Calvin Klein Mens by Italo Zucchelli | Photo: Karim Sadli for 032c

In Part I, we examined Italo Zucchelli’s philosophy of menswear. Today, we explore the designer’s creative process and approach to innovation.

NEW YORK, United States — A honeyed accent doesn’t give away Italo Zucchelli’s heritage as much as his ability to cut a jacket. A Wagnerian sense of color and experimental materials reveal professional stints with both Romeo Gigli and Jil Sander respectively. He may seem of a piece with European contemporaries like Prada or Raf Simons, but critic and friend Tim Blanks argues that Zucchelli is refining an entirely personal viewpoint, what he calls “subtle futurism,” an evolution sewn discreetly into every collection. Stitch by stitch it could add up to an altogether altered reality.

Everyone agrees Zucchelli has stepped into a big pair of shoes – a pair of Calvin’s as it were. He’s won respect for not kicking them off, but Zucchelli notes the paradox faced by a generation of talented designers who, like him, are breathing new life into old brands: “If all of us were strictly referential we would be criticized. It’s very important to respect the language and understand the staples, but also evolve because time moves on.”

With nearly two decades of witnessing audience reactions to every twist, fold and turn on the runway, Nian Fish warns that the pressure to innovate is ruthless: “If you are safe, they will kill you.” In her opinion, Zucchelli is moving not only the clothes, but also the whole brand forward. Forward? Fashion may innovate, but certainly not in the same way as technology, or does it?

It’s a common perception that men’s fashion is slow to change, and Zucchelli acknowledges that: “Few men will respond to a fantasy as freely as a woman.” However, he observes that many more men are interested in fashion today than a decade ago. In numbers alone, international consumption of men’s apparel and accessories had nearly caught up to women’s by 2000, and with increased freedom of choice.

In the years that preceded Zucchelli’s arrival at Calvin Klein, innovative menswear seems to have been largely defined by flashy changes in shape. New York Times reporter Eric Wilson recalls: “Thom Browne created the shrunken suit, Hedi Slimane the extremely fitted suit and Tom Ford the louche, high-waisted big lapel suit. They were contrasting looks but they worked all at the same time, making menswear feel very exciting all of a sudden.” Currently, Wilson believes, a band of niche designers has splintered menswear center stage leaving no clear headliner. Things are set for a major voice to rise. So the question facing Zucchelli, as Nian Fish puts it, “is how far to push without the shock of pushing too far.”

Are you ready? Cotton and metal weaves (2006); nylon moirés and PVC packaged wool (2007); silver PVCand mesh covered neoprene (2008); reflective wool and liquid twill; stretch, heat-bonded, debossed and molded foam wrapped in wool and nylon; punched and bonded paper-based fabric (2009); bark-texture coated cotton and heat-bonded Mylar; transparent nylon (2010); laminated nylon pile (2011); laser cut mesh cotton, resin suede bonded jersey (2012). Perhaps more than anyone in the field of luxury menswear, Zucchelli manipulates the genetic code of clothes, merging natural with synthetic materials as if engineering a sneaker, a car or the wardrobe of a Hollywood cyborg.

Zucchelli’s laboratory, a modest fluorescent-lit space with a discolored concrete floor, emerges from down a blaring all-white corridor in Calvin Klein’s 7th Avenue headquarters. The other surfaces are plastic laminate, the most ubiquitous and virtual of today’s architectural finishes, and they are pitch black. The contrast ignites my eyes. Everything looks sharp, most notably a few well-chosen crystals Zucchelli keeps by his desk. “The next time you are on the beach, pick up a grain of sand: that is a quartz crystal,” he says, explaining his fascination. “They are beautiful to look at and they have been used since the dawn of civilization. Our telecommunications system, like computers and telephones, is silicon-quartz based. Crystals have a ‘connecting’ power with other worlds or dimensions.”

Similarly, Zucchelli strives for higher-order connections in his working process. He almost never sits in his corner office, but prefers to share the open studio space with his five-person team listening to atmospheric and “mental” music. He favors small, well-appointed groups of “very good people that are happy and engaged.” Together they initiate every collection, which can include upwards of 40 pieces, by travelling, either to Los Angeles, London, Tokyo or Berlin on a scavenger hunt for books, magazines, vintage clothing and, most of all, ideas. At the moment I find myself looking at meticulous, hand-drawn sketches and material swatches the team is preparing for the Fall 2012 debut show in Milan.

Italo Zucchelli: I start every collection early. Nobody starts as early as I do. This is a system I inherited from Calvin. I never abandoned it because there is an ocean between us and where the clothes are produced. During the six-month process I get three fittings, which is a lot. It’s good. I can perfect things. The core concept I come up with now is what you are going to see in January. I say it because it has always been like that – that’s what I do.

Pierre Alexandre de Looz: What did you learn from working with Calvin Klein in the beginning?

I worked with him for three years and it was an amazing relationship. He always knew if he liked something or not. He solved things without compromise. I am similar in that sense. He was very quick. He made decisions almost immediately, which is very American. Europeans can be philosophical about things, but these are clothes! His response was very good, it was the main thing that allowed me to go in one direction or the other and then apply my European sense to make it the best possible. I learned the immediacy from him. I never heard him say, “I don’t know” … ever.

You never doubt yourself?

No I don’t. I question myself but not in that way. Last January the concept for the show was “protection” and I came up with it in August. Then we perfected the concept until the end.

Didn’t you tell me you have a German bent?

I joke about it.

You are being conceptually rigorous because you identify an idea and you stick with it. In other words, if I look at any collection, everything I see refers back to the exact concept you came up with in the beginning?

On the runway it is definitely the case. When you do a show the message should be self-explanatory. It’s important to express the vibe of it very clearly. Often it is verbalized at the beginning, but it can also happen towards the end. It helps the team to communicate and work together, and convey the construction of a mood.

To give it a name is to make it recognisable to everybody else, like the public and the press. Do you ever let yourself use more than a single word?

Yes, but I prefer one. I think it’s more powerful. I also like journalists who do their job when they see a show. I give them a word and they elaborate on it.

Is the person who wears your clothes American?

The world we live in now is global. People take planes the way we took buses 20 years ago. Of course different markets have different requirements. What I design is produced the same for every country, but retailers in each area purchase different elements, based on what they think they can sell. What you see in a runway show is only a third of what compromises a complete collection and the rest appears in the showroom for the buyers. The show gives a message to the journalists. The buyers however see the depth of collection in the showroom. The presentation is an edit and we aim for consistency. I could do a show where every outfit is different but it would be completely wrong and the press would get confused. You have to meet commercial needs.

So how do you keep your audience interested?

