Geoffrey B. Small

[Faust]

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Well, last week or so, I was asked by a magazine in London to answer some questions via email as part of an article they were doing on our recent delivery to Hostem with photos taken by Ryan Skelton. The angle of the piece was supposedly about slow design and sustainability issues of which we are well know to be leaders of. OK, so albeit the questions are all pretty lame, I write my answers and send them inside the deadline requested, and a few days later, the piece comes out in publication. You can view the piece yourself here:







At first glance, I think it is alright, but somehow something doesn't ring straight to me. I decide go over it again. And whoa… more than half of what I wrote and sent them is not even there. Alright, I know editing is always needed in media, and even sometimes for an online publication though they have no costs of paper or printing etc.. So I am thinking that maybe this is OK--but upon closer examination, that is not at all the case here. What they took out was in fact very specific and calculated. Indeed, anything their advertisers might not feel good about. And as some of their advertisers are world leaders in unsustainability, pollution, and unethical practices, that might create some problems with what I really had to say to their questions.

So for the record, exclusively here on StyleZeitgeist.com here is the interview published in full with my answers (yes, I must use the word here) uncensored….

Geoffrey, thank you for posting the entire thing. AnOther is well-embedded into the fashion corporate system, while still masquerading as an indie magazine.

Read this Vestoj article on Jefferson Hack, owner of AnOther and Dazed.

http://vestoj.com/hacking-the-system/

[newp]

I've seen this interview because Hostem posted some photos from it (and Hostem was the first shop which introduced Geoffrey B. Small's work to me) and this interview was lacking indeed. I am happy to be able to read these complete answers, thank you!

[TabulaRasa]

Extremely happy with everything about my most recent purchase from Geoffrey's amazing collection. Thanks to Persuade in Bilbao for helping make this happen.

Geoffrey B Small FMS06

[Geoffrey B. Small]

thank you & a note about Paris...

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Thanks so much Newp, Faust and Zam. And thank you Tabula Rasa for your most recent acquisition from Persuade, I believe Nic and Falcon at Eth0s in Shanghai will be having something to send to you shortly as well...

We have been working non-stop for months on this record season and have now finished the last of all the beautiful pieces we have accepted to produce for SS2016, and are continuously amazed as we have been receiving incredible sell-through stories among our worldwide dealers throughout this entire record season for production demand of our work, whenever deliveries are able arrive their stores. For example, one dealer's delivery received only 3 weeks ago is sold out, another in Japan received 2 weeks ago sold out 50% of their delivery in 2 days, another a week ago sold the first jacket only 15 minutes out of the box and an incredible 24% of the delivery was sold in the first day and a half etc… These are incredible figures in an industry plagued with excessive seasonality, planned obsolescence, chronic markdowns, and an estimated one-third of world production of clothing never ever being bought at any price. Clearly, we are making enormous progress in our mission to build a leading sustainable non-seasonal collection concept with extremely exclusive and limited distribution that focuses on one simple goal: making the best clothes humanely possible in the world today.

And because of this extreme growth and sales of our company in recent seasons, we decided in March that we are not doing any press presentations for the SS2017 season. Our organization has been increasing rapidly to meet demand and we must focus all of our time reorganizating many parts of the firm to manage growth and demand in the coming years. Over the last ten seasons, our sales and orders have increased by more than 50 percent in the world market annually, but in the last 2 seasons, growth was even higher… setting all-time records and despite aggressive hiring and expanding of our workroom team staff -our production capacity has been able to meet only about 80% of the new order levels of demand in these seasons, and we have canceled a significant amount of orders (totaling in the hundreds of thousands of euros) that our production simply was not able or willing to handle. So we have a priority on pruning some of our distribution and increasing more and more production capacity and organizational structure and systems in our workrooms at Cavarzere Italy where our extreme handmade clothes are produced.

