Displaying items by tag: American Apparel

They call me 'Mellow Yellow', arite? Total colour dressing is a big trend at the moment, you only have to look at young Irish designer, Robyn Lynch - see more here - to see the attraction.

It's a bit like colourful Kanye and is as playful as is it simple, looking the same from the front and back. It's part cult, part uniform but total sunshine, especially in this glorious yellow. Now, it just has to stop raining...

Credits - #Gifted - Yellow Sweatshirt - American Apparel, Sandals - Grenson, Socks - Falke #NotGifted - Trousers - Polo Ralph Lauren

Rolls Royce’s best customer, the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was the compelling, albeit fairly silent, star of the recent Netflix documentary, Wild Wild Country.

Dressed in his long-flowing finery he was surrounded by his adoring followers all wearing a spectrum of reds. 

Left - The cult's followers wearing their red colour palette

Also known as Osho, the story followers the Bhagwan, his one-time personal assistant Ma Anand Sheela and their community of followers in Rajneeshpuram, aka Antelope, located in Wasco County, Oregon during the 1980s. 

Right - The Bhagwan

This commune was a place of free love and followed the teachings of the Bhagwan. His taste for the finer things in life - 93 Roll Royces! - is part of the madness of it all.

Left - Uniqlo - Men Supima Cotton Crew Neck Short Sleeve T-Shirt - £9.90

The reason they wore reds was to represent “the colours of the rising or setting sun”, as well as beaded necklaces with a locket containing a picture of the Bhagwan's face. It’s fascinating how everybody is wearing something different while conforming to the same colour chart.

I’m expecting Pantone to release a ‘Bhagwan Red’ next year, which would be a crimson/berry red. But you can get in early by buying anything on this colour chart with no logos or branding.

Left - Berska - Bomber Jacket - £19.99

The community imploded, but I won’t spoil it. Let’s just say it makes me rethink about eating from the salad cart at the local Harvester!

Left - American Apparel - Cranberry Hoodie - £34

Left - Spoke - Coral - £89

Left - ASOS - Skinny Smart Trousers In Strawberry Red - £20

Left - YOURTURN - Dip Dye T-Shirt In Red - £12 from ASOS

Left - Ted Baker - Proshor Chino Short - £69 from House of Fraser

Left - Rivieras - Classic 10 Canvas Loafers - £50 from matchesfashion.com

Left - Buscemi - 100mm Guts Red Leather Hi-Top Trainers -£670 from Harvey Nichols

More Get The Looks - The Assassination of Gianni Versace - here

There’s something very millennial, and also sexy, about pink pants. We’ve not had a pair of desirable hipster Y-fronts since American Apparel closed its doors.

Left & Below Left - Boy Smells Men’s Blush Brief - $25 

Boy Smells from LA, known for their candles, has expanded with intimate apparel called ‘Unmentionables’. All styles are made in Peru out of premium Pima cotton. For colour, Boy Smells has chosen to further expand the brand’s signature pink with other neo-naturalistic tones: bone, buff, bare, and blush. 

On the other side of the Atlantic, Ron Dorff, the Franco/Swedish basics brand, has a pair of pink Y-fronts that will make everybody wink. Think pink for that underwear drawer refresh.

Below Right & Bottom - Ron Dorff - Y-Front Briefs - £28

Am I premature or too late, but does the closure of American Apparel signal the beginning of the end of the hipster?

Left - American Apparel is disappearing from British high-streets

This Terry Richardson-type wank fantasy of sports socks and short shorts, with a dash of the ethically made, didn’t quite make it. It had potential. It rode that early wave of ethical consumerism and sold items people need and use in volume. Basics.

It shoulda/coulda been a Gap for hipsters, but thought itself too cool for that and in the process shot themselves in the foot. If you didn’t wear gold meggings and a towelling headband you weren’t going to quite cut it in an average branch of American Apparel. 

Right - Ironic? Were you cool enough to wear these?

You can aim for hipsters, but, ultimately, you want everybody, something that Uniqlo seems to have mastered. And, if you're charging a premium you need to remind consumers what the extra is for, in this case, it was made in the USA. Selling basics is a tough job, these days, as it is so price sensitive. Retailers, like Gap, are struggling to reinvent themselves in this post-hipster market. Maybe they should adopt the best bits of American Apparel and add some contemporary sex appeal to their image.

American Apparel was like one of those scowling cool kids who doesn’t say much, looks the part, but you realise, quite quickly, they have nothing to say.