Instead of giving you a flannel blazer, which will always be in the collection, I might use a fabric that looks like flannel from afar but in reality it’s a techno-fabric mixing black and white; it’s a texture and it’s nylon; it doesn’t crease and it makes you look very sharp and modern. For Fall 2008 I used a thermo-fabric that loses color based on body heat. On the runway, the material gave off an impression of the model’s chest. These special effects are made to look effortless and it’s a way of updating familiar clothes.

As a matter of fact, some of your designs would not look out of place on a CG character like the T1000 Terminator. What kind of special effects, to use the term loosely, do you think men are prepared to wear today that they would not have accepted so easily in the past?

Men want more color. They do plastic surgery, use facial products, exfoliate and hydrate. I don’t think men will be wearing lipstick, but men’s make-up will become mainstream.

What are the most technologically challenging pieces you’ve ever created?

We created a Mylar suit, although it’s not really a fabric, for Fall 2010. The concept of that collection was protection and Mylar, which is used for marathon blankets, is very thin, light and insulating. It also has great texture and nothing else quite gives you that effect. Mylar is only produced in silver, so we found an American manufacturer who could print color on the material. When we started making the pieces, which were heat-bonded, we found that the color would melt and fade in the heat, so we had to start over. We learned we had to face it with a protective layer. It was a whole process that took three or four months to develop and the manufacturer doesn’t speed up just because you have a fashion show! We managed to include the pieces in the show and they looked great on the runway, but it was very challenging. These types of pieces are very specific and are not necessarily bestsellers, but the Mylar suits actually went into production and were well photographed.

What’s your advice for my fashion well-being?

Be yourself is the golden rule. It is very important to choose clothes that represent your personality. Choosing clothes is one of the most powerful ways to express who you are. You should wear the clothes and not the other way around. You also can’t look in the mirror for hours or be too analytical and obsessive about being perfect, because it will feel and look contrived, especially in a man. That’s what’s strong about the American fashion spirit and why sportswear was invented here. It is casual, less studied and spontaneous. That language really speaks to me because that’s how I choose and wear clothes myself. I almost never look at myself in the mirror.

This article was written by architect and writer Pierre Alexandre de Looz and was first published by 032c. Click here for a preview of the current issue 0f 032c.

Calvin Klein Menswear by Italo Zucchelli | Photo: Karim Sadli for 032c

In an exclusive two part interview, courtesy of our friends at 032c, Pierre Alexandre de Looz explores the work of Italo Zucchelli, Calvin Klein men’s collection creative director, known for grafting the infallible promise of technology — the 21st century’s cultural hope — to the fibre of masculine elegance. Today, in Part I, we examine Zucchelli’s menswear philosophy.

NEW YORK, United States — Snug. Well cut. Brilliant. A smack-your-lips example of product design, it defines a point of no return in menswear that equates less with the demise of the top hat than the birth of the iPod. In the story you are about to read, nearly everyone had something to say about Calvin Klein underwear, even the bootlegged kind: MoMA PS1 Curator Klaus Biesenbach, for instance, purchased emergency briefs after losing his luggage on a trip to China and “they are still going strong,” he said, 10 years later. Minimal, clear and universally known, they are like the dark slab of Kubrick’s Space Odyssey, a portal to somewhere beyond our tatty reality. Welcome to the tailored universe of Calvin Klein Men.

Beyond the spread of new men’s fashion rags, growing menswear revenues, and greater assimilation of male customers into the larger fashion system, the Calvin Klein identity sets an ideal stage for modern menswear. If fashion historian Anne Hollander is correct, that “Male dress was always essentially more advanced than female dress throughout fashion history, and tended to lead the way, to set the standard, to make aesthetic propositions to which female fashion responded,” then menswear is the future and the Calvin Klein man is like modernity to the second degree, our escort on the red carpet to a distant horizon.

Italo Zucchelli, an Italian-born designer picked by Mr. Klein, has directed the brand’s Men’s Collection since 2004. I dress as a man, and from this perspective, fashion seems more of a problem than a pastime, a frankly stiffer medium of self-expression than it has been for women. Zucchelli on the other hand doesn’t seem to shoulder any grudges. He wears New Balance sneakers as pleasantly as his Buddha-like face. Nian Fish, 18-year veteran of the KCD production agency and now an independent creative director, tells me, “People don’t get stressed around Italo because you ride his wave of being present and in the moment. He is very light.” Biesenbach, a friend, adds, “He is so modest and at the same time very precise – a rare quality.”

True enough, meeting Zucchelli was light, clear and precise like the tubular steel armchair that graces his living room, a signature Starck design of 1983. A large-scale print of model David Agbodji’s naked back, a molten monolith from Calvin Klein’s Spring and Fall 2010 campaigns sits close. More effusive than his portrait let on, Agbodji later confided: “Italo is probably the nicest, down to earth person I know in this business. Working with him greatly changed my own style. I had no clue how much I love modern minimalism until him.”

Zucchelli invited me to sit at a comfortable distance from the overpowering photo. I hoped to learn a lesson similar to Agbodji’s, to understand Zucchelli’s world and philosophy of menswear. We sank into a soft gray couch that frames the view of midtown from his penthouse apartment. Reflecting on a skyline built of testosterone, I asked, “Should a man dress to show his power?”

“A man should dress to show who he is,” Zucchelli replied. His tautology dispelled any hopes I had of borrowing an identity from anyone or anything outside myself.

Editors and retailers alike appreciate Zucchelli’s no-nonsense focus. Reporter Eric Wilson from The New York Times explains: “He tends to start with a clean line that’s very accessible and adds elements that are more challenging and unusual, but always in a way that a customer can relate to. Italo keeps in mind that he is designing for men and not women, that there is a real world outside the bubble of fashion insiders. It’s a big mistake that a lot of designers make, especially the Europeans.”

Zucchelli keeps a constant reminder of American “realness” in his corner office, a portrait of bulging bare-chested Marlon Brando posing as Stanley Kowalski from the 1951 movie A Street Car Named Desire. Zucchelli has never removed his vintage paperback copy of Tennessee William’s play from its cellophane slip, as if to contain the power of its iconic cover model. Idols like Brando or James Dean served as widely accepted prototypes of masculine style, especially in the way they galvanized a generation of casual dressers (T-shirts and jeans), but was it them or the characters they played? Is Zucchelli thinking of Brando or Kowalski, or both?

David Agbodji, for example, defined the Calvin Klein man like this: “extremely confident and fearless, strong, in great shape and super duper confident. Classic American superheroes like Bruce Wayne or Superman come to mind.” But, how real is Superman? He may be more real than you think. The image of “real men,” particularly in American culture, combines fiction and fact to a degree where the two are inseparable, indistinguishable even.

