Our debut collection
SS26, our obsession with capturing the clothes and feeling of summer nostalgia.
How do you capture a memory that feels personal and universal at the same time?
I keep coming back to that when I think about our first collection. We were making clothes and a campaign, but I was also interested in what somebody who had never met us might recognise in them.
For us, it began with the satin shirt. We originally sampled it with a tailor in Bali for a small group of friends. It was a relaxed piece of shirting with this silky appearance, a shine and a drape that caught people’s attention. I liked that balance. There was something understated about it, but it still had enough character to draw people towards us when we wore it.
Those reactions encouraged us to take the idea further. What might a whole range look like? There was a lot to figure out around the shirt. Creative direction, branding, production, the logistics of starting a business. Looking back, I can see how much our thinking has changed, but at the time the direction felt strong. We were excited by it and wanted to follow it through.
Film was part of that direction from the beginning. We tested both film and digital, and when we watched the footage back, it was the film that brought out the most emotion and excitement. That response mattered to me. We were trying to convey a feeling, and here was a format that made us feel something ourselves.
I think about that in the context of how much imagery we encounter now. Images and videos can be generated so readily, and there is already so much competing for our attention. Making the campaign with people around us and shooting it on film felt like a human, honest way to begin. Friends were involved throughout, with conversations and feedback shaping the process. Those exchanges mattered as much as having a clear idea at the start.
We called the collection Everyday Essentials. It was deliberately accessible, with clothes that people could imagine wearing in their own lives. I wanted the details to feel special, whether that was the material of a shirt or the way we captured it, while leaving room for somebody else to make a connection.
That is the part of nostalgia I find interesting. How does a feeling become familiar to someone whose memories are entirely different from yours? It was something we hoped the campaign could do, and something I still think about.
After the release, the satin shirt became our best-performing product. I found that particularly encouraging. We had spent so much time figuring out everything around it, and people were still responding to the piece that had started the whole idea.