The story of our workrooms and our company is also attracting more and more attention among smart cultural, economic and business people in Italy. As one of the few firms aggressively hiring people in a country where unemployment officially among people 30 years old and under is way over 40 percent, I have been invited to speak at no less than 3 major leading universities in Italyin the past year (the Facolta` L'Economia at the University of Padova, the Fondazione CUOA in Vicenza and the IUAV University of Venice) about our phenomenal, and yes, radical new approach to design, management and business in the fashion world. The fact that the majority of fashion industry press and media remain ignorant of this story is no problem for us. We don't need them and indeed, our model is based upon the opposite of theirs. Like politics today, what you see in the media is light years away from the reality of what is happening on the ground. And in the end, what is happening on the ground is what is happening, period.

As part of this growth, on June 1st, the legal structure of our company was successfully transformed from an Italian ditta` individuale (sole proprietorship) to an Italian Srl Societa` Limitata Responsibiilta` (similar to the Sarl structure in France or corporation in US) to reflect the new size and number of employees today in the company, as well as to prepare for the exceptional growth and development which we expect in the coming years. The new company has been carefully named "Geoffrey B. Small Made in Italy Srl" to symbolize our total commitment to our growing investment in the country and its human and cultural resources, and the making of our exceptional products entirely in Italy; and will act as the exclusive completely in-house production firm of our collections for all worldwide distribution.

Our Paris fashion shows require a huge amount of time and personal attention from myself and other key people in the company, and with the above mentioned situation and developments, we do not believe that we currently have the organizational size or team depth developed enough to handle all of the major organizational and building changes going on in the firm and the critical sales appointment work with our customers that needs to be done this week- and produce a great show in Paris…all at the same time. Priorities have to be made. Selling our work and promoting it is not our problem at the moment. We can sell every single piece we can make. And demand far exceeds supply. We will spend our time this week on the nuts and bolts of making things and selling things more efficiently and working more closely with our best retail partners to better serve the GBS customer at the retail level.

Our major retail partners around the world have agreed with us and supported us in this decision.

The collection we have developed and are presenting is one of our most exciting and beautiful to date, with new levels of extreme handmade clothing technologies, sustainability, and ethical creation for menswear direct from our workrooms. There will however, be no press access to the new work, so we cordially invite all interested parties to wait until the pieces arrive at our dealers' stores around the world next season to begin to see and experience them.

Thank you and best wishes to all,


Geoffrey










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[oulipien]

6.
What is the benefit of producing limited edition collections?
Do you think fashion needs more of that?

A recent study has come out that indicates that one-third of all clothing produced in the world is unsold. A ”29£" or ”2,990 yen" or “29,99 dollar or euro” article that steals its design from a Paris runway collection, promotes and uses slave labor and consumes a long chain of energy and resources and produces an equally long chain of greenhouse gas emissions in its production and delivery to the marketplace, fits poorly, uses uncomfortable plastic petrochemical fabric, looks cheap, and falls apart after only a month and several washings, and then needs to be replaced and repurchased again 5-10 times a year, and then ends up in an African landfill where its synthetic materials obstruct water flow, degrade topsoil and increase malaria growth or in the oceans all around the world where UK scientists have discovered now contain alarmingly high percentages of microscopic plastic particles most likely caused by our industry… is no bargain at all. It is a waste of money and one of the most expensive, wasteful and destructive things you can possibly do with your money. The business model is totally flawed. Reducing the amount and quantities of product and making things that last as long as possible is a tantamount to the new wardrobe philosophy for those of us who wish to avoid mass extinction of the human species within the next few decades. It takes a tremendous amount of skill, time and work to make a Geoffrey B. Small limited edition article, and it is financially and logistically impossible to over-distribute and over produce. Every piece must count for maker and wearer. If making clothing is going to cost more in the future, and it is, it must contain less waste, and that includes pieces that are over-produced on speculation using slave labor tactics and extravagant consumption of energy, water and natural resources. Micro-scale design and high value production specifically targeted to individual niche customers’ exact needs in exclusive and limited series is the logical sustainable, and humane, approach.
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I'm curious about how "micro" the micro-scale design, and how high the high-value production, you see as being necessary here. I don't think I've discarded more than a couple of garments or shoes in the past ten-odd years due to their falling apart, and even those that I have have lasted considerably longer than three months. (Several years, at a minimum; the only exceptions I can think of have been admittedly flimsy pants and shirts that got ripped up hiking, but even they served admirably until then.) None of it was produced in limited editions; no doubt some of it fit poorly and some of it may well have been ripping off reputable designers, and I wouldn't bet on any of it lasting 25 years. But it seems as if a lot of independent concerns are being addressed: quality of fit is independent of durability is independent of looking cheap is independent of being targeted to a niche customer's needs (because not every customer *is* a niche customer or wishes to formulate particularly specific needs---disregarding them is all well and good in the general world of fashion but if you're talking about the clothes-wearing public in general, well, I have only to look around my office to begin to suspect that few of my peers wish to spend a whole lot of time thinking about what, precisely, covers up their nakedness) is independent of where it was produced, etc., and only a few of those things seem to be addressed by having a limited collection. If I want a leather jacket, am I better off from a carbon standpoint getting the ultra-limited edition (of one) reindeer leather jacket from Albert is selling, given the source of the leather and the additional hop from him to me, or getting something from a thrift store? Probably the latter, right? & I would have thought that, if your clothes really do last 25 years, it's actually a *shame* that the editions are so limited---because everyone in the market for a shirt who, because of the limited number of GBS shirts it's even possible to buy, instead buy a different, less long-lasting shirt, are perpetuating the problem, even if the shirt they buy instead lasts a decade rather than six months. (Though to be honest I also wonder how many people buying GBS shirts, etc., *actually do need a shirt*. They *probably* have a number of perfectly serviceable, if perhaps not as stylish, shirts already.)

