New Black

March 9, 2011

Photo Erik By Erik

NewBlack is trying to go head to head on a market so dominated by American and Japanese brands; the street wear market.

The two brains (anonymous at the time) behind the brand initially met through the world of Graffiti. New Black wasn’t something they planned, it basically was just two best friends that felt like jumping on a new exciting excursion. Living in Sweden where a lot people play the safe cards, they felt like it was refreshing to push the limits in street wear fashion and see what they could get away with.
Hopefully something good will come out of it. Also being able to contribute something valuable to the street wear and sneaker culture in Sweden and cross the borders meant a lot to the founders.

The two best friends of NewBlack says that some of the major references for the “Fake It Until You Make It” line is from growing up in the 90’s, rocking snap back caps, bumping 2Pac and Biggie.

How do you battle the competition out there?
The difference is that we grew up watching the American culture from a distance, yes you can say that a lot of brands are using the same references, but there’s no Swedish brands like that yet. We think Swedes like to wear something local and our main focus lies in the graphics and clever prints.

Many people before us have just found a photo of Biggie and put it on a t-shirt and that’s it. New Black takes it a step further, trying to create something clever and make the customer interact and focusing on the humor.

So in this first release “Fake It Til You Make It” we can see a clear play on NBA and NFL logos as well as typical staple brand North Face, but how are you going to elevate the brand and keep it interesting?
This is just the beginning and somewhat of an experiment really to see where it could potentially take us.
Our focus lies in working with well recognized existing brands and like the name of the line implies – fake it all the way. We want the viewer to look at the brand and recognize the logo, then take another look and realize that some things off and eventually realize that it’s more than “just” a rip-off. The second delivery is already in the making, and yes you will see some of the same elements but not as much in your face.
We have to be real, if we’d start a line printing tee’s with just our logo, no one would have looked twice. we needed to reach out to people before delivering truly unique stuff.
That’s why we’re “faking it”.

Although it’s hard for them to pinpoint another favorite brand, Polo Ralph Lauren comes up as a cult brand that both bring back memories form their youths to still being a brand they rock. As far as their own genre, it’s more about who’s been able to stick around and create a following in the already over saturated street wear market.

It all depends on how you look at it; we’re not crazy about Stüssy, but they’re doing something right because they’ve been around for a long time. The Hundreds, Mishka and Undrcrwn have been doing some really nice stuff for some time now too.

It’s hard saying specific brands these days, because these days it’s all about finding pieces from different lanes and own it. Gone are the days when people stuck with one or two brands, you do that today and you end up looking like a human ad campaign.

Check out NewBlack’s premiere collection at www.newblack.se
The brand is on sale at Swedish street wear shop CaliRoots
www.newblack.se
By Louise Lund

Published by: The Swede Beat