SUNFLOWER (Q9243)
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Slovak company
- SUNFLOWER s.r.o.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | SUNFLOWER |
Slovak company |
|
Statements
For the second season, Sunflower uprooted itself temporarily from Copenhagen to show in Paris during menswear. (Vogue Runway saw the collection in Denmark.) Observing that men still seem to want to “dress up again in a real masculine way,” according to designer Ulrik Pedersen, the brand continues to focus on both suiting and denim. “If you go 10, 15 years back in Scandinavia, you had the casual brands doing [casual] like we did at NN.07, and then you had the suit brands doing suits, but there was nobody doing a mixture of both,” said Pedersen, referring to the brand he cofounded and ran for eight years before selling. “We always liked the look of denim and a suit jacket.”Proving the point was a beautifully tailored blazer with gold buttons, styled in the look book with dark jeans or leather pants. He also added gilded buttons to a blue leather blazer. It wasn’t theTake Ivykind of preppy Pedersen was after but something he dubbed “rock-and-roll preppy.” Polo shirts in the lightest knits came in highlighter pink.There was a surfeit of shorts suits and looks; the point is quickly made. Among the stand-alone styles in the collection was a military-style jacket with patch pockets and a nicely constructed curved sleeve. Pedersen, who has a special way with denim, showed deep blues and undyed jeans styles; take note of the cream-colored patchwork pair. Also noteworthy was a rust-colored work jacket and pants made of an unbelievably soft and pliant Japanese denim that drapes beautifully.
14 August 2024
Sunflower’s take on the trending ’80s was informed by New York’s two poles during that decade: Punk and Power. On paper, Richard Hell and Gordon Gekko might make strange bedfellows, but their sartorial codes wove together nicely in the Danish brand’s fall collection, which was presented on the runway in Paris, and shown to Vogue Runway in Copenhagen. Pinstripes coexisted nicely with actual silver metal coated jeans. Ties were back, coats were longer, and a reversible shearling vest topped a classic pant suit.Bling, flash, logos…they’re tired, said Ulrik Pedersen. “Men would like to dress up, men are ready again to look sharp.” To appeal to a generation of men who haven’t worn suits before, he continued, “you also need movement, you need maybe to work with more technical fabrics that have some kind of stretch in it, because I don’t think we are there where the young people want to look like their Dads; you need to play around with the look.” That’s Sunflower’s m.o., actually, and they delivered on it with a collection that walked a line between trad and bad (meaning good).
5 February 2024
The 1980s surprise promised at the Sunflower show was a live performance by the Danish band Laid Back whose 1984 and 1981 hits, “White Horse” and “Sunshine Reggae” charted internationally. This was the second live music performance of the day (Silvana Imam appeared at Stamm) and the audience sang and danced along. Ulrik Pedersen’s collection consisted of remasters of classic menswear pieces and reprises of Sunflower favorites. Though a chore jacket and moto vest combo and a tuxedo jacket and floral boxers set seemed disparate, somehow they all came together in a cohesive tune.“The element of classic menswear for Sunflower is still an important thing, and then to play around with how to style it to make it not too classic,” is how Pedersen summed things up. Straightforward is a useful adjective for his designs. It’s difficult to articulate just what it is that gives the brand its edge, but like a catchy tune, it hits the right notes for many people. Pedersen reports that the age-range of his customers is broad and that about half of those buying Sunflower are women, although menswear is the primary focus.Dandies and rockers walked the runway today. Sunflower’s take on the popular pseudo jean (worn with a matching chore jacket) was made of a Japanese jacquard that was woven with denim. Seemingly workaday was a similar set in unbleached denim, but the pants were cut with curved seams to create shape and comfort. Other styles with a ’70s vibe seemed born to rock, or perhaps to ride Laid Back’s mythic white horse.
8 August 2023
Despite its name, Sunflower is a citified brand with the kind of inherent tenacity more associated with the proverbial weed growing through a crack in concrete. Copenhagen, despite its idyllic aspects, is a capital with some grit, which is how creative director Ulrik Pedersen and co-owner/founder Alan Blond like it.Not for them are polished show venues and perfect styling. They presented their fall collection in the cramped confines of their showroom on a cast that included local musicians. The nominal theme was supergroups, “the idea being that each look has what it takes to be the frontman,” the press release stated. That’s a catchy summation, and it points in the direction of the values driving the brand. “For us it’s more important that we catch the right people instead [of following trends],” said Pedersen during a walkthrough.The brand name takes the singular form, not the plural (sunflowers are usually grown en masse in fields), and you get the sense that Pedersen and co. have built the brand on a belief in an individual’s ability to choose what they want to wear and how to wear it. “Here in Europe people rely on the brand name,” he notes, rather than build their own style. His approach is to make what he and his friends like to wear and hope others like the vibe. It’s not a total look Sunflower pushes, in fact Pedersen advocates for mixing casual pieces and tailored ones, sort of like how a DJ makes a playlist. This isn’t a new idea, but it’s one that feels authentic to the brand, which is rapidly expanding in Asia.Sunflower’s make your own rules approach means that the collection, at first glance, has no throughline; there’s a little bit of this, a little bit of that. The relationship between a smashing pair of pink corduroys or a shirt made out of a groovy jacquard to the tailoring that was the main theme of the season is difficult to trace, apart from the fact that they all relate back to the Sunflower universe. More coherence would be welcome, and would have complemented the (relative) tightening up of this collection as Pedersen moved it in a sharper and dressier direction. A return to tailoring, noted Blond, is really a return to their roots after a Covid-imposed break from it. Pedersen’s aim was to look at “suiting in a more contemporary way; the contrast of having something really relaxed with something really sharp is something we believe a lot in.”
7 February 2023
Menswear is what everyone is buzzing about in Copenhagen this season, and Sunflower (which according to its Web bio operates as a collective) is one of the reasons why. The brand has been putting on memorable shows irregularly over the past years. One was in a rough-looking parking lot, another was presented in a public park over lunch hour with no seating, just models walking down the garden path. This season’s show was a makeshift, standing-room-only affair set up in the courtyard outside the company’s offices. “This is our daily playground,” said founder Ulrik Pedersen shortly after Anton Falck performed a song with lyrics that included “all the pretty boys”—quite apt considering what came down the runway.Pedersen, whose previous gig, NN.07, was a source for amazing sweaters, launched Sunflower in 2018. Asked what his mission was, he said “to design real menswear for real men and girls,” which he clarified, meant classics that were not so very classic, the difference being fit and materials. The marbleized pattern he used this season is a Japanese jacquard meant for interiors for example. Leather and cowboy boots are signatures of the brand, and they add a bit of unexpected kick to the offering. It’s difficult to find the right words to explain the appeal of Sunflower, which makes use of trad silhouettes that are not quite traditionally tailored. It’s indie, without being achingly hipster. Like the flower it takes its name from, Sunflower’s designs are like seeds that the wearer makes bloom.
11 August 2022