Interview:The Inoue Brothers

To celebrate the launch of Inoue Brother's SS11 Collection at LN-CC, we sat down with the London/Copenhagen based duo for an in-depth interview that outlines the philosophy and production methods of this truly unique brand. We also discuss the forthcoming Inoue Brothers and SASQUATCHfabrix installation that will take place in the LN-CC store later this year.

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LN-CC: So, tell us a little bit about you guys and where you are from.

The Inoue Brothers: We are both born in Denmark by Japanese parents, so we are second generation Japanese and born and raised in Denmark. We started talking about founding our brand in the year 2004, we've been separated in our careers, I started as a graphic designer, my brother as a hair stylist and we've always wanted to do something together but we never really got the opportunity or chance to join forces but then when I met my wife Ula, who is a qualified tailor, we discovered a chance to be able to do fashion together. We've been interested in fashion since we were kids, but we also felt resentments towards the industry in a way, because we grew up in a time where you heard for the first time stories about children being exploited and child labour and you started hearing the scandals with big brands working in Asia. That has kept us away. But the interest in the creative aspect of fashion has always been there, since we were younger. In 2004 we started to do a small capsule collection together, but very limited and very local, then we were approached by a good friend, who just finished a BA in Bolivian politics and he introduced us to this amazing fibre" alpaca fibre", but also the whole concept of working directly with the indigenous communities in the Andes. And that was our first step towards the business concept that is more well-established and more defined now than it was back then.

The ethnic influences are very clear in your collections. You go much deeper into the culture, working with the local communities and are very conscious of where and what you produce. Do you consider this the core of what you you base your brand on?

The Inoue Brothers: Usually when you look at fashion you end up looking at the final product or the result of a process, there have been many great minds before us and there will be many great people and artist after us. For us it's all about studying our hero's in the past, we realised art is a result of a process, it's not about what you're doing but how it's been done and sometimes it's based on a sad story, a self destructive story, sometimes it's based on love, it's based on different things. We wanted to base our product on being the result of a process where we collaborate between our creativity and our style together with a local indigenous skill or craftsmanship. This unique combination is the result of the collections we are doing.

LN-CC: So you see it as a real fusion of cultures?

The Inoue Brothers: It's a concept of social expression as much as ethics, it's kind of difficult for us, because we know our ambitions as designers, we certainly don't see ourselves as fashion designers, but engaging with the community is what drives us. To come up with new ways of doing things or rather turning the conventional way of having an end product in mind, we design clothing by searching for the spirit, heritage and craftsmanship of the communities we are engaged with and endeavor to make efforts applying these aspects as our base for our collections. Exploring the potentials and expressing ourselves in this way, collaborating fully by opening ourselves up to any form of process is exciting and has become our method of development.

We've both as designers experienced the usual process where there is something you really want to do and then you find the production facility who are able to produce what you want to make. Whereas with our method it's the other way round, by us researching in what people are able to do in different places of the world and then finding out how we can combine that with our own way of expression and creating something together. We find out, ok, in South America they do the most amazing alpaca, in South Africa they have the most amazing beading skills or the most amazing eco hemp fabrics and then we sit down and go into the think tank, thinking, ok, how can we integrate or implement this, make the best out of it, into a thing that we really love and that we really believe can push the boundaries of the consumer here in the West. Because you know, I think, it's important that, we don't see ourselves as a consumer aware brand, we want you to buy what it is. There is a bit of magic what happens, from going through a process like this and what is created at the end, you can't deny, you feel something. And then you can start to understand the process of making this process. It's not that my brother sit and think, "ok, we really want to make a bag and we really want make a tote bag and it should look like this, cause that's what I'm into this season".. It's really a different creative process.

LN-CC: The SS11 collection is based heavily on the beading, used on the garments and accessories. How did you come across this community of craftsmen that had these skills? Was there a particular area in mind that you wanted to work with?

The Inoue Brothers: We've always been fascinated by Africa and we've always known there is a great and deep cultural heritage there. And in many ways the whole image of Africa has also been misinterpreted in Europe, because it's such a rich country in many aspects and in many aspects it's such a poor country as well and now the fear of the unknown from our side has probably kept us away from Africa in a long time, but suddenly we had the opportunity to really challenge our own fear of the unknown and go to Africa. A good friend of ours, a white local artist in South Africa, who is really trying to build strong bridges between white and black, and it's a history that has left many scars, deep scars, in South Africa, this is not just something that you can change by freeing Nelson Mandela, but hundreds of years of hate between each other. And this guy tries to build the bridge between them. We were so lucky to meet this artist called Xander Ferreira, he introduced us to the opportunities and the potential that Africa has.

