From a very young age you were already interested in fashion and its relation to surfing until you finally created the New Amsterdam Surf Association line. What were those moments of starting your own brand like?
The start really has two sides. On one hand it’s all new and exciting and it is where the small steps you make feel like the biggest achievements. Your first stockist, first time on the website of an internationally recognised magazine and all other firsts. But it is also where you learn in the hardest way. Getting productions that are the wrong quality or the wrong fit and all that stuff that comes with producing clothing. For a person with a minimal budget I just started with some headwear and build from there. Did a kickstarter at some point with my previous brand DEZEEP and out of the DEZEEP everything just fell in place to start New Amsterdam Surf Association.
Your garments breathe a spirit based on surfing but create new patterns in the way of understanding surfing. What ideas or references inspire you to connect fashion and surfing in such an authentic way?
It is very mixed. For fashion inspiration I really look at Amsterdam and cities in general. That is where we live and are most of the time. But for prints and graphics it depends on the season. Sometimes I will use a concept and theme that is more derived from the city and sometimes more surf. The concepts we did were Red Wave District, Quick Weather Change, Roadtrip, Black Saturday and now Bad Habits. For SS22 I looked at the common question I get asked by non surfers a lot: “Have you ever seen a shark? Are you not afraid of sharks?” I like to spin those things around. There are no sharks in The Netherlands and there’s to my knowing never been a shark attack in Europe. We have a lot of rats in the city and pigeons. In our North Sea we have seagulls and non dangerous jellyfish. So that is why SS22 is themed Wild Life, a take on and tribute to all our dull non dangerous animals we have in Europe. I think this type of irony is very important for the brand. We don’t live the perfect blue water, palmtree, perfect wave, surf life. So the imperfections are always a start of point for the brand.
During the course of this terrible pandemic everything has been somewhat uncertain. How have you been affected by the pandemic?
In ways it has been good to reflect on things and try out stuff. We also really grew in our home country and with our online orders, but we are also at a point where we want to see where we are at internationally. Talk to international stockists, magazines, agents and all. All of these things were almost impossible to do as we had all these travelling restrictions. Also our annual team surf trip was on hold for over a year. Besides that we opened an HQ where we have the office and small store in the same building. After a month we had to close the store for 5 months because of Corona. So it was all very mixed. I’m glad we can travel again and focus on our next steps, maybe meet you guys at one of the fashion weeks ;)!
What do you think the city of Amsterdam and your brand bring to each other?
We bring each other a mindset. Where surf is all about being one with nature and being in the water, the city is about the fast life, not much nature and life is about being with people instead of surfing where it is just you. For me this is balance and I feel this mixed mindset can potentially be good for a lot of people. Because the brand speaks to a pretty wide range of people, mostly not surfers, I feel we can motivate people to go outside and surf and reset, to come back and work and live in the city. Especially people that never thought of surfing.
For this fall winter 2021 season you have launched the expected "Bad Habits" collection. Tell us a bit about it.
Bad Habits was based on something I saw and hear a lot in the city, especially Amsterdam. Every tourist thinks Amsterdam is the original city of sin, where everything is allowed. On a Saturday or Sunday morning you’d always see tourists in the city center that crossed their boundaries. I took all the vices of the city in the mix with some irony to make this collection. It starts of with the Forbidden Fruit print. I felt the story of the Forbidden Fruit was the original sin of mankind and within different cultures the forbidden fruit is a different type of fruit. So I took all these fruits to make a pattern of all “cultures/fruits” combined. I guess the rest speaks for itself. Note, that we never want to promote substance abuse! But this is just what we see around us in the city of Amsterdam.
The evolution as a brand is clearly visible in your latest presentations. What is your assessment of this latest collection?
From a surfing point of few we made some guidelines that we always use for designing the collections. 1 → Graphic wear, these styles explain the concept through graphics. 2 → Workwear, because we undress a lot on parking lots to then put on our wetsuit. You step on the clothes and all that, so the clothing needs to be able to withstand that wear and tear. 3 → Technical wear, as this is a shitty weather country we want rain jackets and to be kept warm after a surf session. 4 → Concept wear, here we take on classic surf things a rebuild them to fashion city pieces, like our poncho.
We started with just 5 tees, so it is just a step by step process to expand on these things within the collection and also educate our customers that we can make these type of products instead of just graphic basics.
Our team loves the whole collection and it was impossible for us to choose a few highlights. Would you be able to choose a top 3 from the collection?
I think the Forbidden fruits vest is one. This is where the Bad Habits concept starts. The liner pant is a new addition. It is based of a classic army liner pant and is something that is perfect in winter after cold surf sessions or just on the bike in Amsterdam. Indeed there quite a few highlight but I think 3rd would be the Rain Mac jacket AOP. This jacket is fully taped and rain proof, has an all over print and I think just in general an item where we could show what we are able to make and design.
What projects do you have for the future? Any spoilers?
At the moment we are focussing on a few things. The fall winter 2022 season is now fully under sampling and we’ll show that on the Man Trade show in Paris and Revolver show in Copenhagen. So our international focus is very important. Within this collection I feel we are growing up even more, adding new silhouettes and vibes next to our core.
The SS22 Wildlife collection will drop in January so that is always exciting. This collection was really well received by our current and some new stockists and feel like there are some very exciting key styles within that collection.
We have a couple local collabs planned and are also talking with some big international companies. The road to this is pretty long, but very exciting for sure!
Besides all the clothing things we want to expand on our Surf Academy. This is where we take Amsterdam surfing with a focus on kids an young adults that would not get the opportunity to surf, or would never think about it. Besides broadening their few on what is possible I think surfing can also teach people about nature and sustainability. Which leads me to my last point, sustainability. We named this responsibility. We are working towards being as responsible as we can on a product level as well as social. This is a long road and we see full sustainability is just not something you can do as a product producing company. So we are not here to play holy, but as a company with the ocean as a playground we want to keep that playground clean and healthy. We are adding organic products and are looking into doing as much recycled, bio as possible, but again we are also tight to some stuff as being very small, so baby steps. We are working on our roadmap as we speak.