Red means danger and while TheChicGeek perilously hovers off the cliff he looks as cool as a cucumber in his white seersucker suit. Roll the trousers, push the arms back and something, which was quite formal, now, has a hot weather coolness to it.

If you find yourself stuck between a rock and a hard place, quite literally like TheChicGeek, then make sure you always look your best! 

Get involved #WhiteOut 

Credits - Shoes - Red Sebago Docksides Ariaprene, White Seersucker Suit - Topman, Hat - John Lewis, Neckerchief - John Lewis, Watch - Triwa, T-Shirt - American Apparel, ‘Brow Gelcomb’ - Tom Ford, ‘Exfoliating Energy Scrub’ - Tom Ford, ’Klang’ Headphones - Sudio.

Shot by Robin Forster on Olympus PEN

See BLUE

See NAVY

See GREEN

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If Helmut Lang and American Apparel had a lovechild, you’d probably end up with RON DORFF. Born out of the partnership of Jérôme Touron, a Frenchman, and Claus Lindorff, a Swede, RON DORFF is a simple combination of their two last names. Aligning Swedish functionality with classic French elegance, RON DORFF is a new idea of sportswear.

Left - SS16 - VELO LOVE developed together with Lorenzo Martone of MARTONE CYCLING COMPANY OF NY

Basically, it’s basics with a few slogans in a simple typeface and we can never get enough of these post hipster labels.

Offering sweatshirts, hoodies, swimwear, joggers, underwear, accessories and skincare, RON DORFF slogan is DISCIPLINE IS NOT A DIRTY WORD.

RON DORFF constantly collaborates with other designers and together offer exclusive limited editions such as the ‘Innocent Summer Pleasures’ series developed in collaboration with the Swedish graphic artist Johan Oxe and the ûber-light but practical city bike VELO LOVE developed together with Lorenzo Martone of MARTONE CYCLING COMPANY OF NY. 

Left - RON DORFF's skincare line is made in Sweden

RON DORFF line of bodycare products is 100% made in Sweden and developed in partnership with Sweden’s most respected skincare brand, FACE Stockholm. The collection includes a shower gel, body scrub, tonifying shampoo and Swedish Massage Oil. The list of ingredients is brief, free of parabens and mineral oils, enriched by active botanicals harvested north of the Arctic Circle. The series also includes an exclusive, scented Swedish Massage candle made in Grasse, France. 

Right - The majority of RON DORFF items are unbranded, but come into the slightly pricier bracket for men's basics

They have a  Paris flagship store  and plan a second in London at the end of this year.

Youth, beautiful youth, seems to sum up the scene at Zalando HQ. Everywhere you look, young people: sitting outside in the sun on bench tables chatting, inside large, open-plan offices developing new product and organising deliveries and logistics and vast teams styling and producing the content for the website in cavernous studio spaces. 

Left - One of Zalando's many buildings based around East Berlin

Zalando feels like a microcosm of hipster Berlin: the youth of Europe drawn together over the passion of creativity, fashion and design in a mix of tattoos, coloured hair and piercings. But, these young people aren’t restricted to simply the creation side of the business, they run all the way through to senior management and is a reflection of the company’s age having only started in 2008. 

In the space of 7 years Zalando has gone from speculative start-up to a billion dollar business. The biggest fashion e-tailer that nobody, well, those of us in the UK anyway, has heard of, it has grown to be the biggest fashion platform in Europe with sales of over €2.2 billion, last year. Just to give it some context, ASOS turned over £975 million in 2014.

While British brands such as ASOS and Topshop looked towards America, Australia and China for growth, Zalando was quietly focusing itself and expanding into 15 European countries and tailoring its offering accordingly.

Right - For the recent Berlin Fashion Week, Zalando opened a 'Fashion House' to showcase product, hold talks and celebrate Berlin as a fashion centre

Based in Berlin, business is conducted in English, so as to unify all 15 markets, making Zalando feel more like a international business based in Berlin rather than a German fashion company. It now sells over 1500 brands with a staggering 150,000 products in markets ranging from Austria to the UK.

Selling luxury diffusion lines, high-street brands and now, a whole collection of own labels, developed for specific customer categories, Zalando is aiming to have everything covered.

