish wide-leg trousers, which Cole calls the ‘work pants’, made from linen and cotton. I took a picture, but it was completely blurry — my bad.

Next up: Thurston. I covered Fielding Miller’s foray into performance headwear here. His showroom — “not nice from a design standpoint,” his words, not mine — was pretty humble, but served its purpose well. That’s exactly what his product does, too. It’s grounded in the everyday life of friends and folks that, as Fielding calls it, “go out a bunch” — meaning: who go out skiing as much as possible. There are a couple of new silhouettes in new fabrics, including the High Loft wool Fielding mentioned in our chat. It’s all solid, and the fits are good.

Next, I met up with Peter Sherno to visit Maison Douillet. Clément and his brother Germaine have turned their atelier — part of a two-year residency they’re doing in Paris — into a make-do studio. Like Thurston, and like Conkers (below), Maison Douillet’s clothes breathe the air of the place they come from. In this case, that’s the French Alps, and more specifically, the daily reality of living in a French mountain town.

On that basis, they’re doing something no one else in doing, literally. I don’t even know how to call it. Luxury outdoor gear? High-end Alpine attire? Whatever it is, the different pieces — about 20 in total — have this amazing comforting appeal to them. That’s partly the material: a lot of silk, and varieties of wool (loden, yak, etc.). It’s also the design: extremely welcoming, with just the right amount of weirdness (a loose thread here, a raw edge there).

Maison Douillet also presented the mountain boot they made in collaboration with French heritage shoemaker Heschung. We’ll be hearing more about that soon I’m sure.

Peter and I jumped on the subway, heading to north-east Paris to meet Oliver Warner and Romina Ferrari from London-based Conkers. Their AW26 collection is called ‘local’, vernacular for your favorite pub around the corner. It also captures much of what’s essential to what Conkers does: local sourcing in London and other parts of England, building relationships with their community, and having tea or a beer with the people they’re working with. “It’s my dream to open a pub one day,” Oliver told me. He should, and I’m sure it would become many people’s local.

From that feeling of the reality of ordinary human life, Conkers is creating some pretty spectacular clothes to live it in. There’s some jewelry (a category they’ll be expanding anytime soon), accessories (scarfs and gloves), and about twenty-five items in total, from dry waxed cotton workman suits to hundred percent linen farmer shirts.

Last stop of day 1: the launch of Fray Papers, in an incredible cramped space, which meant that most of the folks were standing outside in the rain in front of a barber who was desperately trying to keep his entrance clear. I met the Camiel Fortgens team, talking about their furniture-inspired AW26 collection (more on that in the day 3 report) and a big thing happening this Sunday.

I’m typing this at the end of day 2, which was even more packed than day 1. Like last time, it’s the moment I realized a daily Paris report is completely undoable. But, as they say — or the Parisians in 1968 at any rate — demand the impossible. And that’s just what I’ll do.

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“Well, did that actually happen?” you ask. After two trips to Paris for Fashion Week, I’m still unable to say. A lot happened, for sure. But that’s always the case, anywhere — a ripple in the water, the sound of an ambulance in the distance, the murmur of people walking by, a sudden feeling of joy. What matters is whether it’s possible to act in accordance with the kind of happening that’s going on right now. What matters, too, is whether you’re able to lose yourself, to let yourself be changed by that happening in a way that’s true to who you are, whoever you are.

I said it last year, and I’m saying it again: Paris Fashion Week, in the end, is existential to a Rive Gauche degree.

Think of it this way. You’re here, wherever that is, and you know 99% of what happens is there, elsewhere. It means you’ve got to commit to the place you’re at. I chose to be here, so this is where I’ll be. You also know that maybe half of that 99% is impossible for you to be at, and that people will be talking about that half more than the other, more accessible half. I’m thinking of the shows on the Official Paris Fashion Menswear Fall/Winter 2026-2027 calendar, of course, but the showrooms you didn’t get into as well. And you also know you’re part of an industry-dominated commercial spectacle. That’s even true — and, in a non-trivial sense, especially so — for all those brands not on the official calendar. They, after all — and officially speaking — don’t participate in Paris Fashion Week at all. Instead, they’re doing Paris Market Week, where all kinds of fashion professionals (buyers, agents, press) visit showrooms to see upcoming collections.

I vividly remember the first showroom I visited during my first time in Paris. Despite having an appointment, I was first asked to wait outside, and once I was in, not to stay too long. That’s when I realized — for the nth time, I always forget, because I want to forget — there’s a hierarchy to everything.

My point is that everyone, from high-end to low-key, is there to make some money. The reasons vary, from profit-grabbing to simply existing. Is there anything wrong with making money? No. But — yes, there’s a but — it depends how you make it, and what you allow yourself to do with it. However obvious, it does matter whether a brand exists for the sake of money, or whether it lets money exist for the sake of the brand.

You can’t always know this, but I’ve come to believe that, when you’ve trained your guts a bit, you can feel it. And when you don’t immediately feel it, there are partly-factual, partly-emotional indicators. Let’s say you see a wool-looking jacket. Let’s say you check the material composition: 80% wool, 20% polyester. Let’s say you flip the tag and see it was made in China. Let’s say you also take a quick glance at the price tag: wholesale €125, retail €375. You still don’t know what you’re dealing with — some Chinese production can be good, and some designers maintain that poly can be useful — but the gut-feeling is starting to form. Trust it. Doubt it. Trust it even more, so it can begin to grow.

When you go to Paris this week, you’re also reminded that wherever expectations are high, and there’s money to be made, there will be disappointment too. That holds true for others, as well as for yourself. I have friends with young, independent brands who tell me every time just how expensive it is to show in Paris, and how hard it can be to break-even. These friends also tell me how nerve-wracking it is to hope for buyers’ appointments to come through, and how saddening to sit and wait in a showroom for them to cancel last-minute or not show up at all.

When I finally had my appointment with Man-tle last June, I didn’t have time to prepare questions, I forgot my phone to record the conversation or take pictures of the collection. After twenty-five minutes I walked outside — only to discover that a party was being prepared where Evan Kinori (showing next door), Camiel Fortgens, and the BBSPs of this world would come together. I left without a plan for the evening, deciding to walk the hour back to my apartment, passing parties on nearly every corner, where I ate an awful falafel burger before going to bed.

In all such cases of disappointment, sympathy is always the best option — for others, and for yourself. I don’t mean the “I feel sorry for you” kind of sympathy. I mean the gentle, deliberate, and empathetic recognition of struggle, of trying, of failing, of trying again, and failing better.

