An Interview with King Apparel
When you speak to someone like Tim Hoad from KING, his hunger and optimism is infectious. He should be some sort of motivational speaker to kids wanting to learn how to build up a brand, an identity, a quality control, ethics and some sort of intuitive, forward-thinking vision (although I think the last quality I think you either have or you don’t). That is what KING represents and has done from day one, back in 2003, when the label launched in London as a premium streetwear brand, concentrating on (believe it or not) underwear and accessories. It was a brave move, combining snowboard aesthetics and undergarms, but an original one that got KING noticed. They’ve now expanded to a full collection of under and outerwear, have a skateboard, snowboard and urban music team and also hold claim to being the first worldwide brand to work with New Era on their now ubiquitous 5950 hats. A stroke of perfect timing sees the new Autumn/Winter collection drop this week, so read on to check out the full story, and the reason why artists like Sway and Plan B are fully representing the label.
Tim, what’s the background story, I remember seeing KING ads back in the day being a cross between snowboard stuff and underwear!?
Myself and Paul Linton started the brand together. My background comes from being a professional snowboarder and skateboarding whilst I was growing up. I still skate now. Paul’s background was in graphic design. I’d seen loads of cool brands come up in the snowboard scene. Really well marketed and really well designed. I really liked the idea that I could apply myself to that but in my own setting, which is London - where I grew up.
We wanted to start off as an underwear and accessories label because everyone starts with t-shirts and we just thought that was boring. We wanted to do something original but also had scope for expansion. So once the brand grows in confidence we can expand and make it more diverse. That was always the intention. So we have the KING brand, then under that KING UNDER APPAREL and KING APPAREL, the latter is the side which is going crazy at the moment.
The label hits on many aspects, there’s technical side in your garms, as well as street edge, how do you describe yourself?
We see ourselves as a crossover brand. We’ve got a really good appreciation of the skate scene, snowboard scene and UK urban music. We don’t want to be pigeon holed in any sort of way. So if there’s a kid who’s into punk music, but also skateboarding, we appeal to him. But there also might be a kid who’s into the grime scene but hates skateboarding and he can still get into KING. We don’t want to alienate anybody. It was always about making the brand as good as possible as it can be, in terms of quality.
There were some really good brands coming over from the States, more hip hop styled brands, but the attention to detail was incredible and put a lot of the skateboard brands to shame. We thought we’ve got to make our stuff as good or better, otherwise, there’s just no point in doing this. So we manufacture all our product in Europe, so the quality is top notch. We limit ourselves to 300 pieces of everything. No reruns and no repeats.
Kind of like a British L-R-G?
I really liked them in the early days. L-R-G is a really positive model to look at. They’ve got the crossover audience as well and just are a really interesting brand. We get comparisons a little bit. No so much in design terms, but how we approach the business.
We are inherently British. We want KING to be seen as being UK thing. There’s no reason why we can’t do it as well as the US brands, but do it with the talent that’s in this country.
You showcase that with the music team you’ve put together…
There’s some really good artists out there such as Sway and Plan B. I met Sway at a gig in Shoreditch about three years ago. This was before his mixtapes had come out and there were about 30 people there. But his set with DJ Wonder was wicked. So I approached him to get on the KING team and do some collaborations. It all started there. We have a real personal relationship with all these artists we’ve never gone through managers etc. We involve them with everything and let them have complete creative control with what we work on and generally grow together.
At the moment we’ve got Sway, Plan B, Pyrelli is coming through strong. On the grime tip there’s Wretch 32 who’s big. We’ve known him for years but said to him that once he gets his shit together we’ll really hit it proper. In the last year he’s really got his act together so it’s really good at the moment. We’re always looking for interesting stuff. We’ve got a session drummer called Breakbeat on the team who’s worked with John Legend and The Black Eyed Peas and whilst he’s not an “urban hip hop artist” he’s got an amazing talent acoustically, and that’s just as interesting as a kid on the mic.
With heavy associations within the UK hip hop scene, but essentially rooted in a different business, it’s interesting to hear what you have to say about what the UK scene needs in order to grow?