[Geoffrey B. Small]

Dear Oulipien, Sorry I am very busy at the moment working in Paris and your question(s) is rather long, extended and spread out. I would say very quickly that you are seeing things only from one side of a very complex equation and your answers require a lot time and understanding of what we have been doing over the past decades. Suggest you try to read the full thread here first to catch up on some things. Perhaps you are too busy, I understand. I know there is a lot, but that is the point and the reality. We are busy too. In the meantime, I do completely disagree with you about several things.

1. Actually, from a tailor's point of view, every human being actually is a niche customer. Across a wide range of variables, nobody is the same. You may not think you are a niche customer, but that is because you have been brainwashed by living in a system that has and is continuing to dehumanize a lot of things. You speak as if you are just another number, I do not believe you are. So for me to even begin to review and provide my answer to your own case as you began to present it in your post, I would need more specific and complete information including specifics on the garments you are talking about including label information, pricing and where they were acquired or bought, what you do for work and where you work, what other things and interests you have or do in your life that relate to your clothes, what you look like, what you want to look like, what you need when it comes to your clothes, what is the correct budgeting level that you can afford to put into whatever article of clothing is being considered, a myriad of things before even talking about body dimensions and fit, let alone "styling." Believe me, after 40 years of taking care of people's clothes in one way or another, even people who say they "don't care about their clothes at all" actually really do care a lot about them when you really get down to it. So to get to any point that I can provide a competent answer, I would need more information about you and your situation. Hope you understand, I am not trying to pry- but that is what I would need to do my job answering.

2.) Also it took me 5 times to try to understand what I think you are saying, but all those things you think are independent of each other, to me, from where I am coming from, which is the actual making of clothing side... the creation, production and distribution of clothes and the global industry which performs this task... those things are totally integrally connected to each other. They are not separate independent entities. Again, your perspective has been distorted by the norms set by the industrial/consumer era which still remains, and which we, and others are leading an exit or an alternative away from. But again, that requires too much time than I have now.

I will agree with you on the thrift leather if all you want is any leather jacket as it sounds from your text. You should not be asking Dr. Albert to go through all the pain and costs and time to make one of his pieces for you unless you love his specific work enough to do so. He is pretty busy too and has plenty of better things to do with his precious time than waste it making one of his pieces for someone that does not really want it. That is part of our point. Respect and value for individual human beings' time, be it mine, yours or Albert's, or yes, a lady working in a Vietnam or Bangladesh factory, is also paramount to correct valuation and consumer behaviour when it comes to clothes and I would say most anything else. Sorry no more time at the moment... hope it helps some. Give me some more specific information or more concise questions and I will try to do better when I can. Thank you In haste, cheers Gotta go. Geoffrey

[oulipien]

Just wanted to say thanks for graciously entertaining what I realize was a pretty rambly and ill-expressed set of thoughts on my part. I have read a fair amount of this thread but not all of it (it is pretty long) and will try to return with something more coherent. I do appreciate your taking the time.