This, I reckon, is the gateway into what Paris Fashion Week could be. For a couple of days, folks from all over the world — literally, America, India, South Africa — gather to succeed and to fail, to feel lucky and be disappointed, each in their own special way, but together too. Sure, there’s spectacle, events, parties, consumerist madness, IG-coded exclusivity, too-good looking influencers, and what not. That’s happening, yes. But something else is happening too. The key is to maximize that happening, even if it’s just within yourself.

There’s the existential lesson. Paris invites you to be overwhelmed, but in an underwhelmed way. Its point, in the end, is to whelm — and for you to wonder what that could be, or else to embrace the potentials of that non-existing word.

So.

I’ll be in Paris from Thursday 22nd until Sunday 25th. During those days, I’ll be live- reporting what I see and do on my IG here and in Substack notes. If all goes to plan — which is unlikely but hey — I’ll be putting together a wrap-up feature sometime next week. In the meantime, here’s my provisional itinerary, so you kinda know what to expect:

Thursday 22nd

11:45: arrival in Paris
1pm: Csillag
2pm: Thurston
4pm: Maison Douillet
6pm: Conkers
8pm: Fray Papers launch

Friday 23th

9:30am: De Dam Foundation
11am: Atelier Gorsch/Senui
12pm: seventyfive/Monad
3pm: William Frederick
6pm: Gajiroc
7pm: Dinner with Gi

Saturday 24th

10am: Neithers (Impossible Objects showroom)
11am: Awaykin showroom (Camiel Fortgens, Wanze, Gottlob, etc.)
11:30am: toward(s)
12pm: Tarvas
2:30pm: Au Concours
4pm: Jan Jan Van Essche
6pm: Gabriela Coll Garments
(7:30pm-ish: Studio Nicholson drinks?)

Sunday 25th

9:30am: train from Gare du Nord to Rotterdam CS

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Not long ago, Han travelled to the North York Moors, a national park some four and a half hours from London. Being away from the city was important to him. It encouraged reflection on “more essential things — particularly the sense that once something has passed or disappeared, it doesn’t return in the same way.” It may seem a surprising thought for a fashion designer trained at the Royal College of Art, where Han graduated from the MA Fashion Menswear program. Fashion, if anything, operates like an eternal return — thriving on things passing, disappearing and returning again, cloaked in a type of sameness that usually passes for difference.

But Han is not that designer. Born in South Korea, he worked in London from 2018 to 2023 at Margaret Howell, the low-key icon of wearable, timeless clothes and — to quote — “one of the most important designers in [recent] fashion history.” He started at the company part-time in retail while completing his MA, joining the menswear design team upon graduating. There, he worked closely with Howell and Ioannis Chlonidis, Head of Menswear, and was immersed in an atelier where some of today’s most value-driven, most real-world clothes get made — all shaped by Howell’s singular, hands-on design ethos.

After five years at Margaret Howell, Han is striking out on his own. He initially worked under his own name, until launching a brand felt the right move. Now, he’s ready for the world to know.

A couple of weeks ago, Han reached out to me to introduce Fields of Necessity. The email was as unassuming as it was totally confident, much like the clothes in the lookbook he sent along. A few pieces immediately drew me in: the ‘Cashmere Base Crew Neck’, made in Scotland from a cashmere/merino blend; the ‘Clean Wool Polo’, also made in Scotland from 100% wool, with horn buttons; and the ‘Stand Collar Work Jacket’, made in Portugal from Japanese heavyweight corduroy. Are they game-changing? No. Are they going to shift the entire menswear conversation about style? Probably not. Will you love them and wear them to death? Absolutely. And that’s exactly their purpose, I’d say.

The brand is introduced publicly for the first time in Paris, beginning with its AW26 collection. “It felt important to begin there—quietly, but with intent—and let the work speak before saying too much,” Han wrote in his email. And yet, luckily for you and me, he was willing to say something, and much more than that.

During our conversation, he opened up about his years at Margaret Howell, what he learned from working with Margaret and Ioannis, how values—life experiences, really—translate into garments, why he chose to launch a brand and what doing this involves, and his deep appreciation for the most ordinary aspects of daily life.

Lukas Mauve: Peter, you’ll understand I’m eager to hear about your time at Margaret Howell. What was that like? What made it a meaningful experience for you?

Peter Han: “Margaret Howell felt like a place where the entire company shared a deeply rooted set of values. What stood out was that this wasn’t imposed in a top-down way — it felt more like a space where people with similar sensibilities and interests naturally gathered. While my initial interest was driven by admiration for the brand, the five years I spent there had a profound influence on who I am today.”

Lukas Mauve: What is it that you most admire about Margaret Howell?

Peter Han: “Her work feels essential, thoughtful, and deeply humble. She once said, ‘I don’t describe myself as a fashion designer — I introduce myself as a clothing designer.’ For me, that sentence perfectly summarizes her approach.”

“Margaret’s work begins not with fashion, but with fundamental questions: what clothing is, how people want to wear it, and what is truly necessary. This way of thinking — placing necessity and lived experience before expression — forms a foundation of modern menswear.”

Lukas Mauve: How do you feel she has changed menswear?

Peter Han: “This design perspective isn’t hers alone, of course. But Margaret has spent more than fifty years articulating it with clarity and consistency. In doing so, she has created a language that continues to resonate deeply with designers and people who care about clothing today.”

Lukas Mauve: You said that working at Margaret Howell had a profound influence on who you are. Could you tell me how that happened?

Peter Han: “Working closely with Margaret, the founder and creative director, and with Ioannis, the head of menswear, was particularly formative. It shaped my understanding not only of clothing, but of attitude, observation, and life. These lessons were rarely taught explicitly, but absorbed through time spent together.”

Lukas Mauve: Could you give me an example?

Peter Han: “One of the most meaningful experiences for me was traveling on location each season for the campaign shoots, often alongside Margaret herself. It went far beyond simply attending a shoot — those trips became a way of fully understanding the brand. Being on location revealed how carefully every decision was made: why a place [often in the British landscape — LM] was chosen, how garments were styled, and how restraint often mattered more than expression. Margaret’s presence was quiet and precise, and her attention to small details consistently shaped the final outcome.

“Over time, these experiences taught me that the brand isn’t defined by the clothes alone, but by the context they’re placed in — light, atmosphere, and pacing as much as design. That understanding has stayed with me and continues to inform how I approach my work.”

Lukas Mauve: What was your role within Margaret Howell’s menswear team?