Italo Zucchelli: When I do a collection I think about the things men would want to wear. On the other hand, when I do a fashion show I have to create a fantasy. My ideal is to reach a perfect balance. It’s like a perfect pop song. It is the most difficult thing to achieve for an artist: to create something that may not seem commercial, expressing his or her creativity to the fullest, and then to see it become a commercial success. Kate Bush’s first single “Wuthering Heights” comes to mind. She was 19 and she sang a song that in 1978 was not what the radio would play – just a girl with a piano and a voice. She fought to release it as her first single (her record company favored another song). It made her a star immediately, number one all over Europe. It was the perfect combination of creativity and commercial success and it’s very inspiring.

Pierre Alexendre de Looz : Perhaps the consumer we think exists is just a fantasy?

I recently read that Steve Jobs avoided focus groups. He believed you have to show people what they want and he proved it. The iPod is a great example. I obsess over music and to me it was revolutionary; a minimal and perfectly designed object that everybody uses, and the most commercially successful product of the last decade. Jobs was incredibly clever and intuitive. I’m fascinated by the fact he applied Zen principles in his “creative strategy” and the result was pure innovation.

How do you use intuition?

Without comparing myself to Jobs, I’ll give you an example. I wanted to use neon color for a while. I debated whether it was chic enough and the many ways to use it. Suddenly, in a vintage store in LA, I saw a wet suit with perfect neon colors. I thought it was a message and decided it was the right time. I assumed the fluorescent suits would simply be an editorial piece, but they did not even arrive in stores – people bought them over the phone! There was clapping in the middle of the show – it was a real moment.

How do you keep your intuitions fresh?

Transcendental meditation. Intuition is something everybody has and meditation is a great way to develop it. I was given a mantra 20 years ago. I sit down and close my eyes, repeating the mantra for 20 minutes. It’s a tool. I would do it even if I cultivated tomatoes because I love it!

What defines the style of American men?

On an elemental level there is a casual, less conceptual or philosophical way of living in America. American men have been trained to take good care of their bodies, practicing a sport or working out at the gym. It’s very different from Europe.

It’s an obvious exception to the distinction you just made, but what do you think of Versace’s menswear from the 90s, since his men were on an American scale?

I thought it was fantastic. It was the opposite of what was going on and it marked the moment of Versace’s career when he enjoyed his greatest success. Sadly, he died shortly after. I see the 90s as a reaction to the 80s, which were about flamboyance and excess. You could design anything, even skirts for men. It would sell and people would wear it. Then came the Gulf War and we entered a major recession. Fashion in the 90s turned to purity. It was almost “non-design” – the opposite of 80s maximalism. But then, Versace became even more baroque. He was making people dream in sad times, you might say. Did I wear it? No, it wasn’t for me. But, it was fun. He invented the super models. He worked with Bruce Weber and Avedon. He created the kind of excitement that fashion always needs.

If the Calvin Klein identity were ever to part ways with minimalism, it will have taken a radical turn; yet, you seem to flirt with the possibility. Do you ever let yourself be kitschy?

In a sort of minimal way, I actually did for one of my earliest runway shows (Spring 2007). The aesthetic was clean, of course, but I sent some models down the runway with leggings (I don’t think anybody got it, but I pretended they were the kind of swimsuit worn by Australian surfers.) When the first of the legging models came off the runway he said, “I think I caused a stir!” That was the show where everything changed: people gasped. It was borderline underwear, borderline kitsch without having to do skirts or brocade. I had taken a staple of American sportswear and combined it with the sex value of the Calvin Klein brand. One reviewer said that you could see whether the models were circumcised or not! A lot of people laughed and some didn’t like it at all, but you need these moments! The midriff T-shirt (Spring 2011) was also very risqué. In eight years it was the most photographed item I’ve designed!

You sexualized the man but did you also feminize him?

Androgyny as a concept was one of the things that drew me the most to the brand because I was always fascinated by it, but especially androgynous women. That’s why I love Tilda Swinton, Annie Lennox, and Grace Jones. David Bowie is on the other side. In fact, I hope Tilda Swinton will play David Bowie in a movie someday. She would be perfection in the role, not least because she is playing a man. There is something extremely modern about the genders coming together, or men and women who dress alike. Calvin always played with that. Even Kate Moss was a creature in the beginning. She was a girl but also otherworldly. That’s the power of unisex. I grew up with this fascination. Even if I am unaware of it, this attitude will come out of what I do from deep inside my imagination.

But you grew up in a country where the gender roles are so clear?

That’s probably why I was fascinated with the middle, as a rebellion.

Are you familiar with Fellini’s sketches where he imagines a muscle woman whose clitoris stands erect like a penis? Modern androgyny was probably invented in Italy.

The Park Hyatt in Tokyo has those drawings on display! It’s an ancient tradition, but that’s where we are headed. The future will be less worried about gender and it will be reflected in clothes.

You are nudging us there! Your collections could be described as a battle between the T-shirt, which is increasingly genderless, and the man’s collar shirt. Lately, the traditional men’s shirt seems to be losing.

Lately, it’s true. T-shirts are very American; just think of James Dean! I was not born here, so I fantasize about the American look – again, we go back to the fashion fantasy. How do I make menswear look relevant and iconic but at the same time highly designed? The T-shirt is the number one staple of American sportswear and the American identity.

Nevertheless you’ve manipulated the traditional shirt. Would you call that fashion in its truest sense – because you are making small changes to a prototype, and these changes can cycle from season to season – or is this what we call progress?

To achieve any results in fashion, it takes time; that’s why I have three fittings in my process. Every collection starts from what you achieved in the last one. Menswear elements like the suit are subtle, whereas sportswear can be extreme and bolder and it’s easier to update. In menswear you have more rules and fewer elements than in women’s fashion, which I like. I find it more challenging to achieve something new while staying within the rules, or, you might say, breaking but not destroying the rules.

Hindsight shows us moments when contemporary fashion reached decisive points, like the little black dress or pantyhose. Do you have any inkling what the next major step for menswear will be?

When Chanel did the little black dress, fashion as we know it was at its beginning. She was a genius, but she arrived at a point when women were still wearing frocks. She simplified the woman. When Giorgio Armani put women in suits, that was genius and both times fashion was still young. These kinds of avenues have been well explored. I am not sure a statement as vast could be made now. My biggest fantasy for the future is that we’ll be able to disappear and not even need clothes. When we live on spaceships, maybe then someone will come up with something as groundbreaking as Chanel.

So, the revolution will come from life and fashion will respond. Thinking back over the last 60 years, who together with Armani has shaped menswear to modern life?

Armani created the power suit for both men and women and empowered women to be as powerful as men. He also created a whole new language, still very relevant today, for men in business and for celebrities – think of Richard Gere in American Gigolo. He created an effortless, everyday man that lives in a modern world, unfussy and real. He always speaks about sobriety. That is his mantra. His company is 30 years old this year, but something so good doesn’t have an expiration date. Helmut Lang created something very sleek, street cool and desirable, especially for men. He defined an era and it was a big loss when he retired. I wore a lot of his clothes because they fit me so well – like a reflective pair of pants!

