5 Minutes with the Founders of Scandi Skate Brand Soulland
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON LYST.COM - APRIL 2016
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Founded in 2010, Scandi skate brand Soulland is the brainchild of Silas Adler and Jacob Kampp Berliner. As well as their mainline collection of graphic skate-inspired tees and urban outerwear, the duo have collaborated with some of menwear's most iconic names including Nike SB, Lee Denim and most recently Icelandic technical clothing brand 66NORTH. Find out what drives their collaborations, how Soulland came to be and exactly why skateboarding has caught the fashion world's collective imagination.
How did you both meet?
Silas: We both remember the first time we met very clearly. It was at an outlet sale that some of our friends were running—they asked us to come and help out. One day we started messing around together and started chatting. I remember Jacob was smiling and laughing a lot with the customers.
Afterwards we had some beers together and the rest, as they say, was history. From then on, we started hanging out with the same crowd in Copenhagen. It was a time when different creative scenes started interacting with each other—food, fashion, music, skating—everything started to come together.
How did that lead to you starting a clothing brand?
Jacob: We always talk about this era in a bit of a romantic way, but there was a real energy in Copenhagen in the early 00s. It was the first time that we really felt everyone was collaborating to create something different. People were starting to realise that they could cross over the barriers between different subcultures. There was such a great vibe and a real sense of possibility in the city. It was at this time that Silas and I decided to join forces—at a Vietnamese restaurant.
“We always talk about this era in a bit of a romantic way but there was a real energy in Copenhagen in the early 00s.”
S: As we’ve got older, these scenes have dispersed a bit. Everyone was linked because they had a common interest, but now people have families and day jobs—it's inevitable as people got a bit older. But now it feels like people have settled, and that they are starting to come back together and collaborate—rather than being competitive like they were when we were younger.
J: I think everyone is really happy to see other brands succeed now—that’s what’s so great about the Copenhagen scene.
Tell us a little bit about the early days of Soulland?
S: I woke up one morning and decided I needed to get out of school, so decided to start a clothing line. I was about to go to college, then decided that I didn't want to so told my mum I was going to make some T-shirts—without knowing anything about making T-shirts or the fashion industry. I had to work other jobs on the side and I had various people telling me it was impossible. There were plenty of false starts—I even opened a store that got robbed.
“We haven’t founded a business on making things in the right colours, it’s built on mistakes.”
When I look back, I think there were a lot of things that said ‘stop this’, but I was too naive and and ignorant to listen to them. Then one day Jacob said to me, 'if you have something fun that you want me to invest in let me know.' I thought he sounded like the most un-serious business man (which was right up my alley), so I got him involved—and Soulland, as you know it today, was born.
J: The Soulland we have today started in 2010—that was when we had our first show at Copenhagen Fashion Week and finally had ‘proper’ production set up. it took us some time to find people we loved to work with and to really establish what the brand was about. We made so many mistakes at the beginning, but we were really happy-go-lucky about everything and learned so much. We haven’t founded a business on making things in the right colors, it’s built on mistakes.
S: And embracing those mistakes and moving forward. A lot of the best stuff in our collections has come from us experimenting with a piece or messing it up a little. Slowly these pieces turn into something fantastic.
Why did you choose to collabOrate with 66NORTH?
J: Our latest collaboration with outerwear brand 66NORTH is super exciting for us and we've drawn a lot of inspiration from the brand's heritage. 66NORTH is over 90 years old and was founded with the intention of creating coats and jackets to help Icelandic fishermen survive in the harsh elements. The coats were constructed to improve a fisherman's chance of survival if he were to fall overboard during a storm. Making clothes for extreme weather conditions is their main focus and we wanted to give that a more urban spin with our collaboration.
You describe yourself as a skate brand. Why do you think, especially at the moment, skating has captured the fashion world's imagination so much?
S: In terms of fashion there is alway a hunger for youth culture. Fashion embodies a lot of things and the eternal fountain of youth seams to a trope that comes up time and time again. I guess people don't want to think their life is going to end some day and young people make us forget that. Skateboard culture is by definition about youth.
I started skateboarding in Copenhagen, in the mid-nineties when I was about 10 years old. In Sweden (where I was living at the time) people used to skate a lot, but when I moved to Copenhagen it hadn’t caught on yet with kids. Everyone was older than me and that exposed me to a lot of things that other kids my age probably didn't see. Everyone took me in and treated me nicely, but they were all about five years older than me—I felt like I got more respect at the skatepark than I did at school.
Which other skate brands should we be watching out for?
S + J: We love 917, Polar, Pastelo, National and Post Details.
And what about awesome skate talent?
S: These days it’s all about Hugo Boserup—that kid man!