Read more

It definitely feels as if we’re onto a good start. That’s leaving aside the terrible state of the world right now, of course. Is that possible? No. Is that impossible? Also no. I’ve started writing occasional features for Highsnobiety, which is definitely as exciting as it’s surreal. I’m particularly happy with this one, on the former Louis Vuitton finance guy weaving fabric for some of the best French brands out there, including Maison Douillet, Jean Laumet and Burgaud.

That said, it also comes with some discomfort and anxiety.

When I started this newsletter after leaving academia, I promised myself to always remain an amateur with a beginner’s mind, whatever might happen. Fast forward to today, it turns out that not knowing things is much harder than believing it’s important that you do. One reason the notion of being a “professional” didn’t catch on — I’m talking about the nineteenth century here — was that being paid to act upon your natural curiosity was seen as an insult. They were all rich white men, but I get what they were saying. And it can be taken a step further, I’d say. It’s not about actually getting paid; it’s about allowing yourself to turn into someone who’s payable.

Besides, the moment you become professionally invested in something — whether that’s because your readership is growing, or because you’re making some money from what you do, or because you come to see yourself that way — you get into a situation where you suddenly have something to lose. Be it your readers, your income, or worse, your ego.

“Why are other newsletters getting so many paid subscribers? Are they doing something I’m not doing? Should I be doing that too? Am I even able to do that? Is this the right place for me at all? Do I know anything about this stuff? Do I even like clothes all that much? Who am I kidding? You said you’d never tell other people what to wear — and at the first opportunity you get, there you go doing exactly that. You don’t even know what to wear yourself. I’m a terrible person.”

That’s the kind of inner spiral the feeling of doing well can get you into.

But let’s forget about me. From a broader perspective, 2026 could be a turning point for the menswear we love. Rather than predictions, let me voice what I’m seeing, feeling, daydreaming — in no particular order.

I would like the brands and makers I and others are covering to be freed from well-intended, but ultimately subtly condescending labels: small, under-the-radar, independent, crafty. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these labels, but they tend to define things s by what they lack or are not. As if “big,” “on the radar,” “established,” “large-scale” are — and will forever be — the standards against which everything else must measure up.

When that happens, these small brands might actually make the big ones better or, who knows, make them run out of business. I mean, it has apparently become accepted now to say you don’t buy a €650 Margiela shirt for the quality of the fabric or construction. There are two options to put an end to that. Either capitalism dies or people — including those working at Margiela — come to realize you can buy 2,5 shirts by Camisas Manolo for that money. We all know which option is more likely.

This year could also be the year that good menswear has its minimalist, natural-fabric, and black-brown-or-taupe-colored feathers shaken. I’m not saying I hope it will happen — only that I can feel it happening, both outside and within myself.

We’ve seen the occasional red and purple this season, but the Auralee color palette has yet to burst onto others. We’re witnessing signs of weirdness entering the menswear conversation beyond Camiel Fortgens: trashed pieces from Ancellm or Edward Cumin, paint-splattered vintage stuff offered by taste-making boutiques like Swimmers or Snagged Rags; and indigenous aesthetics from regions in India and China, through brands like Itoh and ZAMX. On that note: place-basedness has been driving good menswear in recent years, but the number of places the brands we wear come from has remained extremely limited. Let’s change that shall we?

Likewise, outdoorsy silhouettes are moving beyond the technical gorp-realm — and in the process they’re getting entirely stripped of synthetics, instead made from cotton, (loden!) wool, and silk. I said it last April, and I’ll say it again: I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before brands like Ranra are stocked at the Neighbours of this world. Working is already doing some of that work, and so is Thurston.

Finally — and I apologize for saying this, in a way — I see us moving beyond a focus on clothes for the sake of fabric, or even clothes for the sake of clothes. I don’t mean we’ll be returning to narratives or concepts, god no. I feel like we’ve established what good (well-made, well-fitting) clothes are, and are now ready to explore how they’re part of, and what role they play in, the good life.

Since we’ve already established that no commercial object whatsoever, including clothes, will guarantee a good life, this might involve more than you’d think. Put it this way: I feel there’s a relation between combining a Gajiroc hoodie with a ‘70s Carhartt Detroit Jacket, Hans Reichel playing his daxophone, and an interior by Josef Hoffmann, and I really want to know what it is. That’s the kind of thing menswear is about too, as far as my 2026 is concerned.

So much for New Year’s reflections. The gist: we’re back, and moving forward. Also — why not start the year by leaving a like, sharing this post, recommending us to friends and family, or subscribing/upgrading? Any of these things, let alone all of them at once, are appreciated. Thank you!

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A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that the post-beanie world is upon us. I might have been wrong. But then again, 2025 was the year performativity shook off its character as the of dusty university-hall-full-of-students-discussing-J.L.-Austin concept it once was, and found widespread social media use. My basic point, at any rate, was that beanies might be good (like this one by Dana Lee Brown), but other types of headwear are becoming better and better. I really like what Tokyo-based brand Nine Tailor is doing. They’ve got everything, from fur dill caps, chunky flap caps, wool flight caps, pom pom knit hats, and Basque hats. But some of Cawley’s styles top them all when it comes to wearable weirdness.

Another designer leading the post-beanie pack — yes, okay, he also does beanies — is Fielding Miller from Thurston. I mentioned him in an earlier feature, but it’s time for a proper introduction. A couple of weeks ago, we jumped on a call to talk about whatever was needed to make sense of his incredibly fast rise. I mean, he got his first collection of high-performance-driven headwear ready after the buyers’ deadline for AW25, and it still found its way to some fifteen taste-making stockists, including Ven.Space, Neighbour, Understory, Rising Star Laundry, and Nepenthes.

Some of his styles, like the sold-out Wind Pro Alpine Hat, can be hard to pull off. But maybe that’s just me. Though not a fashionista (his words), Rhys Kearns — formerly at Norse Projects — definitely can, and so can Frederick Sellier from thv4gsb. That said, we’re talking about a function-first product here, meant to keep you warm on snowy slopes, not make your urban life easy. Take the Alpine Hat itself. This is a superfleece that’s designed to offer four times the wind resistance of literally any other hat in your closet.

What got Fielding into this? What’s his take on men’s headwear? What’s next for Thurston? And how do you get hold of new products before they’re sold out? Here we go.

Lukas Mauve: Hey Fielding, thanks for agreeing to this conversation. Where are you now and what have you been up to this first week of the new year?

Fielding Miller: “I’m in Aspen and we’re getting some snow so I’ve been skiing. But mainly I’ve been working on getting product from British Columbia to here, and bringing that to the market.”

Lukas Mauve: How are the preparations for Paris Fashion Week going?