What other American designers besides Calvin Klein attracted your attention?

Stephen Sprouse was the only alternative designer in America that I was interested in as a student. I never wore anything by him, but I know his vintage is hard to find, and expensive. The fluorescent colors, graphics, graffiti and punkiness; everything about it was underground.

In a similar way, Hedi Slimane has been recognized as having applied countercultural references to men’s tailoring. How do you describe his contribution?

He brought back youth culture. He influenced fashion through the shape he created – a skinny idealistic guy – which was androgynous in a way. All his muses are very young. I relate to his music interests and his interest in the underground, which is where everything comes from.

In the Wim Wenders movie A Notebook on Cities and Clothes from 1989, you see Yohji Yamamoto explaining his love of August Sander’s photographs. They are predominantly images of early 20th century working class men whose clothes are loosely fitted. It reveals a secret code of fashion: if something fits perfectly, it looks tailored and non-proletarian. You are clearly obsessed with precision, so what does looseness mean to you, and how do you use it?

I recently started doing over-sized shapes – let’s use that word – in sportswear. For Fall 2011 I did a bomber and I wanted to make the classic bomber even rounder, to emphasize the iconic. Yamamoto is a master and Japanese fashion has been over-sized since the beginning. But, I would never do this with a suit.

Tomorrow, in Part II, we explore the designer’s creative process and approach to innovation.

This article was written by architect and writer Pierre Alexandre de Looz and was first published by 032c. Click here for a preview of the current issue 0f 032c.

George Condo x Supreme Skate Decks| Source: Hypebeast.com

In Part I, we examined how New York-based streetwear company Supreme became a global cult brand with its own myths, iconography and belief systems. Today, we explore the creative and commercial philosophies that underpin Supreme’s lasting success, courtesy of our friends at 032c.

NEW YORK, United States — The mythology behind legendary New York streetwear brand Supreme is so potent, it’s easy to imagine founder James Jebbia as a king pin of downtown Manhattan. But as he will be the first to tell you, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

In fact, Supreme’s core creative and business philosophies are the sum of Jebbia’s patchwork retail past; not, as one might assume, a storied legacy in skateboarding. His resume reads like a series of interconnected Google-map pins on a late-80s and early-90s SoHo New York. A British-transplant who arrived in New York around 1984, Jebbia got a job working at the now-defunct Parachute clothing store in SoHo.

“I didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew I enjoyed clothes,” he says. He quit five years later to open, along with his girlfriend at the time, a small flea market on Wooster Street inspired by the myriad of stuff he coveted from The Face and i-D magazines. The project evolved into his first proper store, Union, an experimental shop on Spring Street that carried “mostly English brands” and one very important streetwear juggernaut at the time by the name of Stüssy. This allowed Jebbia to work with Shawn Stüssy, who asked him to partner with him to open one of his eponymous boutiques on Prince Street in 1991.

When Stüssy left the business, Jebbia opened up Supreme in 1994 in a small storefront on Lafayette, a then-desolate street that was a perfect place for his clientele to skate first, shop second – an order that would very quickly be reversed. “I opened Supreme because there were no other decent skate shops around at the time,” Jebbia says. “I thought, cool, I might as well be the one to do it.”

The store was able to become the holy grail of high youth street culture by curating a mix of the city’s iconography – fashion, music, celebrity and politics – within its walls and then instantly sledge-hammering the city’s high-low playing field.

Limited-edition Damien Hirst skateboards are around the same price as decks featuring lyrics from Public Enemy; custom Spalding basketballs might be sold under the artist Nate Lowman’s gritty canvases hanging on the wall. The brand’s iconic T-shirts, like everything in the store, have become collector’s items that are collages of controversial provocations and heady imagery. Designs have included an oversized New York Times logo, a portrait of Kate Moss, lyrics from the reggae musician Lee “Scratch” Perry, Mickey Mouse’s hands praying with rosary beads, Budweiser labels, and alarmist political slogans such as “Illegal business controls America.”

Juxtapositions abound: images of naked girls playing with a hose pop up in a calendar from 2006 but more cerebral women like Chloë Sevigny and Jenn Brill act as brand ambassadors in Japanese style magazines; one of the brand’s most iconic image is of the rapper Raekwon, an Elmo doll, and an Uzi show by the photographer Kenneth Capello. And really, who would have thought Lou Reed would ever become the label’s face, as he did in 2009?

“Supreme embraces the outsider and always does things off-value from their brand,” says Richardson. “But they’re consistent and have always embraced the outsider and the individual. At the end of the day, Supreme is about the legacy of punk through skateboarding and you can really genuinely feel this in everything they do.”

The brand’s insidery-outsidery brilliance often made them precursors to trends that would later pop-up on the catwalk, such as their collaboration with Richard Prince as part of their art deck series well before Prince joined forces with Marc Jacobs to make handbags. “I like to point that out,” Jebbia says with a smile. “Not to be that guy, but just, you know, to point it out.”

The Supreme brand and its products soon became viable forms of creative expression, which in turn became catnip for a particular breed of male consumer hungry for that indefinable but high-quality cool, resounding most immediately with Japan.

“We never purposefully went after a Japanese customer,” Jebbia says. “It wasn’t like that. It’s always been about that really picky New York customer, but I think that translates all over the world.” Nonetheless, the Japanese consumers hyper-related to Jebbia’s choosy modus operandi and were quick to embrace the Supreme product as something culturally valuable and worth a premium price. “Japanese kids respect underground movements and have a good eye for it,” says Bondaroff.

Supreme now has five stores scattered across Japan and just opened their first store in London, featuring installations from the artists Mark Gonzales and Ari Marcopolous, this past September. “We’ve always really been inspired by London youth,” says Jebbia. Evidence of his grimy South London influence can be seen in many of the Supreme staples, such as military jackets, beanies, and oversized Oxford shirts with a neat fit.

But there is also a business component to setting up shop across the pond. “For us, London is the real gateway to Europe,” Jebbia says. Now kids won’t have to fly from all over Europe to come to New York to get a piece of Supreme. “We hope it makes things easier for them, honestly. It can save them a plane ticket, you know what I mean? But, we’re keeping the shop with the same spirit, it will feel like New York.”

In the past, owning a piece of clothing with the red Supreme logo on it was like a more authentic “I Love NY” T-shirt, a tourist token that instantly made you feel a part of a certain downtown New York ethos. Jebbia is mindful of this, but he doesn’t seem worried about diluting the potency of his brand by going global: “We’re not going to open up stores everywhere, that’s just not us. I can’t even think of somewhere else I would like to open, really.”

