More pictures after the jump.

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Whether it’s doing it like Acne and mixing film amongst their clothing or being like Kitsune and running a record label, some brands function better as part of a creative collective. With their fingers in music, art and film, Uniforms for the Dedicated are the latest example of a collective fulfilling their potential.

The collective itself started around 2004, with the Swedish team originally meeting in the USA. One of the founders, Fredrik Wilholm states that ‘We actually got to know each other living together in Colorado snowboarding, basically starting out as a travelling collective’. It wasn’t until 2008 that the clothing collection started, with the video and art sides not starting until early 2009.

The clothes themselves are influenced by historic reference points and given tweaks and twists to bring them in line with the rest of their collection. Using family owned factories in Turkey and China, they focus on fabrics that can achieve the look they strive for. “Materials, whatever we find, like and can afford, mohair, wool, leather, cotton twills, synthetics, a lot of canvas. We spend a lot of time on washes that looks Uniforms – they might not be the most crazy expensive raw material but we work and treat it to get the right look and hand feel.”

When it comes to the oft-stressed topic of prestige not being enough to warrant a high price anynore Fredrik states, “We believe that everybody need to question their brand existence, what´s unique in your product and what the customer actually gets in relation to what she/he pays for. Recession or not I think we live in a time when consumers in general have the confidence and knowledge to create a subjective opinion about the product living up to the price or not.”

In recent blogs I’ve discussed the impact that component details such as lace colour and edge treatments can have on footwear design. A prime example of this is March’s shoe of the month.
 
I have taken our country brogue, this time in black grain calf, and injected styling elements that lighten and freshen the shoe’s aesthetic. Despite it being a black shoe, the styling has transformed it into an eye-catching and surprisingly successful Spring/Summer piece. The forthcoming Lodger Spring/Summer 2011 Collection explores the idea of melding traditions from different seasons. Pairing darker textured leathers, traditionally selected for a wintry aesthetic, with light ’summery’ sole edges, skeleton linings and natural welt stitching is a look I have explored at length and feel works beautifully.
 
The storm welt on March’s shoe is unstained and simply sealed with a light waxing. This pale leather colour is reflected in the flat cotton lace. The sole edge has also been left ‘nude’ and clear-waxed. The final touch is leaving the welt stitch a natural linen colour. The grained pebble texture contrasts with the smooth flat edges of the light sole edge, and leads the eye from the light lace, down through the brogued pattern pieces to the rolled storm welt.

I am ashamed to admit it, but I often get lazy when it comes to polishing my shoes. I rarely unlace them to polish around the eyelets.

In a moment of guilt last week, I unlaced three pairs of shoes and gave them a thorough polish. Nourishing cream et al.

As I relaced them, my eye was drawn to the elegant lines, shapes and design around the eyelets. My immediate thought was that it is such a shame that this part of the shoe is so often covered by trousers.

When it comes to trouser length, I have a natural aversion to short cuts. This is probably because of the childhood screams of “JACK UPS” every time a pupil outgrew their trousers at my primary school.

I have been in New York a month now and I have noticed that most businessmen like their suit trousers even baggier than me. So their laces are covered too. (Incidentally, I prefer the back of my suit trousers to just touch the floor when I am standing barefoot – a good measure for alterations.)

However, when it comes to casual trousers, male New Yorkers favour shorter turn-ups. And for jeans, they are shorter still. Admittedly, the latter are predominantly favoured by those wearing Chelsea boots. It is far too cold around the ankles at the moment for anything else.

But seeing shorter trousers and jeans has reinforced the elegance of showing the vamp, laces and top of the shoe in general.

As I write this, I’m looking down at the developing hole in my jeans where my keys rub. I need a new pair. And rather than grabbing my size and hoping they fit at home as per usual, I will try short cuts or longer ones that can turn up.

I think I’m old enough to brave the “JACK UP” bellows now… Although the phrase probably has a different definition over here. Everything else seems to.

I was introduced to a relatively new brand recently called Thomas Lyte. Better known for their silver work (it’s their responsibility to maintain and refurbish the FA Cup), they also have a growing selection of leather goods with an admirable focus on craft.

