10 years of Sixpack France: what did it mean to you achieving this goal?
Well, Sixpack France started as a shop in 1998 without any plan. Our goal was just to sell everything you could find in our teenage bedrooms: posters, streetwear, spraycans, records, books, fanzines, comics etc. . . I can still remember when we started – day and night were mixed into one. Now we have a real team who work at the office. We are distributed in 20 countries. I am really happy to see how the brand has evolved.
From the first Sixpack store to the creation, development and success of an innovative brand, full of contents. How did your avant-gard evolve and what is the approach to your work today?
Sixpack is on a daily struggle to capture the essence of teenage – spontaneity, candor – to celebrate the relativity of knowledge and life. Messages comes from countercultures, minor cultures, popular cultures that we mean to bring back to the first plan. We want to democratise them by using the elite symbols combined with our inspirations. In a way, we are the advertising agency of the lost causes.
Sixpack France is not the classic streetwear brand. It is more elegant, conceptual and cultured. How do you define Sixpack’s style and what is its position in the streetwear panorama?
For us, street has little means, big hopes, self made man dreams, american influence, outdoor, oposed to home, oposed to elite, oposed to official… In a way, we’re getting off the wagon.
In the other, we lead the way. We dont feel we still belong anymore to such a categorie than streetwear. Streetwear implicitly includes in its definition that the product will not match with high standards. We would rather more define our environment as sportswear; in this matter we believe that sixpack belongs to a kind of label of a new generation, heritating from an older culture than streetwear itself, taking its roots in 1920 coco chanel’s sportwear and Lacoste for instance.
What is the relation between Sixpack France and the artists who work with it? What kind of projects do you like to develop and in what direction these collaborations will go?
I see my relations with artists beyond a print on a t-shirt. It should be something global and logical, I want to dig deep into things with them and built a long term relationship. The books are what stays, not the t-shirts. We have some pretty cool zines in the works. So, I see Sixpack like a strong united artists team who fight for the same values, but I want the brand to be able to exist by itself, that’s why I plan to divide Sixpack into two different lines – the artists line and a line that I’ll design myself.
My aim is to do a line free of any graphics, and focus on the garment design. The line is supposed to be basic and sophisticated, while remaining minimal and recognisable. A mix of classics with a futuristic approach.
In the Sixpack’s immaginary the hourglass recurs often. What’s its meaning?
The Hourglass means the time. In a way, we are fascinating by time passing by and the links between past and present. One of my favorite film is La Jetée, by Chris Marker. It is a lo-fi SF movie about the end of the world. Humanity is in danger of extinction so they send this man back in time so he can alter the present. It’s an absolute masterpiece that inspired our short movie « It Was On Earth That I Knew Joy » as well as the collection “Past-Present-Future”. It was a good excuse for me to scan past periods, and find links between past illustrators and those today, who will no doubt be references themselves tomorrow. I had a lot of fun and was lucky enough to collaborate with Robert Crumb, Hajime Sorayama, Todd James, Istvan Orosz, La Boca, etc.
Flipping the hourglass, what about the present’s sandy inundation and your daily work’s inspiration, and what about the next flip and your future projects?
For our SS11 collection, there is only one intention: back to the products. The main theme is the product in itself. Burn History, celebrate the product.
We also have a micro-collection with gay illustrator Tom Of FInland coming out on January. We are very proud about that.
Tell us something that is really Sixpack France.
Spontaneity, insolence, sincerity.
