Soulland (Q9190)
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Soulland is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Soulland |
Soulland is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Soulland, which pulled back from shows a few seasons ago, presented a fairly formulaic fall collection by appointment. Silhouettes stayed mostly static, while textiles (note the neon tapestry floral) and prints changed. There’s a wonderful “logo” print made from a pencil drawing by Silas Adler’s son, where thesin the brand name is turned into a dollar sign. The designer has also created a relational narrative by combining a print of a painting of a landscape with that of a snow-shoe hare. When he found the latter, Adler explained, “I was like, that’s perfect, that’s Soulland: small, but with a big energy and on fragile ground.Adler took a step toward firmer terrain by working with jeans, garments he isn’t drawn to for himself. “The only denim that I had a feeling for was ’90s hip-hop denim from New York—Sean John and Ecko….” Adler interpreted that inspiration by applying utility-style topstitching to dark-wash fabric. These pieces feel related to the designer’s skateboarding background. It’d be good to see him bring that forward more; there’s power in fashion that feels personal.
2 February 2024
Soulland extended its break from the runway this season, opting to host a dinner and show the collection by appointment instead. There are a variety of reasons for this, but certainly there’s some soul searching involved as creative director Silas Adler continues to reconcile how to best apply his background in skateboarding to fashion. Last season the designer started working with deadstock and bonding fabrics, a practice he continued evolving this season. The collection’s art print is a baroque number featuring peacocks. It’s effective as a design, but an outlier in a lineup that’s otherwise pared-back and not particularly ornate.Among the most convincing pieces were the classics. Adler revisited the polo shirt, stretching it into a long white knit dress with black stripes. A slip dress and pajama separates with a beaded Soulland logo were other convincing takes on wardrobe staples. If you think about it, their making in some way mirrors the way that skaters return to the same tricks over and over, without ever executing them exactly the same way.Catching air, and contributing an upbeat feeling to the collection, were floral motifs and injections of color like rose pink and neon brights. Their cheeriness belies the mindset of the designer; like many, Adler is concerned about the state of the world. When styling the collection he happened to misbutton a shirt and had an aha moment. “I realized, that says everything about now,” Adler said. “I was just like, ‘Okay, I’m just going to button everything wrong.’” It was his way to “express a weird feeling in a super simple way.” And it worked. Barbie and Ken might live in a perfect plastic world, but for most of the rest of us embracing imperfection is a key to making it through these treacherous times.
14 August 2023
Skateboarding was Silas Adler’s gateway into fashion, and it’s still turning his world, even as his world expands its borders. “I want to start not in Copenhagen, but in Florence, because going to Florence to do Pitti also introduced me to production in that area,” the designer said on a walk-through. Adler ran into an old skate buddy in the Italian city who brought him into contact with factories full of deadstock materials, which he cut and pasted into his fall collection for Soulland. The most dramatic examples are the bonded half-and-half looks, paisley and red leather. Elsewhere, the tapestry fabrics are upcycled, as is the floral textile used for a long-line body suit with après-ski flair.Overall this collection was less merch-y than predecessors, and in place of a seasonal “mascot” (it was Hello Kitty last spring), Adler paid more attention to silhouettes. Some of the bonded fabrics made for stiff A-line shapes, but this was balanced by the soft pile of corduroy, knitwear, and wonderful teddy-like outerwear. The harmony of the palette worked in his favor as well. If somehow you missed the message, the bells that trimmed some tailored pieces might wake you up to it.Working with Italian factories gave Adler access to fabrics of a quality that was not previously available to this contemporary line, which grew out of a T-shirt business. Luxury was not part of how Adler came up in the business. His approach to his work was honed by skateboarding and hip-hop culture, “[which] was not so much about quality, but about expression, about the sort of subculture that lay behind it.” He also has the Scandinavian belief that clothing should be “very democratic, [and] needs to be in some way affordable.” The transition from designing skate/streetwear to a full men’s and women’s ready-to-wear line hasn’t been seamless, and the brand has relied heavily on seasonal collaborations. But the fall lineup looked tighter and a bit more grown-up. Going forward, Adler hopes to offer a wider range of products, from t-shirts to limited edition pieces, at a broader range of prices.The materials he used here and the connections he made in Italy will help him reach that goal. Usually one of the bigger brands on the Copenhagen schedule, Soulland dropped off the calendar this season and hosted a dinner instead. Whether or not that feast was inspired by Italian traditions, the print Adler created for the season was based on Renaissance art.