Supreme has been able to grow, but Jebbia has always been able to keep his hand right on the faucet, letting out just enough but not too much. “Supreme represents fresh ideas done right,” says Kenneth Capello. “They’re always one step ahead and always limited, so people want it.”

Mr. Jebbia, however, is playfully cautious about the idea that his small production runs are part of an exploitative plan to skew supply and demand to fever-pitch levels. “The main reason behind the short runs is that we don’t want to get stuck with stuff that nobody wants,” he says. But admitting to a kind of customer trickery isn’t exactly the coolest thing to say, so you let him be. “Let me put it this way,” he adds tellingly. “We work really, really hard to make everything seem effortless.”

As the shop is on the horizon of its second decade in business, all that hard work has become the focal point for a type of New York aesthetic that is just now entering the canon of great American dressing. When it first opened, the shop was a reflection of the times: the raw energy of Larry Clark’s film Kids; the haphazard elegance of grunge; the polished grit of the East Coast hip-hop movement of the time. In Jebbia’s conversation with Glenn O’Brien from the piece in Interview he asked me to read, Jebbia spoke about the lasting influence of that era in his brand’s sensibility:

“There’s always, I think, a sense of the early-90s to it. That era is definitely a big influence running though everything we do – that was a really special time. And since we started back then, I think it’s fine for us to always look to that era and get a lot of influence from it. It’s not nostalgic – it’s more like it’s a part of us.”

It’s been almost 20 years since the birth of this aesthetic, and now, with most menswear designers aimlessly searching in tea-soaked history books for authenticity, it has never felt more right. If Polo reflects a sense of country club prep and A.P.C. a type of louche French rock ’n’ roll (two brands Jebbia says he greatly admires), Supreme has then its own unique form of authentic, time-encapsulated style in early-90s skate culture.

But now, the baggy pants are a little bit more fitted; the Oxford shirts come in a more sophisticated palette of colours; the imagery is more mature. And while other designers such as Rag & Bone, Tommy Hilfiger or J.Crew hark back to a phantom sense of American heritage, Supreme actually embodies a new garde of American classicism without dwelling in dusty clichés. The little skate-shop-that-could has unexpectedly grown to foster one of the strongest statements in men’s sportswear – the hallmark of American fashion – in quite some time.

“People think that because we are widely-known as a skate shop, our clientele must be idiots. But they want new things on a high level. All they care about is quality,” says Jebbia.

He is right, after all. Today, the globalized customer demands a certain tasteful efficiency, not the trappings of exclusivity. To date, Supreme has chosen to refine their signature products, not to forge themselves out in wild, unpredictable directions with their design process, but instead to forge themselves out in new directions in the world at large. “The product keeps getting better and better,” Bondaroff told me in a phone interview. “It’s so solid now, it crosses over to so many different types of people depending on how they want to wear it.”

Solid, in this case, means well-proportioned sportswear without a lot of frill; done with a discerning eye for what is wearable – take a long-sleeved double-ply flannel in yellow, brown, or green, for example. Therein lies Supreme’s striking paradox. Underneath its tough exterior, the brand has always traded on something of cool’s polar opposite: pragmatism and utility – with a keen sense of graphics and sharp design, no doubt.

The crucial thing to know about Supreme clothes is that they reflect everyday style for men. But more importantly, they assuage the fears many men who have come of age alongside the store have about wanting to look grown up – or, dare I say, appropriate – while still being true to their core aesthetic values that Jebbia speaks of. Almost two decades later, the Supreme project has become an updated take on that oh-so American sense of function and pragmatism. It’s a design philosophy that has mostly been missing in men’s fashion in recent years.

“Quality” is a word Jebbia stresses over and over again in conversations about his brand. You get a sense that he is growing impatient with just being known for on-the-nose artist collaborations or an effervescent downtown credibility. His brand’s true worth, and what his customers fetishize above anything else, is its casual matter-of-factness. Nothing looks sharper, but there is nothing snobby about that. There is something universal about it, really. If fashion and award shows have any teachable moments, it’s that cool doesn’t last on the fickle world stage. Quality does.

“It’s not really just a cool skateboard thing anymore. People resist that idea still. It frustrates me,” Jebbia says before taking a pause. “Oh well.”

This article was written by Alex Hawgood and was first published by 032c. Click here for a preview of the current issue of 032c.

Looks from Supreme NYC Fall/Winter 2011 Lookbook | Source: Weareyouneak.com

In a two part series, courtesy of our friends at 032c, BoF takes you inside notoriously press shy, New York-based streetwear brand Supreme. Today, in Part I, we examine how Supreme — the Chanel of downtown streetwear —became a global cult brand with its own myths, iconography and belief systems.

NEW YORK, United States — When the controversial young rapper Tyler, The Creator won the award for Best New Artist at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards in August, he offered an enthusiastic, yet expletive-laden acceptance speech. “Yo, I’m excited as fuck right now, yo,” he said. “I wanted this shit since I was nine. I’m about to cry.” But with MTV’s censors on high alert, the speech was broadcast more like this: “Yo, I’m excited as - -— -- -, yo. I wanted -- -- -- – —- --. - -— - --.”

With the audio missing for about a minute straight to avoid any profanities and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fines, viewers were left with no choice but to absorb Tyler’s image in mute. Clad in skinny dark jeans, an oversize tie-dye T-shirt with an image of a cat’s face on it, and a Supreme baseball hat with a leopard print brim, Tyler, who is 20 years old, was the only artist at the award show who could be said to actually embody how young people dress today. No outfit made from meat, no fancy three-piece suit with a cocked fedora, no oversize bling: Tyler looked exactly how certain young men at this very moment choose to wear their clothes on the streets all over the globe.

It’s no coincidence that the only logo the image-conscious Tyler wished to communicate was the one on his Supreme hat. After all, Tyler’s hodgepodge street aesthetic – a big chunk of skateboard culture and urban hip-hop with a dose of American sportswear prep and a winking, intelligent take on hipster irony – is the one Supreme has been cultivating for the past 17 years since opening its first shop on Lafayette Street in 1994.

The flashy sartorial sensibilities of, say, Russell Brand or Kanye West have mutated into their own category of sub-entertainment and, more often than not, their personal styles do not reflect the current vogue. So how then did the Supreme aesthetic finally become one of the most honest representations of how men choose to wear their clothes in the global mainstream today?

It’s easy to answer that question if one concedes that Supreme currently makes some of the best clothes for men in America right now. And for a brand routinely overlooked by fashion publications and menswear experts as “skate clothes” or, perhaps even worse, just a fad in a niche subculture, this may come as something of a surprise.

