Leopold MMSFW 2006 pics via Six6Photography

Part 2 of Lol B’s interview with Leopold designers Shandor Gancs and Boyd Parry:

So who’s your demographic?

Well it’s really different than we actually imagined, it kind of falls into two groups. There’s the very young market, skater kids, who buy a lot of the t-shirts then there’s the slightly older creative office type who will generally drop more money and look at it as an investment. These people are like us, we understand that market well. We were surprised though, in Sydney when we were having a coffee on crown street, and we saw lots of younger kids wearing our cardigans we were like “oh look there’s another one of ours!”, so yeah it’s been surprising. On the whole though we aim to design multifunctional pieces that can be worn in several ways.

Do you think you’ll be able to push the aesthetic a bit further?

We’d like to, we developed a men’s business shirt which was quite directional and we took it to our manufacturer who thought it was a little too complicated. With only a handful of manufacturer’s available here in Melbourne you can only produce what is able to be made. That’s why we’ve played with colour and fabric more than we’ve played with the cut. The irony of this is though that people have often said our clothes are too directional! We’re not really pushing the envelope as much as we’d love to, we often design things then don’t send it to production because it may not get picked up by the buyers, and at the end of the day you’ve got to keep your head above water! Before we went overseas to show a couple of buyers we were really beating ourselves over the head about it worrying it was too hardcore, but we wore our range around Paris and people on the Metro were stopping us and asking us about our clothes and we were like YES!

Your label has some similarities with British designer Paul Smith but your style is obviously less formal and more relaxed, do you think it’s possible for Australian designers to emulate the global success he has had?

We think so, but maybe we have to get off the island…

So you don’t think it’s possible to use Australia as your base?

Australia poses a couple of problems, financially because of a weak dollar, but that does work both ways. Time zone and climate especially are problems, to really get in the head space of other climate’s you have to experience the cold! That was a thing that totally shocked us, the climate even affects the cut, if it’s freezing you can’t go around with your butt hanging out. We do admire Paul Smith though as it’s got that quirky sense of humour and we’ve heard that comparison before. We were very impressed when we visited his new concept store in Nottingham in the UK, but we are definitely more casual.

It’s great that Leopold manufacture a lot of the range here in Melbourne, is that a political / ethical decision or a logistical one?

A bit of both really. Initially it was a political one, we were so anti going to China and Bali like everyone else was doing, but it does have it’s own limitations. It’s hard as a new label to find producers, people are so secretive in the industry and often don’t share information on makers and manufacturers so it takes time to find good people.

So do you think as you grow you may have to consider offshore production?

We actually like the fact that we are mostly Australian made, we’re an Australian label, and we plan to stick with that, we’ve remained loyal to all our makers. We’ve had to buy most of our fabrics offshore as we can get much better quality at a better price. Australian wool is very expensive and it’s also hard to find pure cottons here. Retailers are always “make it cheaper, make it cheaper” and you do have to respond to that. We’re lucky in that the producers of our more up market technical pieces are very high calibre, they’re just fantastic, we’re really happy with them. We pay a lot for that but again the quality is very important to us. T-shirts are a nightmare though because people go out of business frequently, there are a lot of people with workers sitting out in garages, and we’ve avoided that completely.

You mentioned the knitwear and you’re getting a big reputation for it, how did you get into that area as it’s quite specialised?

Yes we are getting a reputation for it, which is funny as it wasn’t intentional and it’s only a small part of what we do. In the winter collection I suppose knitwear does count for say 30% of the range. It’s been a big learning curve for us, with some really interesting bedtime reading for Boyd. You can’t just walk into a factory and say we want a yellow jumper then they start throwing technical terms like ‘gauge’ and yarn specifications at you, but we just asked for help and understanding and they’ve been really supportive and suggestive, so yes we’ve really learned a lot in the process.

So do you use Australian wool?

Yes, but it’s funny because when we were doing our manufacturing here the wool would be shipped from Australia to China for processing then we’d have to buy it back and ship it back here to manufacture. It’s a lot easier now to do it all in one place. We have been using Mongolian cashmere too.

Akira did a lot of development and work with the Australian wool board is that something you’d be interested in doing?

Oh definitely. Yes. We’d love to develop some merino and superfine merino products with them it’d be great to develop some really lightweight stuff.

Is there the possibility of you setting up your own manufacturing plant and doing it in house in the future?

In a few years that would be great, it would make life so much easier! The times when you have to wait for samples and special pieces, doing it in house would make it so much faster and convenient.

Part 3 coming soon…