Fielding Miller: “I haven’t had much time for outreach other than the stores I’m working with and people I’ve already been in touch with, but that’s the main focus anyway. I’m looking forward to seeing people. Along with the product, people are the point.”

Lukas Mauve: In this post-beanie I did, I placed you at the forefront of a new wave in men’s headwear — exploring unconventional, experimental styles. How do you look at that?

Fielding Miller: “From Thurston, I look at it with gratitude, because it’s surreal to get that kind of recognition. But I also look at it with some wariness, because the product comes from a pure desire for functionality and versatility, not ‘fashion’, even if that’s what it ultimately is.”

Lukas Mauve: I feel some of the styles you’ve been releasing, especially the Alpine Hat, is already quite adventurous.

Fielding Miller: “It’s not the case for me because that style references a hat I found in my parents’ basement that my dad used to ski in when I was a little kid. It was a Patagonia style called the Synchilla Alpine Hat. I reinterpreted it, updating it in a denser Wind Pro fleece.”

“The reason I started with this style is because it was just, quite honestly, a simpler silhouette for me to figure out how to create a pattern for, compared to a classic beanie shape. It’s one piece of flat fabric folded over and then sewn. And not to be like, ‘oh, I was ahead of it’ or anything, but no one I knew was wearing this style. For skiing and snowboarding, hats are a great way to express yourself. I liked it because it was different and more functional than all the crappy disposable beanies that were so pervasive.”

Lukas Mauve: It’s been consistently sold out on your website, right?

Fielding Miller: “I didn’t have as many, and I ended up reserving the remainder for wholesale. It was my first product, and there was more interest than I anticipated. An updated version will be available to Thurston newsletter subscribers on the 12th of this month. It will be slightly less tall, making it more easily wearable, with improved needlework.”

Lukas Mauve: Your list of stockists is quite impressive, also considering the fact that many of them — like Neighbour and Lost & Found — are fashion-forward boutiques rarely picking performance-oriented gear. What do you make of that?

Fielding Miller: “I wanted the product to be available in both the most respected gear shops as well as the most respected fashion-forward boutiques. Operating in both of those worlds seemed like the most interesting way to work on this and meet people. All outstanding stores are places of discovery, and the fashion-forward ones thrive on offering emerging products with carefully-considered use of exceptional materials. That’s what I’m focused on, so to have it be a fit is validating.”

Lukas Mauve: Can you tell me about your first account?

Fielding Miller: “Yeah, it’s called Performance Ski, here in Aspen. It’s right off the Aspen mountain Gondola Plaza, and they’re world-class merchants. It was the first store I approached, and their support — especially so late in the season — meant a lot. Thank you to Dairinn Bowers.”

Lukas Mauve: What was your next move after getting that first account?

Fielding Miller: “I went to New York City and while I was there I met Chris Green from Ven. Space. I just went to the store, he was right there watering the plants. I introduced myself, asked if I could have a moment of his time, and told him I’m a skier and snowboarder focused on creating the best possible headwear. He immediately got the product and that was a huge break. He was asking thoughtful questions, offering helpful solutions, texting Saager from Neighbour pictures of the product on the spot. He’s helped so much.”

“After I got back from New York, I took a massive Western-North American road trip, sleeping in the back of my truck. I went through all of the major ski towns as well as all of the major cities — Vancouver, to see Neighbour, Seattle, to see Windthrow, Los Angeles, to see Mohawk General Store, and the Bay Area to see Understory and Rising Star Laundry.”

Lukas Mauve: When you say Chris Green from Ven. Space “got it,” what do you mean exactly?

Fielding Miller: “He seemed to appreciate the quality and the positioning, and that no one was giving the category this treatment. I also remember him saying he loved that I didn’t put any logos on it. He went to a mirror, tried the pieces on and right away was like: ‘Yeah, we can sell these.’ I could tell he knows what he likes and what he doesn’t, so I could feel his confidence in the product. He has a good eye for clothing, and he’s also a high-level runner, so he got both aspects.”

Lukas Mauve: I know it’s been a challenge for you to keep Thurston products in stock, both on your own website and for your retailers. Could you explain why that is?

Fielding Miller: “I had to work through some initial production delays. It’s a small, year-zero, bootstrapped project. Also, I prioritized accounts over the website. Any account that ordered before fall got what they wanted, when they wanted it, in one clean delivery. If retailers are out of stock, it’s because they’ve sold through, which was the objective.”

Lukas Mauve: Let’s look ahead. What new styles are you working on at the moment?

Fielding Miller: “Along with updates to the original, foundational styles [the Balaclava, Beanies, Skull Cap, and Alpine Hat — LM] there’s a High Loft Wool style which will come out next week. Upcoming developments include hot-weather product, increased usage of natural fibers, and more advanced designs.”

Lukas Mauve: And what new fabrics will you be using for them?

Fielding Miller: “Many are still in testing, but for example this new High Loft Wool is one I’ve used extensively and loved. I don’t know of anyone else using it. It’s made by Polartec on the same machines as Alpha [once developed specifically for the U.S. Special Forces — LM], but uses fine merino wool, and is in Polartec’s High Loft line. Like Power Wool, you get all the benefits of wool next to skin along with increased durability. But with only wool on the face and back, and a more open knit structure, it has a unique airy feel, and a natural look.”

Lukas Mauve: What’s been driving you to explore these new directions, in terms of styles and fabrics?

Fielding Miller: “I’m creating the products I wish existed for all conditions. Most of these start with materials. Some start with shapes, but are only ultimately enabled by the right material. There’s a big backlog at this point, but I’m very carefully developing foundational styles that deserve to continue to exist.”

Lukas Mauve: In the post-beanie piece I mentioned earlier, I started from a divide between the “synthetic” and “natural” camps in men’s headwear right now. Does that divide make any sense to you or not?

Fielding Miller: “Whenever possible, I only wear natural fibers for multiple reasons. But if you’re moving throughout harsh environments, synthetics enable the most lightweight, packable, protective, fast-drying, and durable solutions. For example, Wind Pro is used specifically because it does things that no natural fiber material does.”

Lukas Mauve: A final question. Thurston is a Colorado-based brand. How does place matter to what you do?

Fielding Miller: “It does in the sense that different places make you feel different ways, and this place — with the people here — has provided me with a great deal of inspiration that has informed what I do. That being said, I’m not actively trying to root the brand or myself here forever. I think people just want to know where something’s coming from, and this is where I’m based now. I know I’ll continue to be based somewhere for the winters where I can ski powder. That’s what feeds my soul…”

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*Cover image courtesy of thv4gsb x Hanwag

As the famous Dane put it: “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” That’s supposed to capture a paradox: we gain clarity and meaning from past experiences, yet must navigate the present without complete foresight. The paradox itself, in turn, is supposed to convince us that life is an act of faith rather than a problem to be solved.