I’m here, during Berlin Fashion Week, to see inside the company and how it has developed. I first experienced Zalando’s website a few years ago, and it felt, at the time, like just another European website selling third party brands in not a particularly inspiring way. Fast forward a few years and, now, Zalando is the one of the most important European customers to some of Britain's best and biggest brands and the entry to markets many don’t have retail outlets in or websites directed to. 

Dressed, today, in American Apparel T-shirt, Element cuffed trousers and Nike trainers, Florian Jodl, VP Menswear, is in charge of the menswear side of Zalando.

“When I joined - 3 years ago - Zalando was making the transition from start-up to large company. We’re, now, the largest fashion platform in Europe and we cover pretty much the whole of Europe”.

Left - Florian Jodl, VP Menswear, Zalando

What’s made Zalando so successful in what is a tough market to crack?

“Our founding team believed in the e-commerce trend at the right point in time. The drivers of the company that made it successful was the marketing, the logistics proposition - free and easy returns, we have more than 20 different payment methods, large assortment and strong relationships with some of the best brands in the world”. he says.

“How those things came together allowed the company to grow so fast. We focused on the fashion market and invested in our fashion proposition from a content perspective. The main part of the business is being a fashion retailer, but we are adding more and more additional services to the consumer and to the brands we work with. For example, we recently launched, ‘Zalon’, which is a curated shopping service: a stylist picks a selection, then you get a package and keep what you like. We don’t run it in-house, we’ve created a platform where stylists can log on to and work independently on a commission basis.”

Where many international retailers have found appealing to so many different markets difficult, and have often come unstuck, Zalando seems to have flourished.

“We have a very strong localisation mindset. For example, in Italy you have to have cash on delivery payments, in Germany, you have to allow for invoice payments. We have been successful in all these different markets by tweaking our brand marketing and efficient end structures, but, if you over emphasise it you have an extremely complex system”, says Jodl.

The most popular men’s brands are currently Nike, adidas, Converse, Reebok and Levi’s.

“Some men are still very focussed on brands, and there is a group of consumers that just want to be inspired. So, outfits work quite well, for us, particularly for men. We have a function, now, where you can buy everything the model is wearing.

“We see the men’s business accelerating even faster than the rest. When you think of buying fashion, online, it is an attractive proposition for the stereotypical, average guy. You don’t have to go downtown, be in a crowded store, you can order a nice selection of stuff and what you like, you keep. It just took men longer to take the step and try and, now, they’ve tried it, you can see it really picking up,” says Jodl.

Right - Each individual item is shot and physically moved along the creative line to be retouched, described and uploaded onto the Zalando site

I’m taken inside an old factory building in East Berlin that houses the studio where Zalando shoots all the images for the website. Not allowed to take pictures, it is the modern e-tailer factory: a conveyor belt of styling, shooting, retouching, describing and uploading. 

Zalando has recently developed its own range of labels seeing gaps in the market and also higher margins. Menswear features in labels such ‘Kiomi', ‘Your Turn’, ‘Pier One’, ‘Brooklyn’s Own’ and unisex shoe brand called ‘Zign'. The own brands are currently expanding as a percentage of the business with many collections, now, running into hundreds of pieces.

Zalando, while having shipped to the UK for many years, is now turning its attention to us, and particularly menswear, seeing a fashion hungry and lucrative market.

“One key thing we need to do is build a more focussed assortment as the UK is a very developed and strong fashion market, in the past we probably missed some of the key local brands”, he says.

For Berlin Fashion Week, Zalando curated a ‘Fashion House’ in the centre of Berlin to not only display their product but to inspire and put the flag in the ground for Berlin as a fashion capital and authority. (Zalando recently bought the fashion trade show Bread & Butter, which up until a few seasons ago was one of the biggest street and casual wear trade shows in the world). 

Left - Inside Zalando's 'Fashion House', a pop-up in Mitte during the recent Berlin Fashion Week

They understand that they have to make Berlin relevant in order for them to be taken seriously as a fashion authority. The key to Zalando’s success is its expertise in the markets it operates in. While not only appealing to its customers, it also appeals to other retailers and brands that want the ‘in’ to these potentially lucrative European markets. 

As different parts of Europe come out of recession, Zalando will only increase its dominance and it wouldn’t surprise me if it wasn’t snapped up by somebody like Amazon, or anybody who wants a large and developed slice of the European fashion market. 

Online retailers understand that its their own product which will offer a USP and also better returns. It will be interesting to see whether Zalando's own menswear brands will be picked up by the British male in what is a very competitive and price sensitive market. Watch this space.

www.zalando.co.uk