band of outsiders OFFICIAL SITE
스캇 스텐버그는 미국의 오하이오 주에서 의사인 아버지와 부동산 중개업자이셨던 어머니사이에서 태어났다.
유년시절부터 유복한 부모님의 영향으로 많은 여행을 다녔으며, 그로 인해 또래에 비해 풍부한 경험 할 수 있었다고 한다.
그는 유년시절 티비에서 방영하는 패션정보 프로그램을 시청하는 것을 좋했었는데, 스스로가 미래에 패션에 관련한 일을 할것이라고는 생각도 못하였다고 한다.
고등학교를 졸업하고 대학에 진학하기를 포기, 할리우드의 유명한 에이전시인 CAA에 취직을 한다.
안정된 직장생황을 지속하던 스탠버그는 29살이되던 해에 자신의 브랜드를 세우기로 마음을 먹고, 카드로 6만달러라는 거금을 대출한 후 2003년 말에 프랑스 영화감독 jean luc goard 의 bande a part의 제목으로 영어로 번역한 band of outsiders라는 이름의 브랜드를 런칭하고, 2004가을에 첫 컬렉션을 선보인다.
스텐버그는 지금까지 보았던 지루한 옷들에서 탈피해 더욱 더 깊이있게 다가가되, 좀 더 재기발랄하고 위트 있는 옷을 보여주자는 뜻을 담아 브랜드 네임을 선정하였다고 한다.
스탠버그가 선보인 첫번째 컬렉션부터 2년간 컬렉션에서는 셔츠와 슬림한 타이만을 내놓았다,
이후 2년이 지나서야 전체 컬렉션을 선보였으며, 이를 기점으로 남성의 의상에서 영감을 얻은 레디투 웨어 컬렉션인 boy by band of outsiders를 런칭하고, 몇년뒤 보이라인의 디퓨져 라인인 girl by band of outsiders를 선보였다.
이어 조금 더 캐주얼하고 스트릿에서 영감을 얻은 this is not a polo shirts까지 런칭하여 총 4개의 라인을 런칭, 지금까지 이끌어 가고 있다.
이러한 과정속에서 스텐버그는 2008년과 2009년 두해 연속 미국 CFDA에서 '올해의 남성복 디자이너 상'을 수상하였고 이로인해 차세대 랄프로렌이라는 찬사를 받으며 현재까지 새로운 아메리칸 클래식을 만들어 내고 있다.
Published in the June/July 2011 issue, and re-published here on the occasion of Scott Sternberg's big show at Pitti Uomo this week.
Scott Sternberg does not much like New York Fashion Week.
"A rat fuck shit show" is how the Band of Outsiders designer describes it, so when Sternberg held his first ever runway show on the far West Side of Manhattan in February,
it was not all air-kissing and eye-rolling as usual.
Kanye West, Aziz Ansari, and Community's Donald Glover sat in the front row with all the Very Important Editors.
Dave Chang, the pork-bun king of New York, not only attended but baked cookies for the guests.
"I try to stay low profile," Sternberg says. "I'm not out there begging people to come."
Instead, he offers an off-kilter take on preppy sportswear, plus plenty of Scotch to his guests before the show starts.
It's still a shit show, but it's a Band of Outsiders shit show.
Big difference.
Sternberg's transformation from CAA agent to award-winning designer has been well documented.
The short version: After five years at the House that Ovitz built, Sternberg left the firm in 2003 to become an independent brand consultant for the likes of Target,
and he soon discovered that he had a knack for designing clothes.
"It wasn't like I felt I had a calling for, you know, fashion. I just wanted to make a great shirt and a great tie for myself. I don't know why, but that was the instinct and I thought I could do it."
He designed his first piece of clothing by deconstructing a cornerstone of Americana:
"I took an old oxford-cloth button-down, put it on a bust form, and started taking it in every which way and reconstructing it."
He moved on to skinny repp ties and built up a sample collection of original designs, naming his new brand after the classic Godard movie.
"The sample collection was so lucid that anybody who saw it got what it was about. Barneys, Jeffrey, Ron Herman — they could all see clearly:
'Oh, cool, preppy clothes. Great, we're in. We don't have preppy clothes. Nobody's doing preppy right now.' "
Right now being the key phrase.
This was back in 2004.
"It was Rick Owens and Yohji Yamamoto and Prada," says Sternberg, listing the names that dominated contemporary men's wear at the time.
"There were almost no young Americans. There was almost no color."
He and peers like Thom Browne and Michael Bastian stepped in to fill the void, and he expanded Band of Outsiders to take advantage of the explosion in preppy nostalgia and all-American sportswear.
"About two years in I was able to start working with a couple of mills to design my own fabrics — the exact gingham check I wanted, the exact seersucker.
And then I started designing handmade suits with [Brooklyn tailor] Martin Greenfield."
In 2009, he won the best men's-wear designer award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America, tying with Italo Zucchelli, the creative director of Calvin Klein.
Sternberg had officially arrived.
Today the 36-year-old lives and works in Los Angeles.
There are no Band of Outsiders stores;
his advertising campaigns consist of Polaroids shot of semi-celebrities like Jason Schwartzman and James Marsden.
His clothes are expensive but not prohibitive — about $150 for a polo shirt, $250 for a button-down shirt, $2,000 for those handmade suits — and his influences are evolving beyond the traditional confines of prep.
For his spring collection, in stores now, there are dark suits and separates, rumpled gingham and madras shirts, drawstring shorts and baseball jackets, all meant to be mixed and matched.
The question for Sternberg is how to move forward now that Americana and preppy nostalgia are no longer the big buzzwords in global style.
"It doesn't worry me at all," he says. "I do what I do, and when I look at clothes dating back to the 1920s, there have always been men who dress in variations on preppy. The proportions change, but that style, that way of dressing, is there."
For Sternberg, whether you're an insider, an outsider, or stuck between two worlds, a man will always need a great shirt and a great tie.
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/mens-fashion/scott-sternberg-profile-0611
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