This community is based in a township called Khayelitsha, they have different townships in South Africa and this is the main community we've been working with. Their strength is beading and also eco hemp production, it didn't take us long before we found out that this could easily be combined, this could easily be expressed through very stylish garments. And our role in this process and collaboration was to take all these different pieces from different areas and mixing them all together, combining them as whole garments and creating this collection that we just launched through LN-CC. And what we also realized and what is also interesting in working together with LN-CC as well, is that one thing is to create these kind of collections but when you do something different and do something against the current, then you know, on all levels we need likeminded people. So for us, being able to work with you guys has been a very important part of being able to introduce our collection in the purest form as it is and being accepted as it is and also being showcased like it should be and not like any normal high street brand, so I think the whole flavor and the whole aura about the Ubuntu is the combination of all the people that are involved in it, the ladies in the townships, right down to the boys at LN-CC...

LN-CC: Integrating their traditional work into these kinds of garments must be a total new thing for them?

The Inoue Brothers: Detail wise, the process you can't even make a story out of it, you can't make it up, we went there.. it's literally a year ago, and my brother and I were like "Shit, what are we going to do in Africa?", you know, we didn't have a clue but then when we got down there, we just researched, finding the best craftsmen, you got to make kind of a presentation on what Africa has to offer and then you know we looked into everything and started to see what these guys do, its very simple, because for them what we implemented in the garments, it's not something that we have had to designed, it's something that they have always made, they made these things, they're so incredible, the beading and this craft is hundreds of years old and it's a part of their cultural heritage and it's also a very tribal thing. For them to export that creates dignity and a feeling of pride. To have this possibility make something that originates from your country, and even better if it's a part of your inherited culture, and especially to them seeing it has appeal in the fashion industry, gives a sense of dignity and confidence in that kind of community. This is what my brother and I have been hooked on the most. We felt that is what we have to offer.

LN-CC: So you are keeping in touch with the craftsmen, giving them feedback on how their work is being perceived in the outside world?

The Inoue Brothers: Some of the greatest memories from this production is the feedback we got from our production manager in South African who was so happy, that he's been able to engage so many people in this project and of course also the ladies there, these ladies are strong ladies in a social aspect they're pinnacles in the local communities looking after younger woman, and all of them have children, most of them have children very early and these ladies functions as consultants or social workers or mothers and they're everything for their local community and they're so happy, first of all, they are just happy for having the opportunity to work and secondly all these ladies, they have these skills they were practically born with but because of how the market has developed, all of the work they have done until now was beading football flags for the world cup or touristic stuff, tourist souvenirs and stuff like that, and then suddenly they meet these two Japanese guys, coming to them and asking them to use the skills they're really proud of, tribal things and expressing themselves like they have never expressed themselves before.

And they didn't have this chance for a long time, so you can see they flourish as well and they shine even more when they are doing this and I also think that's the reason why these garments are so strong visually, because the way of expressing yourself in a tribal way, is a method and a culture that has been developed over a long time, so it's not just the result of a design session, which maybe lasts a month, it's the result of many many years of expression, many years of visual identity and when you combine these things with garments in different concepts we always end up with a really strong expression and it catches people's attention so quickly.

LN-CC: You guys have been to Peru recently, developing some new knitwear. Can you tell us about that process?

The Inoue Brothers: Knitwear has been our specialty until now and it has defined our brand. We were really known as knitwear brand before we started in Africa. When approached by our friend who encouraged us to start designing and producing a fashion brand for real, we were intrigued by the opportunity to work directly with artisans and crafts so personal to their culture and way of life. Through this process of working directly with communities, known as direct trade, we learnt that you can make significant impact on peoples lives by taking responsibility through making efforts in designing desirable collections and creating products that are sought after in our societies and consuming markets. Our efforts are directly reflected in our commissioning of products to our collaborative production partners within the indigenous communities, which has now become our formula and method of working also applied in our UBUNTU project.

In search for the finest fibre in the world, we forged a partnership with Pacomarca Farm located in the Puno province of southern Peru. Pacomarca is a research facility initiated due to the steady decline in the fine-fibre production over the past 30 years in the Andean regions. The heritage, culture and way of life for the indigenous communities in these rural and harsh environments, has been jeopardised through abandonment of government and educational organisations' lack of support and investment for the poorest people of the country. More than five million indigenous people - of Quechua and Aymara backgrounds - live below the poverty line in the southern highlands of Peru. Rural women are the worst affected. The majority of rural women are poor, and nearly 70 per cent of them are extremely poor. Rural women play an important role in the subsistence economy. They work in agriculture and tend livestock, such as alpacas, and they engage in income-generating activities. Women may represent as much as 80 per cent of a family's labour force and thanks to their productive activities, in addition to traditional household tasks and child-care, women make it possible for their husbands to migrate in search of temporary work, often in the growing mining industry of Peru. There are no records of production or fibre fineness, and much less of pedigree. Veterinary care is almost non-existent and frequently animals are shorn with bits of old tin cans or even pieces of broken glass, which is a painful process for the animal and also ruins the fineness of the fibre. In the Highlands it is thought that this is the only way to shear alpacas.