I visited the leather workshop in south-west London last week to take a look at how the bags are put together.

The leather they use comes from a small German tannery called Breuninger, which Thomas Lyte effectively saved from insolvency when it bought a large order of mustard-coloured grain leather a few years ago. Now functioning and solvent, Breuninger has retained the mustard dye (together with a grey) exclusively for Thomas Lyte.

The vegetable-tanned leather uses a method called tipping to bring out the fine grain the company has stamped on it. Essentially this means dying the leather twice, once before and once after stamping, the second time using a darker dye that sits between the raised grain and adds contrast.

Having written before, in my piece on Bown bags, about the hand-inking of cut edges, I was glad to see that Thomas Lyte also uses this method. They try to avoid cut edges wherever possible though. (A cut edge being where the leather has been cut, leaving a raw surface that needs to be covered with something, like ink or paste.)

On a bag’s handles a cut edge is pretty much unavoidable. But on side panels or other parts of the bag, the edges are always turned – which requires skiving the edge to make it thinner, turning it over and then stitching it down. This leaves a cleaner, smarter finish but takes longer.

Thomas Lyte’s leather products are always fully lined, with silk. This can create engineering problems, such as a tight corner where the silk has to be sewn into it on the inside. But it is more attractive, particularly in the flower motif printed on deep pink that they often use.

Also – and I love this fact – all the pockets of all the wallets are lined with silk too. Many manufacturers don’t line the pockets, only do so halfway, or use less expensive material. Because you can’t see it very easily. I check that every time I pick up a wallet now.

To segue from craft into design, I’m a fan of their coin purses that fasten with magnets along the edge. Not only do they keep the pocket shut, but when it is open they cling to the coppers so everything else comes out first. Assuming you’re not searching for 2p to put in a tip jar, this saves much scrabbling around.

Design is all about British icons. From the pillar box, Thomas Lyte’s designers took the kicking plate that runs around the bottom and transferred it to the leather goods. So the bottom section of the bags and the wallets is in black bridle leather, contrasting with the grain calf leather on top. Practical for the bags, as bridle leather is much hardier, but more a question of continuity on the wallets.

From the Spitfire plane, the designers took the curve of the tail and echoed it in everything from bottoms of the bags to the tags on all their zips (see picture). And lastly, there is a faint reminder of a fairground’s helter skelter in the lines of the pockets of a wallet.

I think Thomas Lyte is a craft-orientated company that is just discovering what it wants to do in leather goods, with a leaning towards the slightly funkier, irreverent end of the design spectrum. For the moment they are only online. But watch this space.

Photography by Andy Barnham

There’s never been a more harmonious time in the relationship between streetwear and traditional menswear. Streetwear aficionados are wearing oxford shirts, menswear fanatics are wearing backpacks and everyone is wearing the simple under-designed sneaker. Gourmet are a brand who’ve risen to the top in this sector of fashion.

Started by three friends, Gourmet originally started out as a clothing company. “The [story] behind the clothing company was three Italians from the East Coast coming together to start a clothing brand, but the key ingredient to the recipe was that we were going to make all the clothing in Italy”, stated Jon Buscemi. This changed when they found that the market wasn’t quite ready for the products they’d made. “Making $400 sweatpants and $1200 sweatshirts just didn’t make sense where the market was going”.

It was only then that the company started introducing footwear into the collection, eventually morphing into a fully fledged footwear label. Gourmet are a company who wear their influences on their sleeves - sometimes to their own detriment. “Obviously Gourmet is influenced by Nike, they were doing all this first.” Jon stated in an interview with BNTL.co.uk that “When we did that Jordan flip shoe they dropped a federal lawsuit on us.”

That blip aside, the company still make shoes based on classics. For instance, their duck boot is clearly influenced by LL Bean’s version, but Gourmet’s versions is a re-interpretation as opposed to a rehash. Fabric-wise, the company uses the same leather as Louis Vuitton, making their shoes in Italy. But whilst the quality is top notch, the design is their calling card. They make clean trainers that straddle the fine line between under and over design. As Jon puts it, ‘There’s no floating space shoes here. It’s all easily digestible classic design.’