I don’t think Kierkegaard was wrong. But I’m sure he wasn’t completely right either. He clearly overestimated human understanding, and obviously underestimated our will to experiment and the existential promise of living in uncertainty. Put it this way. Looking back on 2025, do we really understand what has happened? And, looking forward to 2026, don’t we already know that we’ll happily take the leap and create some meaning as we go?

Enough with the philosophizing. That, by the way, was AI’s life lesson for Present Forever earlier this year: better stop your haiku-like musings, and stick to the facts — “after all,” and I’m quoting here, “that’s what people want.” As a response, let me borrow the words of Bobby D., spoken on May 17, 1966: “I don’t believe you!”.

But okay, here are some facts:

• Started 2025 with 700 subscribers, ended with 2,000

• 71 features

• 30 interviews

• 3 finished series (“Tyrolean Futures”, “The New Americana” and “Dutch Fashion Guide”)

• 1 ongoing series (“Oh, Canada!”)

• 1 discontinued series (“Not I”) — perhaps it’s coming back in 2026

• I don’t know how many words (200.000, about 1/3th of Tolstoy’s War and Peace?)

Your top-5 favorite pieces, looking at the cold statistics. (The paywall’s gone on these— so they’re free to read for now.)

1. “What’s a Good Shirt Anyway?”, for which I spoke with Janny Jingyi Ye, Oliver Church, Carter Altman, and Atsuki Nakamura

2. “Handmade in the USA”, introducing some of the best one-man labels from America: Never Cursed, Of Nothing, Themness, Brynner’s, Slowboat, and Csillag

3. “Making Clothes for Real People,” my interview with Wanze Song from Wanze

4. “Do Brands Really Exist?," my interview with the folks behind Chinese brand ZAMX

5. "I Love It, But I Don’t Like It”, my heart-to-heart with Gi Tae Hong from Gajiroc
   

What do these facts and statistics teach us? Here are my best guesses:

• Present Forever is doing well, but there’s still plenty of room for growth and improvement!

• There are a lot of one-man brands, small-scale labels, and singular designers making very good, crafty clothes — and interest in them is rising faster than you can say riri zipper.

• That said, these names aren’t always easy to find, so it’s nice to have a go-to source. Present Forever tries to be that source, but it’s not alone, of course: Duchump is very good, and so is Wimpy and Louis Cheslaw’s columns for Magasin.

• Substack has become a force to reckon with for traditional media, and these pages show why. At the same time, each of them faces existential turmoil now and then because of, well, Blackbird Spyplane. (And I’m not even asking what will happen in 2026 now that Jake Woolf is sporting Comoli.)

• Perhaps because of this, brown/taupe-Japan-made-fabric menswear cool might be on the verge of a (“sameness”) crisis: look at this, and this, and sigh. We don’t have to agree with these criticisms, but we do need to be much clearer about our disagreement. How to love similar brands for different reasons — and different brands for the same? (“Good clothes” isn’t a bad term, but it doesn’t suffice either.) Why is true personal style selfless rather than ego-driven? These are some of the questions that will define 2026.

Should I conclude this year’s last feature with a prediction? Probably not. Instead, let’s end with a message I received the other day from an American subscriber. “Keep up the good work! You’re an inspiration — I hope to become as crazy as you!”.

Thanks so much for reading. Thanks so much for subscribing. See you next week, in 2026.

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Example #1: Some people create without thinking — and yet, the work they create is deeply thoughtful.

Example #2: Some peoples’ way of living doesn’t make any sense — and yet, the life they live is perfectly sensible.

Example #3: Some people say almost nothing — and yet, what they don’t say speaks loud and clear.

These examples suggest that earthly miracles aren’t miraculous to those who perform them. Rather, they’re seen and written and talked and thought into existence by others. Let’s call them miracle-makers. They’re the ones who turn otherwise ordinary acts into deeds of magic, senseless habits into little wonders, and dead silence into the humming sound of pure creation.

A miracle-maker isn’t anything like an editor, an influencer, or a media figure. They usually don’t get paid, or very little. They’ve little to no institutional power. They’re gatekeepers of nothing. They answer to no one, not even to themselves really.

That said, there are a lot of them, many of whom don’t even know they are one. They’re scattered across the internet, archiving ‘80s fashion magazines or footage of unknown and long-forgotten punk bands, zooming in on bread and cheeses and mountain villages, collecting found cassette tapes, or documenting interior designs. There’s no deeper reason, no hidden meaning behind what they do. The reason, the meaning, of course, is the doing — like growing vegetables on your balcony just because.

They have only one thing in common: they call earthly magic when they see it.

I’m going to do my part here and introduce New Zealand-born, London-based brand Au Concours. They’re still as small as can be. On their website there are two caps, a sold-out western shirt, an unreleased pair of jeans, and this unconstructed, single-piece leather jacket which has achieved some Discord fame.

But small isn’t the right word for Au Concours. It’s not small for smallness’ sake. It’s the kind of small that hasn’t grown big yet. That exciting feeling of potential, of coming-to-be, of what’s-to-come, of nearly-there has much to do with its founder Christopher Smith, who at 33 has already lived two or three lives on different sides of the globe.

A born-and-bred Kiwi, Smith left university at 22 to photograph fast cars full-time. At 21 he had been appointed editor of the country’s biggest car magazine which, in his own words, is “very bogan.” What does that mean? “Bogan is like New Zealand’s and Australia’s redneck. It’s, you know, burnouts and body kits and big wheels and drinking and drugs.” It wasn’t for him. By some sort of magic trick, within a year or two he found himself working at Alt Group, “one of the best design studios in the world,” based in Auckland.

Smith’s job was to transform entire fashion brands — designing collections, producing runway shows, shooting campaigns, hiring and firing people. Soon, folks around him started asking the same question: “Why the hell are you doing this for other people and not for yourself?” Yes, but where Smith came from — first his native town of Pukekohe, and later the “very toxic, hyper masculine” Auckland car scene — even the thought of being a fashion designer was considered weird. Besides, no one in his right mind would start a clothing brand out of New Zealand.