First and foremost, everybody has to be as professional as possible. If you take America for example, a lot of their independent artists will go that extra nine yards just to make sure they’ve got an interview, a review, they turn up to meetings… I think the grime scene in particular has exposed a good work ethic in young UK artists but there needs to be a touch more professionalism. It needs to be spot on and you’ve got to be better than the next man, otherwise no-one is gonna take any notice of you. Everyone also needs to work together, as opposed to clashing each other. It’s a small scene and everyone needs to work together in order for it to grow.
I also don’t think major record labels have a clue of how to market the music. So I think it’s so important to do it on your own. And when you do it on your own, you got to be top notch, professionally. I think everyone knows that, but it’s all about applying yourself.
How about British streetwear?
I think it’s in a stronger position now than it ever has been before. We did some tradeshows back in the day and you can see the brands that have actually developed and really put the hard work in, because these are the guys who are still about.
At the end of the day a lot of the good streetwear brands have a graphic design background. So there’s always going to be some similarities because a lot of graphic artists get their inspirations from similar places. It’s inevitable. But we’d rather design stuff for ourselves and take influences from the most obscure places to make sure we don’t look like anyone else. We don’t follow fashion trends, colours or any of that nonsense! If it looks good, we’re gonna do it. If our work starts leaning towards anything that we’ve seen before, we’ll just stop and start again.
It’s also a good time because there are a lot of good mediums to expose the scene. Good magazines, street press, Channel U etc. The general public are tired of the high street. People want to see something new and because of that I think it’s definitely a strong time for good British streetwear brands.
You just dropped the new Autumn/Winter collection, what have you got this season?
We’ve got a new Defy range which is a bit tongue in cheek regarding the hoodie ban in shopping malls. We’ve got the slogan “Stand Up For Your Hood” and did a bunch of garments where you could remove the hoods and have little prints that say “Shopping Mall Friendly” etc. We’ve also released denims for the first time this year. We’ve got as much detail on there as possible without going over the top, we use a nice 12oz raw denim. It’s such a tough market that you have to come with something different otherwise, you’ll just be eaten up.
Bringing it back round, I wanted to talk about New Era and the range of hats, you guys kind of spearheaded that move, right?
We were the first worldwide brand to ever work with New Era on the 5950 hats. Before DC, before anybody. Because of our backgrounds we knew the New Era thing was going to be massive. We approached them before they even came to Europe and they really liked the direction we were going with our brand and that was where we started the collaboration and it’s gone from strength to strength.
I remember when we first started with the New Era pieces, so many stores were just not interested. They would say things like “it’s rudeboy, we don’t want it in our stores.” And now the phones ringing off the hook to get one of our caps! We use the cap as the canvas to push some really original designs. In terms of colours, embroidery, position of designs, it’s unmistakably us. No reruns and no repeats.
King
Tim, what’s the background story, I remember seeing KING ads back in the day being a cross between snowboard stuff and underwear!?
Myself and Paul Linton started the brand together. My background comes from being a professional snowboarder and skateboarding whilst I was growing up. I still skate now. Paul’s background was in graphic design. I’d seen loads of cool brands come up in the snowboard scene. Really well marketed and really well designed. I really liked the idea that I could apply myself to that but in my own setting, which is London - where I grew up.
We wanted to start off as an underwear and accessories label because everyone starts with t-shirts and we just thought that was boring. We wanted to do something original but also had scope for expansion. So once the brand grows in confidence we can expand and make it more diverse. That was always the intention. So we have the KING brand, then under that KING UNDER APPAREL and KING APPAREL, the latter is the side which is going crazy at the moment.
The label hits on many aspects, there’s technical side in your garms, as well as street edge, how do you describe yourself?
We see ourselves as a crossover brand. We’ve got a really good appreciation of the skate scene, snowboard scene and UK urban music. We don’t want to be pigeon holed in any sort of way. So if there’s a kid who’s into punk music, but also skateboarding, we appeal to him. But there also might be a kid who’s into the grime scene but hates skateboarding and he can still get into KING. We don’t want to alienate anybody. It was always about making the brand as good as possible as it can be, in terms of quality.
There were some really good brands coming over from the States, more hip hop styled brands, but the attention to detail was incredible and put a lot of the skateboard brands to shame. We thought we’ve got to make our stuff as good or better, otherwise, there’s just no point in doing this. So we manufacture all our product in Europe, so the quality is top notch. We limit ourselves to 300 pieces of everything. No reruns and no repeats.
Kind of like a British L-R-G?