LN-CC: You are doing an exhibition here at LN-CC with the SasquatchFabrix guys from Japan. We believe SasquatchFabrix are doing something very special, and now they are working with you guys we are pretty excited to see the outcome of this project. Can you give us more light on this project?

The Inoue Brothers: I think our admiration of the Sasquatch boys is in a way very in line with everything that we've been talking about now. As we mentioned before we are second generation Japanese, we've had the advantage of being bi-lingual since we grew up, we've been able to look at Denmark, where we grew up but also Japan, with a different view than that of a true local, we've never really felt Danish and we never really felt Japanese, so our identity has never been based on a nationality, it's only because when you're in Denmark, you know, physically you look different from the local people there and in Japan mentally we are different from the local people, therefore we've always felt alien in a way, but this has always made us able to see both good and bad with a strong sense of criticism as well and what is interesting with the development of Japanese fashion or the Japanese culture in general is that after the Second World War Japan built itself up by copying and becoming really good at doing something that already existed but better..., electronics, cars, and fashion also. The Sasquatch generation, the generation of designers where Sasquatch belongs to is a new generation. It's so fresh and it's the new thing and seeing that from the outside is so obvious.

These guys are of the first generation that has been able to create their own original style. This is a style you can call, you can all it anything, but I call it, and I think they call it themselves as well "The Tokyo style". The style of Tokyo, new generation of Tokyo. This is not a style that is born out of a fascination of American clothing or British clothing or European. This is a style that is born out of Tokyo and it's, in many ways it's so creative, it's so avant-garde compared to what we're used to. And when we had the chance to meet them for the first time, I think they fell in love with our very unconventional way of doing fashion and likewise we did the same with them and thought 'wow' these guys are so different than with what we grew up with in Japan.

So I think it was very natural for both of us to feel a very mutual interest in each other, for me, especially.. the only thing that defines Tokyo, or the only feeling that you can get, is when you go there and feel it. But now there are people like Sasquatch creating a tangible product that gives you that feeling and you could never get that before unless you went there. Because this is an interesting time where that feeling is manifested through a product, you can feel it by seeing what they're making. It's very very fresh and it's very very modern. When you see Sasquatch's products you kind of can hear the sound, you can smell the smell, you can see where it comes from and at the same time, it's not just a romanticized view of Tokyo super hot, it's strong.

I think it's very obvious to see that the whole mainstream Tokyo movement at the moment is very inspired by what Sasquatch are doing, so I think the mutual interest in each other came very naturally, when we met we were like we need to do something together, and that same feeling we get when we go to Africa, it's the same feeling when we are in South America also, we say ladies, we need to do something together, because we're so fascinated. And that has been the foundation of our collaboration and what will come out of it is very interesting. Its out in the open.. It's gonna be a result of a process that we're in now and we're still in it so we don't really know what it's gonna look like, but all the things we were talking about before is what it will feel like. But what they will look like, is a very different thing, they have, you know, very specific ideas, I don't think they will know until we come together as well.

The confidence in each other's style is the reason that nobody needs to control it, the control is in the process, we're all open. We both know, both parties know it's gonna be strong, it's gonna be bold, it's gonna be loud. And very interesting. Definitely it's gonna be interesting, what people will be able to see and we will be able to see in June and July here in LN-CC.

Extreme satisfaction that we're all feeling that when we are together looking at it, wow this was the reason we're all started this collaboration and I think we all feel a great satisfaction because we've always been so open during the whole process, it's not a secret that our backgrounds are different, but also at the same time we have similarities, what we do is so different but at the same time in a way we're like minded and you know if you look at the style of LN-CC, SasquatchFabrix and The Inoue Brothers.. it's so different but this melting pot this is what's gonna be interesting. We really look forward to this, and the whole process is so full of joy, we really enjoy it.

I feel really privileged that we're able to work like this and we're very very lucky and I can feel that they feel the same way. Everything is based on very positive vibes, nobody is trying to force it, nobody is doing something that they don't want. It's gonna be really cool and both Sasquatch and us are very grateful that LN-CC are providing this platform also to be able to explore this creativity and explore the expression together.. without LN-CC this wouldn't be be possible.

Photography by: Xander Ferreira & Troels Jepsen