Fashion

Designing fashion for adult skaters was the starting point for Pop Trading Company, an Amsterdam firm that is now collaborating with Camper on a capsule collection

The skateboard, in the popular imagination, is the exclusive heritage of children, adolescents and high school students. Fashion, marketing and the culture of this urban sport that has thousands of boys and girls all over the world hooked on it are aimed at them. What happens when they grow up? That is the question that gave birth in 2016 to Pop Trading Company, a skater fashion company based – physically and spiritually – in Amsterdam. “We had been distributing skate brands like Palace Skateboards and Quartersnack in the Benelux since 2013, and we soon realized that there was an unfilled gap, that of older skaters. A more formal and considered version of skate clothing”, tells ICON Peter Kolks, co-founder with Ric Van Rest of this group that has just collaborated with the footwear firm Camper through the creative alliance program Camper Together in a collection collaborative capsule.

The Pop Trading Company formula quickly caught on in a market that, as they had anticipated, demanded a middle ground between adult fashion and teenage skate fashion. Sporty luxury, but in a different way. "Our idea was to make quality clothing, but also play with the perception of skateboarding in a foreign environment, and vice versa," explains Kolks. “Everyone has prejudices and we try to break them through contrast in design, marketing or collaborations. Also with distribution. They give an example: their collections are sold in skate shops such as Lockwood, Supreme or Slam City Skates, but also in men's designer fashion temples such as Mr Porter, Goodhood or Waremokou (Japan).

It is precisely this love for contrasts that articulates his collaboration with Camper. After a visit to the Zapatoteca, the footwear archive of the Mallorcan firm, the Pop Trading Company team decided to opt for a dual approach. “When we went to the archive we had two ideas”, they explain, “we wanted a more technical, running silhouette, and also a more casual and relaxed design. So that's where the idea of ​​rescuing the Before and After concept came from, because when we skated we wore technical shoes and after skating we changed and put on something more relaxed to go to the bar”.

The capsule collection includes two models, each in turn in two different color combinations. The first is a shoe suitable for skateboarding, a renewed version, with new colors, materials and technology of Camper's Runner XL sneaker, with an extra-light sole and generous volume. The second is a new rewriting of the Chasis boot, with a rubber sole and crepe rubber trim. The two designs reflect Camper's aesthetic and technical heritage, but also Pop Trading Company's balance between sport and contemporary fashion.

In fact, as a sign of how well the two firms have gotten along, for a limited time the Camper online store also allows you to purchase some items from the Pop Trading Company summer collection: sweatshirts in resounding tones, t-shirts with typographic prints, caps, bags and accessories. Contemporary fashion without frills, which, for its authors, is a reflection of the Amsterdam skate scene. "The most important thing for skateboarding is the architecture of the city, because it's the landscape we skate on," Kolks describes. "Amsterdam is a bit rougher and purer than other cities, the streets are not as smooth as, for example, in Barcelona."

The landscape is precisely the protagonist of the Camper Together campaign with Pop Trading Company. Artist Jethro Haynes has created miniature sets that evoke the two mental spaces of the collaboration. "The city of Amsterdam for the running sneaker and the exteriors of Mallorca for the most relaxed," explains Kolks. The still lifes were photographed in London and later the filmmaker Patrick Louwerse came into play, who made two videos. "Jethro and Patrick have put in many weeks of work because it's all manual, stop motion and animation, it's insane, and we're very proud of the result."

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