[Geoffrey B. Small]

Examen Reginae in Collezioni Donna

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thanks Oulipien,

we are now back from Paris and a very successful session for men's SS2017, thanks
to everyone who took part in it- it was great seeing each of you. Now I would like to get a little caught up
on some recent runway press coverage on our collections. Collezioni Donna has run some very nice pages on
our SS2016 extreme handmade technology 'Examen Reginae' collection in Paris which we have now completed production on worldwide.
You can read and find out more about the creation of this collection in our SZ post from last year here...
You can find these works in Japan at Arts & Science, Journal Standard Luxe and AL Select (arriving), in Europe at Hostem in London,
Persuade in Bilbao, and Axsum in Bordeaux (arriving). North America: Hotoveli (albeit already sold out I believe) and IF in NY,
Noodle Stories (just arrived) and (arriving in next few days:) Cruvoir in Los Angeles, and Worthwhile in Charleston.
Eth0s in Shanghai will have a special group combined with their AW2016 selections as well.
Collezioni Donna is published in Italy by Logos and is the industry's leading print runway show coverage publication.

Thanks again to everyone.

Best wishes,

Geoffrey & the team

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[Geoffrey B. Small]

[Lohikaarme]

Would you consider any of your pieces unisex? Sadly for me, I think Noodle Stories is the only place near me that has your clothing and isn't appointment only.

[Geoffrey B. Small]

Dear Lohikaarme,
Thanks for your message. Yes many pieces are valid for both men's and women's wear in our collections and more often than not, we have crossover purchases and use by men wearing women's collection pieces and women wearing men's collection pieces. This goes for how the buyers work in Paris with us as well. Specifically for Noodle, about 15 pieces of their delivery were actually selected directly from our men's SS16 collection, even though they were ordered for a women's store, and made in smaller sizes (xs,s,m generally). So depending on your sizing and fitting if you are thinner they might actually have something for you. They have a small cdg store with some men's as well so maybe they thought there might be some cross-selling for a few men's items with the Comme as well. I don't know, although their women clients tend to like beautiful tailored clothes like we do on a lot of our men's works, and I do know they have a good number of our jackets to their clients- so that may be the main reason... We will also have some men's pieces also coming soon to Cruvoir in LA, although I believe they may work by appointment as you stated. Hope this helps a little. thank you and best wishes, Geoffrey

[Lohikaarme]

Thanks for the advice Geoffrey! Hopefully I can swing around to NS.

Dear Lohikaarme,
Thanks for your message. Yes many pieces are valid for both men's and women's wear in our collections and more often than not, we have crossover purchases and use by men wearing women's collection pieces and women wearing men's collection pieces. This goes for how the buyers work in Paris with us as well. Specifically for Noodle, about 15 pieces of their delivery were actually selected directly from our men's SS16 collection, even though they were ordered for a women's store, and made in smaller sizes (xs,s,m generally). So depending on your sizing and fitting if you are thinner they might actually have something for you. They have a small cdg store with some men's as well so maybe they thought there might be some cross-selling for a few men's items with the Comme as well. I don't know, although their women clients tend to like beautiful tailored clothes like we do on a lot of our men's works, and I do know they have a good number of our jackets to their clients- so that may be the main reason... We will also have some men's pieces also coming soon to Cruvoir in LA, although I believe they may work by appointment as you stated. Hope this helps a little. thank you and best wishes, Geoffrey

[TabulaRasa]

Thrilled to have a chance to wear the matching linen trousers to my GBS EVJ03 jacket. Thanks to Nic at Eth0s (and, of course, Geoffrey and the team) for making this possible.

[Mojo1990]

Awesome look! 😎 compliments you really well

[TabulaRasa]

Thanks, Mojo. Much appreciated.

Looking forward to a few more pieces in the coming year. Cheers.