Pure Womenswear & Stitch Menswear Tradeshows

For most, Sunday 14 February was Valentines day, but for myself and Karen it meant an early start and a trip into central London. Our first destination was Stitch, a menswear tradeshow taking place at Billingsgate Market on the banks of the Thames. This was the first Stitch show and featured a selection of up and coming and more established brands. Amongst others we talked to Original Penguin, Fenchurch, Farah Vintage and Ifuku during our brief morning visit.

After a quick coffee and bite to eat we headed over to Olympia for Pure Womenswear. Pure has established itself as one of the biggest clothing shows in the UK and is broken down into 4 distinct sections; Directional, Studio, Boutique and Young Fashion. It also has an increasingly large accessories and footwear section and this year for the first time launched ‘Label’, a specific area for young branded fashion. Brands showing in this area were the likes of Bench, Ringspun, Junk Food and BC London. After having a quick chat with our contact Robbie from Bench we went to check out Rutme. This is a new Scandinavian label and is the little sister of Numph. We are stocking Numph in our Indah womeswear section launching very soon and we we’re interested to see the look and feel of the brand. With more vibrant prints and colours, Rutme will certainly appeal to its younger market and is definitely one to keep an eye on! Thanks for the head up Marika!

Having caught up with several of our brand contacts and agents, we then nabbed great seats for the performance of Soul II Soul at the show. Soul II Soul was re-launching their clothing brand that was so massive back in the late eighties and treated the large crowd to a few of their classic tracks including 'Keep on Moving' and 'Back to Life'. I managed to grab their founder, Jazzy B, for a quick photo before the performance. What can I say; the man’s a legend… and a really nice guy.

After a sneaky glass of champers at the bar we went to check out a few more of the brands on show; I particularly liked the new womenswear collection from Scotch & Soda; Maison Scotch. This is their second season and I very much doubt their last. We also saw the new Pepe Jeans collection and their very entertaining rep Karen. The new Pepe campaign is being fronted by the TV presenter Alexa Chung. Both of these brands are real possibilities for UK Kolours. For our Indah womenswear section; collections from Vero Moda, a new Australian label called Staple, the Dutch company The Barn and also Ese O Ese stood out. We shall see what happens with these.

As evening fast approached we headed away from Olympia with bags of info, goodies and sore feet. Fortunately Karen had her Rollasole’s with her in her bag and so the heels came off the she made it home in comfort ;-) I just want to take this opportunity to thank the guy who fell asleep next to me on the tube on the way home. You provided great entertainment for the majority of the carriage for most of the journey. Thank you.

Until next time…

James

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