I really liked them in the early days. L-R-G is a really positive model to look at. They’ve got the crossover audience as well and just are a really interesting brand. We get comparisons a little bit. No so much in design terms, but how we approach the business.
We are inherently British. We want KING to be seen as being UK thing. There’s no reason why we can’t do it as well as the US brands, but do it with the talent that’s in this country.
You showcase that with the music team you’ve put together…
There’s some really good artists out there such as Sway and Plan B. I met Sway at a gig in Shoreditch about three years ago. This was before his mixtapes had come out and there were about 30 people there. But his set with DJ Wonder was wicked. So I approached him to get on the KING team and do some collaborations. It all started there. We have a real personal relationship with all these artists we’ve never gone through managers etc. We involve them with everything and let them have complete creative control with what we work on and generally grow together.
At the moment we’ve got Sway, Plan B, Pyrelli is coming through strong. On the grime tip there’s Wretch 32 who’s big. We’ve known him for years but said to him that once he gets his shit together we’ll really hit it proper. In the last year he’s really got his act together so it’s really good at the moment. We’re always looking for interesting stuff. We’ve got a session drummer called Breakbeat on the team who’s worked with John Legend and The Black Eyed Peas and whilst he’s not an “urban hip hop artist” he’s got an amazing talent acoustically, and that’s just as interesting as a kid on the mic.
With heavy associations within the UK hip hop scene, but essentially rooted in a different business, it’s interesting to hear what you have to say about what the UK scene needs in order to grow?
First and foremost, everybody has to be as professional as possible. If you take America for example, a lot of their independent artists will go that extra nine yards just to make sure they’ve got an interview, a review, they turn up to meetings… I think the grime scene in particular has exposed a good work ethic in young UK artists but there needs to be a touch more professionalism. It needs to be spot on and you’ve got to be better than the next man, otherwise no-one is gonna take any notice of you. Everyone also needs to work together, as opposed to clashing each other. It’s a small scene and everyone needs to work together in order for it to grow.
I also don’t think major record labels have a clue of how to market the music. So I think it’s so important to do it on your own. And when you do it on your own, you got to be top notch, professionally. I think everyone knows that, but it’s all about applying yourself.
How about British streetwear?
I think it’s in a stronger position now than it ever has been before. We did some tradeshows back in the day and you can see the brands that have actually developed and really put the hard work in, because these are the guys who are still about.
At the end of the day a lot of the good streetwear brands have a graphic design background. So there’s always going to be some similarities because a lot of graphic artists get their inspirations from similar places. It’s inevitable. But we’d rather design stuff for ourselves and take influences from the most obscure places to make sure we don’t look like anyone else. We don’t follow fashion trends, colours or any of that nonsense! If it looks good, we’re gonna do it. If our work starts leaning towards anything that we’ve seen before, we’ll just stop and start again.
It’s also a good time because there are a lot of good mediums to expose the scene. Good magazines, street press, Channel U etc. The general public are tired of the high street. People want to see something new and because of that I think it’s definitely a strong time for good British streetwear brands.
You just dropped the new Autumn/Winter collection, what have you got this season?
We’ve got a new Defy range which is a bit tongue in cheek regarding the hoodie ban in shopping malls. We’ve got the slogan “Stand Up For Your Hood” and did a bunch of garments where you could remove the hoods and have little prints that say “Shopping Mall Friendly” etc. We’ve also released denims for the first time this year. We’ve got as much detail on there as possible without going over the top, we use a nice 12oz raw denim. It’s such a tough market that you have to come with something different otherwise, you’ll just be eaten up.
Bringing it back round, I wanted to talk about New Era and the range of hats, you guys kind of spearheaded that move, right?
We were the first worldwide brand to ever work with New Era on the 5950 hats. Before DC, before anybody. Because of our backgrounds we knew the New Era thing was going to be massive. We approached them before they even came to Europe and they really liked the direction we were going with our brand and that was where we started the collaboration and it’s gone from strength to strength.
I remember when we first started with the New Era pieces, so many stores were just not interested. They would say things like “it’s rudeboy, we don’t want it in our stores.” And now the phones ringing off the hook to get one of our caps! We use the cap as the canvas to push some really original designs. In terms of colours, embroidery, position of designs, it’s unmistakably us. No reruns and no repeats.
King
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