Bing, Harris and Co, a heritage brand established in Dunedin in the mid-1850s and last year relaunched has opened a new High St store and launched AW13 simultaneously…
Bing, Harris and Co, a heritage brand established in Dunedin in the mid-1850s and last year relaunched as a stylish and affordable men’s fashion brand, has opened a new High St store and launched their Autumn/Winter 2013 collection simultaneously.
Thread met head designer Alistair Ramsay at the launch of Bing, Harris and Co at Sylvia Park last year. Now, Alistair discusses his inspiration for this, his second collection for AW13, with its strong visual campaign shot in Detroit recently.
“I spent a lot of time rambling around the streets of New York and Brooklyn and met some amazing characters. One of them was Dylan Forsberg who is a young photographer based in Soho whose portraits and landscapes are amazing. I asked if he was interested in doing a colab with us and he was super keen so you will see a few tees in our new collection from Dylan. He spends his time lost in a world of photography and art and goes hitch-hiking alone when everything gets too much. We have a great interview with him coming out soon. So the range was inspired by the lone wolves of the world, those people who walk their own path and block out the noise around them, true creative types, those that unintentionally shape popular culture.
"Also the colours of the buildings around NYC were inspirational, deep greens, burgundies, greys, rust, so many amazing winter colours were just jumping out at me whilst walking around so I used these in the range.”
“Detroit was the perfect city for our Winter campaign. The world hasn’t been kind to Detroit.
The city is now in ruins, huge skyscrapers lie empty without windows, suburbs scattered with burnt out houses, schools abandoned in the 80’s open wide to the elements with school books still scattered in the class rooms, police stations now just shells with criminal records still in drawers. There were wild pit bulls roaming the empty streets whilst we were shooting which was a little unnerving!
For three days our photographer Chris Searl, model Josh Dane and our guide Mark explored some of the hardest hit areas of Detroit, climbing through derelict factories in below freezing temps, walking into burnt out houses. It was so much fun.
The best thing about this city is there is a sense of hope and energy that is coming from the ruins. I met a young guy with three mates cleaning out a factory to turn into an art gallery; it was just one of about four massive buildings this twenty something owned. This is the sort of thing happening everywhere in this city, and there is no shortage of empty buildings to claim if you have the vision”.
For more info see their website at www.bingharris.com
Megan Robinson, 2 April 2013
Leave a Reply