But can you blame the press for sleeping on it? For almost two decades, Supreme has existed in a cult-like bubble. Many of their short-run products have a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shelf-life; you’ll pretty much never, ever receive an invite to some Supreme-sponsored open-bar fête (because they almost never happen); and unless you’ve been systematically tracking its product developments on the array of feverish blogs devoted to the brand, or know a mole on the inside who can text you when a new shipment has been delivered, you’ll miss out entirely.

Starting with its swagger-filled moniker, the label certainly has built a colossal and often intimidating public aura. “The most important thing I think is the name – Supreme,” says the art photographer Ari Marcopolous, a frequent collaborator whose images have helped define the brand’s visuals, including having his work silkscreened on an assortment of sneakers for the label’s partnership with Vans. “Really, you cannot do much better than that.”

Being sovereign – the supreme ruler of culture – is the brand’s unofficial mission statement; everything is appropriated, recontextualised and refitted in Supreme’s hands to be made better. (Not the least of which is the fire-truck red box logo ripped from the oeuvre of Barbara Kruger.) Chinos are constructed with military-grade reinforcement, hats are made with a sturdy square brim, and T-shirts are twice as thick. They’ve carefully chosen to cross-pollinate their homegrown image with unhip but timelessly macho brands like Hanes and The North Face, worked with blue-chip artists such as Jeff Koons and Christopher Wool for their art-deck series, and built ad campaigns around a motley crew of celebrities that have no direct connection to skateboarding, including Kermit the Frog, Mike Tyson and the pop star Lady Gaga.

In fact, the brand’s biggest appropriation of all is the very idea of what a skate shop is – or isn’t. “I don’t see Supreme as a skate shop at all,” says Steve Rodriquez, the owner of 5boro Skateboards and one of the founding members of the New York City Skateboarding Association. “It started a whole new genre of store. To some people, it became like a religion.”

Like most religions, James Jebbia, Supreme’s founder, is fiercely protective of his shop’s doctrine, its history, and of who is allowed to retell its myths. To him, most articles in the press about his brand get it all wrong. “All the magazines, if they’re being nice, just think we’re some cool little skate shop doing kick flips downtown,” Jebbia says. “They always write the same thing over and over.”

Because of this belief system, Jebbia and his team are notoriously press shy. Although Jebbia is soft-spoken and quite generous (by the end our conversation he offered me a checkered North Face for Supreme hat that was no longer on the shelf at the store but still in stock), he is cautious and skeptical about the media and those who write for it. “If you don’t understand us, then what’s the point?” he huffs, referring chiefly to the confusion on how to treat the brand (is it an X-games label like Quicksilver and Billabong, or a legitimate small fashion label more similar to agnès B or A.P.C.) and, more troublingly, the frequent pigeonholing of skateboard culture within the fashion industry as just a passing fad, no different from big shoulders or neon colours.

There are so few examples of stories about Supreme that Jebbia finds successful, he treats the chosen pieces like scripture that he is eager to share. The holy writ includes an interview with Glenn O’Brien from Interview magazine from 2009, a 1995 article from Vogue comparing the persnickety shopping habits of the uppity uptown women who peruse the racks at Chanel’s boutique on East 57th Street and the baggy-pants, bed-head boys who wait in line for hours at a time to shop at Supreme in SoHo; and of course, the 300-page retrospective of the brand released by Rizzoli last year (of which Mr. O’Brien wrote the introduction, and in which the Vogue article was reproduced in full.)

The message is clear: Supreme is sacred, and it’s sacrilegious to get the story wrong.

“The fashion industry doesn’t understand Supreme,” says the stylist Andrew Richardson, who has helped facilitate several projects with the label, including a calendar with Larry Clark. “And that doesn’t bother James one bit. They want James out and about, paying for dinners and hosting parties. But he’s not. Fashion people want something that is uncomplicated and easy to digest – those are the opposite things James embraces. But really, at the end of the day, James doesn’t care. Why should he?”

Hearing Jebbia talk about the press, you don’t get the impression that he is paranoid about being criticised or that he is tyrannical over what is written about his beloved brand. Most articles simply do not live up to the gold standard he has set for his label and himself, or the one expected from his fastidious customer-base. The impression is that most writers and publications are not worthy.

“We always try to shoot for the very best and go for it,” he says. “Some people call that snobbery, I guess. But it’s not.”

Indeed, selectivity and exclusivity are an integral part of the brand’s DNA. When the shop opened in 1994, it immediately became an epicentre for what Aaron “A-Ron” Bondaroff, the label’s front man, has called “train-hopping, taxicab-jumping, runaway kids.” And dudes from all over the city followed in reverence, often lining up for hours to be the first to score the latest products to come in, like candy-collared baseball caps or spacious bomber jackets with the Supreme logo shown discreetly on an outside tag. And even if you made it inside, the really real cool kids knew to ask for the hidden, in-the-know merchandise in the back storage room.

Remembers Bondaroff: “The social club wasn’t so inviting, though, and had a lot of attitude. We made the rules and ran a business that was very successful. People were addicted to the clothes like a drug. We didn’t want to work so hard so we developed a sales style that worked in our favour. In the early days, it was like, come in, but don’t touch. You can look with your eyes, but not with your hands. It was a crazy way to sell garments but the customer learned the deal: don’t fuck with us and we won’t fuck with you.”

The store was so cool, it was, well, scary. “I remember being so nervous walking past it, I would walk across the street,” says Jen Brill, a freelance creative director and “friend” of the brand since it’s inception, “even though a lot of the guys that worked in there were my friends. It was effective, though, and set an impeccable aura around the shop.”

In an interview with the graffiti artist KAWS from the Supreme retrospective, Jebbia maintains that, even in his own tank, he too felt like a fish out of water: “There were 50 or 60 skaters who’d just hang out there. And right at that time, too, Larry Clark was filming Kids. For me, again, it wasn’t part of my world, but I knew it felt very rebellious. It felt right and I liked it.”

Hiding out in the back room and letting the kids rule the roost allowed Jebbia to observe the natural habits and tendencies of his clientele, not unlike the objectivity achieved from a behavioural psychologist studiously taking notes behind a two-way mirror. He didn’t have to be a skateboarder at all, he just had to know what this new generation of skate kids wanted and what they weren’t getting anywhere else.

Most importantly, Jebbia developed the cunning to anticipate what they needed next. If you’re too far in it, you can’t see outside. The distance from the lifestyle, conversely, gave Jebbia a sublime ability to understand how best to represent the lifestyle. “I think James is always thinking with a 25-year-old skateboarder somewhere in his mind with everything he does,” says Richardson.

Tomorrow, in Part II, we explore the creative and commercial philosophies that underpin Supreme’s lasting success.

This article was written by Alex Hawgood and was first published by 032c. Click here for a preview of the current issue of 032c.