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If it wasn’t for his partner, and a happy-go-lucky Covid-move to Berlin, and next on to London, Au Concours would never have seen the light of day. But here we are a couple years later. I jumped on a video call with Smith, who was sitting in his Stoke Newington apartment overlooking the West Reservoir wearing the leather jacket, to talk about the brand’s first full-blown collections — 25 pieces for spring-summer and about 40 pieces for autumn-winter 2026. Afterwards, he kindly shared some exclusive imagery of what’s to come, included below.

Lukas Mauve: I usually discover brands online, but I first heard about Au Concours in a Discord group where people were obsessing over the leather jacket.

Christopher Smith: “Yeah, Discord has been a funny marketing tool. I guess we both grew up in the era of forums, right? At any rate, I used to be heavily into car forums and fashion forums, everything I could sink my teeth into. I’ve always loved the community aspect of it, and I’ve found that again with Discord a bit.

“It’s kinda funny actually — one of my best friends in London I met through Discord, which feels bizarre and very 21st century. I was in this group, where I posted my personal website, and he was like: ‘Hey man, I used to follow your blog like 10 years ago!’. Soon after, we met and started hanging out.”

Lukas Mauve: What kind of blog was it?

Christopher Smith: “So, I grew up in a household where my father was heavily into cars and my mother heavily into thrifting clothes. He would drag me out to car meets and car races, and she would buy me weird shit to wear. I recently learned that I was a very picky little kid — turns out I’ve been sort of art directing my life since the age of three. I would tell me mother her outfits were bad and that she needed to change them.”

“I went to university in Auckland to do a fine arts program. But at some point, I must have been 18 or something, I started this car blog — it was just me running around with my dad shooting cars and then writing about them. Around 2010 that went viral. It totally blew up. I had a big Facebook following, and got sent to Japan and all over Australia and New Zealand to shoot cars. I was totally wagging university because of it. I mean, I was like: ‘Why would a 19-year-old go to uni when he can be driving some brand new car on a race track?’.”

Lukas Mauve: You’ve got to tell me more about that. What kind of cars are we talking about? What part or niche of the car world?

Christopher Smith: “For the blog it was primary drifting. I was working with Red Bull and Mad Mike Whiddett, who’s like this world-famous Kiwi drifter. I would travel with him a lot to shoot at drifting meets. It’s a very big thing in New Zealand.

“There’s not much to do there. If you’re not into outdoors stuff or sports, then you’ll probably end up going to the racetrack in the weekends. The town I grew up had a racetrack — there was another one just a 20-minute drive away, and another one two hours further down. They’re everywhere. I made friends with the people running them, and I could just show up, get media passes to everything, and shoot cars.”

Lukas Mauve: You said your blog blew up. What made you stand out from the crowd?

Christopher Smith: “Honestly, I was just covering what was happening. It’s a similar thing with the clothes, I think: I was quite undeniable in a way. I was shooting drifting culture in a sort of artistic style, and I think people liked that. There wasn’t anyone else shooting like me. Others were more journalistic, whereas I was trying to do a panning shot at a tenth of a second with a car flicking in it full sideways, big smoke billowing off, you know — and with the right crop and the right angle.

“I was not really too worried about death, so I would be standing at terrible points, almost like aiming to get hit by the cars, until I got pulled off the racetracks. Let’s just say I would get quality angles that others wouldn’t.

“I ended up shooting for a website called Speedhunters, which was like this need for speed-based blog that sadly disbanded this year. It was the peak, the pinnacle of this culture. I’d always been looking at their photographers for inspiration, to see how they would make art out of something so bogan. My blog had a terrible name — it was called Freshly Whipped — but people liked it. Everyone would have my stickers on their car, and wearing my T-shirts. Looking back, it was absolutely crazy. It feels like a whole different life.”

Lukas Mauve: Do you ever miss it?

Christopher Smith: “Yeah, for sure. It was so right time, right place — me being in that New Zealand drift scene. I was shooting for all the major car publications. We had three back home. There was Performance Car, NZV8 — which was like this American muscle car magazine — and Classic Car Magazine. This was the one I liked most — I mean, I would be thrown a brand new Porsche or Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing to review and shoot. It’s much better than shooting a Nissan Skyline, at any rate.

“I already told you about this friend I met through Discord. After we connected, he invited me to a car meet in London. Now I’m part of this group of car guys, which is really interesting to me — it’s super modern and progressive compared to the car scene around Auckland. The people here also like things outside of cars. They’re film directors, writers, designers, photographers driving 300k Porsches 911 gt3 rs’s. I’m being indoctrinated back into the car scene as we speak.”

Lukas Mauve: Let’s talk fashion. After you left the car magazine, you got to working at this major design firm…

Christopher Smith: “Well, when I quit my job at the car magazine I got put in touch with a tailor in Auckland. This was for my final project at university. When you’re living in Auckland and want to get a really good suit, he’s the go-to guy. He has a store in the city center I walked past every day to go to university from the train station. I was always like: ‘Man, one day I’m gonna be dressed like that — monk straps, double-breasted suit, and all that stuff’.

“I ended up making a documentary about him, and that opened a whole bunch of doors. I just became entangled in the Auckland fashion scene, and soon started shooting freelance for a bunch of big brands and showrooms there. I eventually was picked up by the design firm.”

Lukas Mauve: Looking back, what was this experience like?

Christopher Smith: “I was basically being paid to learn how to run a fashion business. That’s the good side. But then again, I was designing clothes for other people. It always felt a little bit weird when they would do these runway shows. I was standing in the corner while the guy that fronts the brand runs down and goes like ‘yeah, this is me!’. Let’s just say something to what I did was obviously working…

Lukas Mauve: How did you end up starting your own brand from there?

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So, here’s what happened. I reached out to Caleb. We set a date for a video call. We had the video call. Caleb was wearing a loose knit sweater over a fleece quarter zip, speaking in sentences flowing like an improv solo. We talked for about an hour. I transcribed the whole conversation. And then, while reading the transcript, I realized we had spoken about bags for exactly two minutes.

This made me wonder: Don’t you need to talk about bags when talking to someone you reached out to because of their bags? Did something go wrong here? If so, who was to blame? If not, what was going on?

Before I knew it, I concluded everything and everyone was perfectly okay. Yes, I believe it would be nice for GQ-type interviews with designers to occasionally discuss what these designers actually do, rather than marvel at how above-average their lives are. But I’m not GQ — (un)fortunately? — and, in any case, I — like so many of us, I believe (I hope?!) — hold the positively odd opinion that you don’t need to talk to say something about what you’re talking about.

