During our visit to the Shockoe workshop, Anthony Lupesco explained his approach for Shockoe Atelier's debut menswear collection.
Anthony Lupesco
I think that there is this kind of personal connection to your favorite pair of jeans that you don't get with many other garments, maybe shoes. So, you throw your jeans on, and these are the other pieces that, without thought, you throw on, walk downstairs, get your coffee or whatever you're going to do for the day. It's all pretty simple. It's all pretty straightforward. This is our first go at it, so we really kind of focused more on fabrics and finding the most beautiful fabrics we could, and finding really clean classic silhouettes and making them a little more modern.
Anthony Lupesco
Exactly, yeah. One of the things that I really love that I've kept in my head this entire time: Rebecca and I will go to New York every once in awhile. Just the two of us, no work involved. We always take the Chinatown bus, even though it's a miserable experience. You wait long enough, you don't remember the bad parts. There's this really amazing moment that happens when you get off in Chinatown at like 5:30 in the morning, and we always just start a really slow walk towards Soho. You cross through the Bowery, you cross through Chinatown, and you see the entire city waking up. It's kind of voyeuristic in a way. You see all these different people who are crossing each other, who have completely different lives, and they all kind of mesh. They all have one common goal, which is get to work. So, if I wanted to go do that, what are the pieces that I would just throw on?
Someone Else
Even though menswear seems like a departure, the sport coat goes back to the beginning of the business.
Anthony Lupesco
Yeah, the argument was always do we make jeans or do we make a sport coat, and we went back and forth on it. They both have pros and cons, and I'm not talking about a sales perspective; I'm talking about a production perspective, which is the pro with jeans. No matter what we made, there was no interest in going mass-market or even mid-level. We really wanted to make the best in the category. To make a really good jacket takes 10 years for a factory to build up to that level. Belvest started off being mid- to low-tier and now they're one of the best jackets in the world but that's 25 years later.* So—jeans.
Someone Else
As part of the new collection, you're also doing washes with your jeans, working with Dick Gaines at Wonderland Concepts. Why washes?
Anthony Lupesco
I love raw. I may include one or two washes in my wardrobe as we get them, but I'll probably mostly wear raw jeans—but it is pretty awesome for me to do washes because you really get to know the fabric. You really get to see all of the details that are in it. You really need to put that age to it, to see all those different slub yarns and characteristics, and you also get to see how much it's going to shrink.
*Editor's note: The Italian factories that Shockoe works with for the menswear collection have already built up to Belvest-level quality, which is one of the benefits of outsourcing production for the collection.
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