Azzedine Alaïa | Source: New York Times

The relentless pace of the fashion industry has almost certainly contributed to the retirement, the downfall, and possibly even the death of some of the industry’s greatest creative talents. But is anyone asking questions that might lead to change? Today on the eve of his off-schedule show in Paris, BoF brings you an exclusive interview between our friends at 032c and the revered couturier Azzedine Alaïa, son of Tunisian farmers who has rejected a corporate fashion system he has called ‘inhumane’ and recently turned down the chance to replace John Galliano at Dior.

PARIS, France — Quietly outside the fashion spotlight, Rue du Moussy is Alaïa’s home and workplace. The boutique, the atelier, the showroom, the studio for private clients, the designer’s residence — it’s all here, under one roof. For more than a decade, Alaïa has premiered his collections at his own rhythm, in discrete, private défilés here. He creates one collection per season. He doesn’t advertise; very few magazines are sent clothes to feature. He rarely gives interviews, and makes no public appearances.

Everything Alaïa creates, he creates with his hands on a bust — to feel the movement of his creations he even maintains a fitting model in residence. Every piece is handmade. The clothes are there to make women even more beautiful. That is his goal. Pure and simple.

Monsieur Alaïa — fashion today, what is it like?

I can only speak for myself, but for a long time now the system of fashion has had nothing to do with our time — it doesn’t suit our time at all. The world is changing rapidly. We see the proof of change every day in the news. Young people want change in this industry, too, yet we continue, just like in the 19th century, to do défilés. There is no need – no interest, really. We could do fewer collections and obtain the same results. We don’t lose any money if we do less.

Is money really the only concern?

Creativity should be the only concern. But today there is no time for creativity; nobody has time to develop a special silhouette or a special fabric. Of course there are a few exceptions, like what Nicolas Ghesquière does at Balenciaga, or Alber Elbaz at Lanvin. But designers working for big houses like Dior or Vuitton have no time to reflect. We can’t just squeeze the young talents out like lemons and then throw them away. Four collections for women, four collections for men, another four collections to sell, and everything needs do be done within four-five months — it’s a one-way course towards emptiness. It’s inhuman.

You’ve been showing clothes at your own pace and in your own house for a while now, but this season it seemed especially exclusive, focusing solely on knitwear.

Maybe in July I will show other clothes, if I have the time to develop them. I refuse to work in a static rhythm. Why should I sacrifice my creativity to that? That’s not fashion, that’s industrial work. We can hire people to design all day long and then fabricate what they design and sell and sell and sell — but that has nothing to do with fashion, with la mode. And it’s a shame talents are being abused for this. I really don’t understand that. I have to live as well. That’s what life is about: living. Tell me how these designers who work for the major houses can have lives? How can they raise children if they are never home? They are gone for one, sometimes two months, while their children have to go to school. They have husbands, wives, but they can’t live their lives. People need time for that, and talents need time to create something. It’s stupid to ask someone to create eight collections per season. Look what has happened to John Galliano or this poor young guy from Balmain, who is now in a psychiatric hospital. After five or six seasons, he was already broken. Or last year, McQueen — dead. And there are many more that are just so tired. There is a pressure that is mad.

How do you work?

I first need to work on the fabric: I need to cut it, think about the shape, drape it on the bust — reflect on it. I make every piece with my own hands. And this season, where I decided to show only knitwear, I sold two times as much as I did last season. You know that at Barneys in New York I got a 140 square metre space just for me, for my clothes? If you do one beautiful skirt per season, that already is a miracle. If you do one manteau that women desire, you have won. You don’t need to do long coats, short coats, one with a zipper this way and another one with buttons that way.

Also, people travel a lot today. Seasons are not what they used to be — we go skiing in the summer, swimming in winter. We don’t need to think in seasons anymore; we need to think about beautiful clothes. We really have to do something about this situation in fashion.

What do you do to deal with that?

I remote. I don’t do fashion just for the show. I have done it in the past, but I stopped. There are other problems to solve, so I moved away from such frivolous things. I give myself time, as much as I need. I am not afraid to lose. As I say, you need one miracle piece – nobody can do a ton of great clothes. And Alaïa is expensive, like couture – it’s luxurious, like all high fashion brands. I don’t know why people in fashion don’t treat it as luxury anymore.

You have said before that we are missing philanthropy in fashion.

New talents, like Haider Ackermann, really have to watch out for themselves. The decision for someone like him is hard — to be approached by a big maison and then say no. But signing a big contract is like signing a contract with the devil today. He can’t do his collection and do, for example, collections for Dior. Of course there are exceptions, like Karl Lagerfeld — he can do Fendi, he can do Chanel, he can do photos, film, Diet Coke — but that’s something very different. There is just one Karl Lagerfeld — it’s a whole other system.

What about your system?

I just concentrate on the clothes I make. I think, “Why do I make clothes? What should the clothes I make be about?” There is just one good reason to do fashion: to make the woman look more beautiful. If that is not the case, it has no meaning for me to create. And it has no meaning for her to buy something that massacres her style. I truly never calculate — I only think about women when I create. And I owe it all to the women, all my success.

Are you interested in money?

Only to spend. And of course I had to learn, and I have learned, it’s good to have it to be able to do things.

Are you interested in success?

Everyone is! Even a sweeper is interested if you say he sweeps well. It shouldn’t go to your head though, because it’s not for ever. I am not pretentious in such things. You know, from the beginning I could have been the best paid stylist. I have been offered the highest paid contracts in the world. I refused them all. It’s not my thing. I don’t want to cheat people. And there are certain people I am allergic to. I even intervene when I don’t like a customer; I rush in and check all the names. If I don’t like them, I don’t take them.

What keeps you going?

I don’t let things get to me.

How many hours a day do you work?

I begin at 9 am and I go to bed around 2am, sometimes around 3am. I sleep little. If I’m not working or entertaining, I love to watch the National Geographic channel. It takes my mind off business. I don’t take things too seriously, though — in this system, you are closed in. You will wake up one day and you will think, “Shit, what have I done?” You have to take things with a lot of laughter. I laugh with everyone, this way I will be able to die happy. And I put myself on the same level as everyone else around me – from the directrice to the workman, everyone. Except my pets — they are the Kings; you must treat them like royalty.

Four or five hours of sleep — is that enough time to develop a dream?

I don’t waste time when I sleep.

How would you describe the man I am facing right now?

I don’t try to understand myself. I live more like this: every morning when I wake up, I ask myself, “What will I learn today?” Really, it’s true. When I wake up I am happy to open my eyes, happy to be alive, to feel good, to have no diseases. And then I ask myself, what will I learn today? Who will I get to know today? I am a very curious person. The beauty of working in fashion is it gives you the possibility to meet a lot of people – interesting, amazing people. I think I’ve met the most interesting people of my time, from all fields, and I am very grateful for that.