Perhaps that’s my own little counterpart to uninterviewable designers: uninterview the heck out of the designers you’re actually interviewing. Or maybe it’s just some sort of attempt to introduce non-duality into the fashion Substack-o-sphere. At the end of the day, if there’s no distinction between “this” and “that,” then when you’re talking about “that,” you’re also talking about “this.”

And what applies to literally everything and everyone, by definition, also applies to bags as well as to Caleb and me. So, what did(n’t) we talk about when we talked about Soup646? Let’s get to it. No wait, before you start reading, put on this playlist of songs Caleb and I exchanged — it’ll get you into the right state of mind.

Lukas Mauve: Caleb, if I’d ask you to introduce the brand, what would you say?

Caleb Jackson: “Man, I have a hard time calling it a brand. It started so innocently. It was just pure curiosity on my part. I wanted to create something because I was interested in doing it. But I only knew vaguely and intuitively what ‘doing it’ even meant.”

Lukas Mauve: What about yourself then — what would you say about yourself as the doer behind this doing?

Caleb Jackson: “It took form gradually during my time at The New School, studying jazz there. You know, jazz conservatories are notoriously regimented — it’s almost like going to bootcamp. The teachers are like these 70- to 75-year-old jazz legends who, back in the day, played with the most incredible, most innovative musicians — people who really, deeply changed culture. They were rebels, man. They had beautiful things to say and express.

“But some of these teachers, they had become the most stubborn, egotistical people I’ve met in my life. I went up there under the impression that I would be trying to create jazz like they had done when they were young. Oh, I was incredibly wrong. I had endless fights with my teachers.

“One of them I spent a lot of time with, and all he did was basically trying to shut down all my ideas — ‘It has no function, no reason — it’s nebulous. You can’t do any of this without first learning the fundamentals!’ And I agree, to an extent. But, you know, I was also like: ‘The people you played with and you admire, many of them just got on their horn and played something so pure — because it came from somewhere true.

“The whole experience drove me insane, and it made me hate the culture, really. It was just preserving a very specific time in history in a way that felt opposite to how that time was created. Doing something else was seen as stupid, dumb, and ignorant.”

Lukas Mauve: Do you think your fellow students felt the same?

Caleb Jackson: “That’s complex. I was surrounded by students, you know, I wouldn’t say privileged, but at least students with an abundance of resources. It was just crazy to me. They had the resources to platform their art, their music in ways unimaginable. It felt frustrating, of course.

“I really felt like that’s not what it’s about, that’s not what we’re here to do. We’re here to create something real — something true to the essence of the people we are individually, and collectively maybe. Also, I was very fortunate to have been able to attend because of a good scholarship. At the time, I was 18 and didn’t really know what else I was going to do. Like, I’m from a super regular working class American family. My dad’s an immigrant from Jamaica — and my mom is Italian from Ossining, New York. And there I was at this liberal arts school in New York City surrounded by kids whose parents are movie stars or own a billion-dollar company.”

“Let’s just say that during college I was feeling so outcasted and frustrated. As soon as I left I knew I had to do something that I felt my expression could shine through. I was like ‘screw this stuff, I’m gonna start something that’s totally true to who I am, and while doing it I’m not going to follow any fundamentals or rules or anything. This is how I see it and how I want to make it, and that’s it.”

Lukas Mauve: And that something is Soup646?

Caleb Jackson: “Yeah, it’s my way of following in the footsteps of these jazz musicians that I was completely in love with — like Sun Ra or Ornette Coleman or Coltrane in the later stages of his career. They really had to fight to say something, and man they did say it.”

Lukas: We’ll have to say more about that. But let me first check: you did graduate from The New School in the end?

Caleb Jackson: “Yeah, I did, in 2023.”

Lukas Mauve: How did that go?

Caleb Jackson: “By the end of my senior year, I remember having this really powerful experience. I was in an ensemble led by an incredible bass player, Gene Perlow. He plays on this amazing album called Night at the Lighthouse with Elvin Jones on drums. I don’t remember the exact song we were playing, but I played it in my own style. I made a few mistakes, sure, but I was really trying to experiment, to explore what I’d been working on. Mid-performance, he just stormed out of the room — he was so upset. After that, another legendary bass player, Reggie Workman — who’s played with both Coltranes, and countless others — said to me: ‘If your heart’s not in this, you should go sell car insurance.’ I was just stunned. It blew my mind. That felt like a tipping point for me.”

“But I will say, there was one teacher — his name is Darius Jones, he’s still playing music, a very out-there guy, in an incredible way, in the best way — and he was like, ‘I see what you’re up to.’ That was so important to me.”

Lukas Mauve: Okay, so — it’s 2023 now, post-graduation. What did your life look like then?

Caleb Jackson: “Well, I graduated and I felt exhausted. On the last day, I had one more talk with one of my professors, telling me that I had wasted my time there. He was right, I guess — and he was well-intentioned. My time there was, in fact, pointless. At the same time, there’s no doubt it gave me something to rebel against — which in turn has been absolutely crucial for realizing my intuitions.

“So, after I left college, I was doing a coffee shop gig and really just thinking over what I wanted to do. A needed break from the trumpet. Every time I was playing I was reminded of these people, these ideas, these experiences. I still love it, I do. But with the bags and the clothes I know I’m going to do it, I’m already doing it, exactly how I want to do it — free from whatever. It’s not something I need to really convince the world of. I just do it because I enjoy it — I genuinely enjoy it.”

Lukas Mauve: You make it seem as if you were able to make bags and clothes out of nowhere. Surely, you must have developed some skills, right?

Caleb Jackson: “Yeah, well — I would say the way I learned was like, you know my mom got me this standard, domestic sewing machine when I turned 19. Shortly after that I started going to flea markets in the city to find fabrics or jackets or whatever that interested me. I guess that just piqued my interest, somehow. I would cut those up and make rudimentary, like very unskillfully put together, little sacks — I wouldn’t even call them bags. It kind of just grew from there.

“During college, my interest didn’t really die out. I just kept trying to find new ways. I never really watched any tutorials or anything explaining how I should do it. I just went for it. I did have a friend who knew this stuff and he showed me how to thread the sewing machine — which at the time felt really crazy and difficult, but it’s extremely easy, really.

“Back then it was just a fun little thing I was doing. There wasn’t much thought in it. It was just an expression that I enjoyed, also because it had function. Soup646 grew from there. I slowly learned to put things together more efficiently, and I learned new techniques. My friend and I would bounce ideas off of each other. And then by the time I graduated I got an industrial sewing machine. That was a necessary step for producing at volume and handle the fabrics I was interested in.”

Lukas Mauve: Do you feel that there is (or was) any positive relation between playing the trumpet and making the bags — apart from the last offering an alternative to your bad experiences with the first?