7 February 2023
The spring show Silas Adler put on in Copenhagen today was almost a mirror image of the one he presented as an invited guest at Pitti Uomo two months ago. The playlist in Florence included Danish music from the 1970s, and vice versa in the Danish capital. Similarly, some looks that had been worn by women in Italy, were worn by men in Adler’s hometown.Soulland started as a skate brand and grew into a menswear label. More recently Adler introduced womenswear and he’s working on ways of bringing the two closer together. This season he decided to apply the same design philosophy across the board rather than focusing on who the wearer is. So beige corduroy suits worn with pink sweaters were sized for men and women, and all genders wore lace. This material was worked in various ways. The sheer closing looks seemed like show pieces while it was easy to imagine the printed laces and the black and white pieced looks, particularly a hooded poncho, showing up in street style pictures next year.This was a large collection with many themes; less variety might have delivered a sharper message. Those corduroy suits worn with pink collared sweaters read as cool, not preppy. Ditto the version embroidered with Sanrio’s Hello Kitty, who made her Soulland debut here. In addition to the embroidery, there was a tonal applique, accessories, and a hearts-and-Hello Kitty print on pink stretch fabric. “Collaborations,” said Adler, should “be fun and a little bit ironic.”Fashion’s favorite feline wasn’t the only creature to walk the runway. Adler also introduced the “Spring Devil,” a being, he explained, who gives you “energy that pushes you to like go a little bit further” than you might ordinarily. Originally a 2D graphic, when rendered in three dimensions the imp became a pet/accessory that looked ready for something wild.
10 August 2022
Soulland’s Silas Adler, a skateboarder-turned-designer, is celebrating 20 years in business. His fall collection was not conceived as a retrospective, rather it was the final chapter in a trilogy of shows developed like a book. Though this outing was titled Original Memory, Adler’s framework was that of an “imaginary autobiography.” Distinguishing between what’s real and what’s fake in our digital world isn’t easy. On top of that, autobiography, as Adler said, is “never the full truth, because as you are digesting the memory there will be a lot of spots you have to fill in yourself, therefore it’s a construction.” Life might similarly be described as a series of constructions. The message of this show, as I saw it, is the importance of trying to build something from nothing, which takes a great deal of bravery and perseverance, but can create meaning and community.“Everything I’ve done has always been hard work, and Soulland still is hard,” said Adler. “When I look at the collection now, it’s 20 years of mistakes and failures that you are constantly trying to fix, and I actually think that’s where clothing is super interesting, because with the way the system works you have to produce something all the time and it’s impossible to do that without having a foundation that you keep building on. And I think clothing gets interesting when you can see that there’s something that’s been worked on for years and years and years, and it’s still the same idea, it’s still the same feelings, the same sensibility, but it’s growing and growing, growing, and all of a sudden, you forget when it started, but you know, that there’s a past, [that] it didn’t come from nothing.”To a soundtrack that touchingly included a John Frusicante track used in the Spike Jonze and Ty Evans 2003 skate videoYeah Right!, Adler explored themes old and new; some connected to the brand’s streetwear origins, others, like a series of crochet pieces, that seemed far from it. There were earth-tone stripes and “snakeskin” separates. An intarsia sweater bloomed with roses; floral jacquard was cut into a windbreaker. Knee-length faux-fur gaiters we’re worn winningly with short skirts and long sweater.The show was presented in the cavernous concrete and brick interior of a former locomotive shop, to an audience that included many friends. After the models decamped, Adler came out for his bow, kissed his family, and exited, leaving the vast space feeling full.
2 February 2022