What have you learned today?

The day is not over yet. But I promise you I learn something new every day. And I want to try to keep it that way, until the day I die. Even in designing, there are so many things I still have to learn. I’ve been trying to manipulate clothes for thirty years, but I know I can still get better. Sometimes I redo one thing five, six times. I am always in doubt; I am never sure of myself. Even when you tell me I’m an influential designer — I don’t see myself like that. So I don’t like decorations. You know Sarkozy offered me the Légion d’honneur medal? I refused. People said I refused because I don’t like Sarkozy, but that’s ridiculous. I refused because I don’t like decorations — except on women. My dress on a woman — that’s a beautiful decoration.

This edited interview was conducted by Jina Khayyer and was first published in the Summer 2011 edition of 032c .

Stephen Meisel in 032c Winter 2008/09 | Source: 032c

As 032c prepares to mark its tenth anniversary and moves into a new office designed by Arno Brandlhuber/ b&k+, BoF sat down with the magazine’s founder, editor and creative director Joerg Koch to discuss the inner workings and future plans of his title. While there’s no formula for the unique circumstances and hard work that led to 032c’s enviable market position, Koch’s insights provide lessons that both brands and magazines can learn from.

BERLIN, Germany — Ask fashion’s thinking class what they consider to be the best magazine on newsstands today and they’re likely to point you to an enigmatic red book with a cover that features a headless female body in black leather gear and story teasers like “Business of Design” and “Fall of Communism.” It sounds unlikely, but the 18th issue of Berlin-based 032c is wildly popular in fashion capitals like New York, London, Paris and Moscow, making it the magazine of the moment.

But its remarkable success is based on more than hype. The latest issue is a winner — and not just editorially. It’s also the thickest in the history of the magazine, thanks in part to 35 pages of advertising (compared to 20 a year ago). What’s more, any of the ads would be the pride of most other independent magazines in the industry: Missoni, Jil Sander and Raf Simons take up single and double spreads alongside Comme des Garcons, Dior Homme and Tom Ford.

This is an impressive feat, especially when you consider that big publishing houses with dedicated sales teams are struggling to find advertisers, putting out depressingly thin issues and accepting ads from mid- and down-market brands they would have turned down just two years ago. Clearly, 032c is doing something right.

Build a strong identity

032c would not be the darling of magazine junkies and media critics everywhere, nor a commercial success, if it wasn’t for the intelligence and freshness of its content. While editorial magic is hard to explain, for 032c it has a lot to do with being true to its Berlin roots and a stimulating and unorthodox mix of content that spans art, fashion and politics, but somehow manages to make perfect sense. The current issue, for example, includes stories on two contemporary artists, the Polish government, a Fortune 500 CEO from Oregon, a Paris nightclub and Trish Goff.

032c is also a powerful signifier, as desirable and emotionally satisfying as a Marc Jacobs shoe. People who buy 032c spend a lot of time with it and prize having it on their bookshelf. And that’s just what advertisers are looking for. Indeed, brands are increasingly seeking to connect with consumers through media platforms that function as aspirational entities themselves. Simply by being in the magazine, brands feed off 032c’s powerful cultural cachet.

Tackle challenging markets

Koch says it was a strategic decision to aggressively pursue Italian advertisers. “We knew that being a magazine that is perceived as being very avant-garde, Milan would be the most difficult market. It’s very conservative and commercially-oriented. In Paris, the fashion brands are more fine-tuned to our sensibility. So for us the interesting thing was to tackle the markets we perceived to be the biggest challenge and then be there all the time and talk to the people. We even opened a small Milan office with one person. And I flew down there quite often. All that pays off.”

Be louder and better than ever, especially in hard times

Koch doesn’t believe economic insecurity is a reason to scale down ambition, if anything you need to be bolder: “The best advice never given to us personally was Warren Buffet’s, who said ‘Be greedy when everyone is fearful, and be fearful when everyone is greedy.’ You can replace that with ‘Be loud when everyone is quiet and be quiet when everybody is loud.’” Clearly, the ambitious attitude has paid off. “We really believe that the time is right for the publication to enter a larger arena,” says Koch.

But being independent has been advantageous for 032c. Their Winter ’08 issue included a story titled “Who is Steven Meisel?” that featured a 14-page fold-out with every single cover the American photographer has ever shot for Italian Vogue. This sort of extravagant gesture would be unthinkable in the context of a corporate publishing house, but the feature was an instant hit, making number 16 one of the most talked-about issues in 032c’s history.

At the same time, there are obvious advantages, in terms of advertising and distribution, to being part of a larger organisation. Koch believes it’s not impossible to create a magazine with high standards of quality and an independent editorial spirit within a big publishing house and doesn’t rule out a mutually beneficial partnership with a larger company. “There will definitely come a point where for further growth — especially in terms of distribution — we’ll probably need a partner.” This should be interesting news for major publishers who are facing tough times and scrambling to reach an increasingly educated and fragmented readership.

Reflect a changing mindset

Koch says that no changes are planned in terms of the architecture and look of the magazine. But he likes to mention “a changing mindset” at 032c. So far, the most overt nod to commerce is the introduction of Select, which would be called a market section at a more traditional title.

With Select, 032c is moving from being a magazine of pure ideas to something broader: a magazine of ideas and products. “Select is definitely a commercial thing,” says Koch unabashedly. But, as one would expect, the magazine is doing it in its own idiosyncratic way: Select’s debut installment, for instance, covers a rare manuscript by Georges Bataille next to Lanvin jewelry next to a museum exhibit of Aztec artifacts next to Dior Homme cufflinks.

Select is also a test vehicle for 032c’s biggest project: developing its quiet online presence into a constantly-updated content site that not only complements its flagship print product, but stands alone in quality and scale. Indeed, the kind of digital operation they have in mind is ambitious enough that Koch is currently looking for a partner to help them take the new website from concept to reality in 2010.

The magazine’s pro-Internet stance is interesting for a title that could revel in print-only exclusivity. But Koch sees no contradiction in doing both. On the contrary: “The magazine will never be something that you will get at every newsstand, you have to make an effort to get it. It’s not everywhere and that is really nice for the aura of the magazine.” But a strong website, the thinking goes, available to everyone, everywhere and at all times, can enhance that aura rather than dilute it.

In its approach, 032 is part of a new establishment of magazines like Fantastic Man and Purple that are not just surviving, but thriving through the economic crisis that’s crippling the rest of the industry. Radiating confidence, theses titles emphasize superior editorial quality and advertisers respond to that, even in tough times. Indeed, nothing about 032c is dumbed-down, and, sadly, that’s a rare thing on today’s newsstand.

Suleman Anaya is a fashion and culture writer based in New York.