Caleb Jackson: “Totally. Both are about the feelings I’m having and the feelings I want to express, and the things I’m trying to see and manifest in the world that I don’t think are there yet. For me, in the beginning, it was really abstract in a way, it was just about the freedom of throwing stuff together in a more or less intentional way. It’s was just pure experimentation, really. But experimentation that, in the end, led to something functional, you know what I mean?”

Lukas Mauve: I write a lot about clothes and listen to a lot of music. One thing I’m always struggling with is that music can hit you in a way — emotionally, I mean — that clothes can’t. Do you recognize that, as someone who’s channeling both registers? Does handling old deadstock fabric in any way have the same, raw intensity of playing the trumpet?

Caleb Jackson: “You know, for every craft it takes a lifetime to really get to that point where you can create something that might change your own or someone else’s life — that lifts you up to this place you didn’t think was even possible. I do feel I’m doing that now — to some extent, yeah, definitely.

“It has to do with the fabric, the texture, the history of where it came from, the extent to which you can allow distressing or repairs — to just see all that, and let it shine through. I really think that can create a lot of feeling. Put it this way. A painting can be really cool and powerful and it can deeply move me. That said, it doesn’t carry the same strength as a piece of clothing I would spend years using, and continuously look at, and of which I know: ‘wow, this person 50 or 60 years ago drew this weird thing here, and repaired this whole section’.

“It’s such an intuitive process. It’s not scientific. I do this, because it feels exactly right. I hope someone else, when they have this piece, will spend years and years inspecting it. That’s what I do, at any rate. I hang old textiles on my wall — they carry this energy, perhaps not as strong as a song or music, but still, you can really feel their presence, their influence on a room.”

Lukas Mauve: Do you listen to music when you’re making something?

Caleb Jackson: “Oh yeah, constantly. Like, music is channeled, you know, through my mind, through my heart, through my hands, into this material. I listen to these older musicians because to me they, in a way, represent the history of being true — the history of being honest and just trying to be your greatest good — dedicating your life to some expression. I really feel that’s the most beautiful thing we can do as humans: to just let it go and see it through to death.”

Lukas Mauve: And how do you see Soup646 developing, creatively speaking, or as a resource for expression in your own life?

Caleb Jackson: “Let’s just say it’s becoming more serious. At the moment it’s more and more about resources and time — about finding out how I make it work, how to manage production, what’s a reasonable amount of wholesale orders and how to balance them against my own ideas about what I want to create.

“It’s becoming a two-person thing now. I’m working together with Aliya Hidirlar, who’s based in Brooklyn. She has a fashion background, studying fashion design at Parsons. She’s really technically skilled and really knows what she’s doing — it’s awesome.”

Lukas Mauve: What does an average day look like for you?

Caleb Jackson: “I wake up, have a cup of tea, maybe read something, listen to music, and just pick something off of the to-do list — either create product to shoot, get back to people (which I’m really bad at, sorry, I apologize), look at stores I’d want to work with, and you know, or just spend some time dreaming. What do I want to work towards? What do I want to do next?”

Lukas Mauve: And what about the sourcing, then?

Caleb Jackson: “I love that. After graduating, I was obsessed — I just wanted to get into as many stores and markets as possible. I’ve this friend who does antique sourcing for a living. She goes through barns, abandoned houses, etcetera, in the Michigan area and on the East Coast as well. By now, she knows what I’m looking for.

“I go to flea markets and also buy from surplus warehouses throughout the United States that happen to sell really nice fabrics — it’s a risky business, a lot happens by chance because their website doesn’t really describe the fabrics. But they’re often incredible, like 50s or 60s deadstock duck canvases, or Swedish military canvases, like these super heavy, worn-out fabrics.

“There’s also this warehouse in Manhattan. It’s just like for stories of industrial packed with rolls and rolls of incredible stuff that. You know, I do want to be able to create products that can be reproduced, and not have to think twice about — like 20 pairs of the same pants and not just like one or two bags.”

Lukas Mauve: Where are you sitting now, by the way?

Caleb Jackson: “I’m in my apartment, and I also work from here. I moved from Brooklyn three or four months ago. It’s a bit quieter here. If I’d stayed there, I was going to be unwell, for sure. It’s such an incredibly overstimulated place. It’s mostly concrete. It’s really tough. You’ve got all the highs and lows of all aspects of life happening all at the same time right before you own eyes. I needed a breather.”

Lukas Mauve: By the way, you’ve got to tell me how your bags ended up at Nho in Amsterdam, of all places. I only found out about that after I’d discovered your work!

Caleb Jackson: “Well, basically, I just approached them. It came to me one that — I’d seen them a couple of times, and I really enjoyed their presentation. I don’t know, it just spoke to me. And they’ve got a really large audience as well. They sell mostly vintage items, but I figured my items could be sold as such, in a way. So, I approached them, and I was like ‘can we create a product that resembles the vintage styles that you guys sell?’. They got on board right away.”

“It’s been the biggest thing I’ve taken on so far, in terms of workload. It was huge. For three or four months it was 80 percent of what I was doing, like, day to night.”

Lukas Mauve: What was your pitch? I mean, I feel your bags are special, but I’m having a hard time explaining why — at least without using vague words that don’t do any justice to their material reality, their physical presence. How did you do that?

Caleb Jackson: “Honestly, I barely describe anything. I just kind of throw out ideas. Okay, well, I do say like: ‘I make pieces from vintage textiles from the 50s and 60s, let’s collaborate’. It’s pretty simple.”

Lukas Mauve: You don’t say anything about the brand?

Caleb Jackson: “It’s not about the brand. It’s not about the bags or the clothes either. It’s just that, hopefully, one day, this thing I’m doing will encompass everything that I really enjoy making — like a lifestyle ecosystem, you know, with music, visuals, fabrics. I won’t say it’s my own version of Ralph Lauren. But I do want to create, to manifest something that reads exactly as how I hope to exist in this world. To me, each day, each week is a step in that direction.”

Lukas Mauve: We didn’t really talk about the bags, did we?

Caleb Jackson: “Yeah, I apologize if this wasn’t the intended outcome.

Lukas Mauve: No, no — not at all. I never really have an intentional outcome. Every interview is driven wherever the interview itself is going, as if it’s some sort of living thing.

Caleb Jackson: “Same here, same here. It feels real. I think it’s the kind of output this world needs. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Lukas Mauve: And what about the trumpet, by the way?

Caleb Jackson: “Man, I haven’t touched it since graduation!”

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