INTERVIEW: CIVILIST
Lets start with how you celebrated the Civilist 10th anniversary?
Julian: Last year in December we threw a party in our friends club called Hafenbar. The club itself is actually known for German Schlager music and thus has a very odd look inside. We had our friends from Modeselektor, Keinemusik and others play techno all night long and got shitfaced! On top, we worked with Stussy on a custom Beerglass to start of the 10 th Anniversary Year…
You just released the collaboration with Nike SB, can you talk a bit about the design and what made it so special?
Julian: The idea was more or less a “day-in-the-life-of” somebody living in Berlin in the 90s. You’d have a regular boring job and needed to be in your business camouflage – wearing a boring, muted outfit plus Black Shoes. After the wall came down there were numerous underground techno venues in Berlin so young people would just go crazy on the weekends, eating pills, getting drunk and so on. When the shoes get warm they’ll light up in various bright colors, much as the inside of a club – or a brain on drugs ;)
You have worked on numerous collaborations over the years. Can you talk about how you approach these projects and how you make every collaboration unique?
Julian: Actually there is no official approach. Most colabs come together while having a good time, fucking around with ideas haha. We are lucky to have a great variety of friends from all lines of work so we always come up with loads of nonsense…and somewhere inbetween there might be a good idea too.
Can you talk a bit about the vision you had for Civilist in the early days and what defined the early days of the brand / store?
Foley: puhh….. I really have to dig in my brain for that. Haha. Since it is more than 10 years ago and probably a couple thousand beers. In the first place we thought back then that it was time to open Store/Gallery/Hang Out Place for us and our friends. Since I used to travel a lot back in the days when I was Lodown Magazine`s Photoeditor and shooting a lot of Skateboarding all over the world . Through that I was lucky to meet so many interesting people from the skateindustry, Store- and Brand owners, that this somehow led to the idea of opening our own space here in Berlin. Back then there wasn`t any “cool” shop that carried all the Brands that we were interested in, like Anything, Fucking Awesome, HUF, DQM, Vans Syndicate, Nike SB amongst others. And through our past with the magazine we knew some of those people. I met Dill and Keith Hufnagel (RiP) already a few times and A-Ron from Anything etc. SO when we decide to open the space I hit up all those people and if they would sell us their stuff. They all were down as they had no shops in Germany at all back then selling their stuff. So that`s how it all started… We used to run some art shows in here too. So we did a few bigger shows here and we then took out all the stuff and did openings here. Allthough we threw some really big party`s here with our friends from KEINEMUSIK. A berlin based record label. So after a year we had the chance to get a second store right next to ours. And we did… So basically things were happening naturally with no plan. So when we got the second store we didn`t really have a straight plan on what to do with it. We did all kinds of stuff, like a pop-up lobster champagne bar, a second hand store with ours and our friends used stuff. Did more artshows until we connected with Stussy and did a Stussy Store for 6 month. So all these things weren`t really planned in the first place. They happened… Sometimes you plan shit and it isn’t happening and sometimes shit just happens by accident or by random circumstances…
Can you talk a bit about the skate scene in Berlin and how it changed over the last decade?
Foley: Dude, it changed a lot in the last 10 years. Mostly the amount of Skateboarders. I mean back then when we opened in 2009 it wasn’t super small but year by year the skateboarding scene got bigger and bigger. I remember in the beginning we hardly sold any boards or hardware. Mostly clothing and shoes. But over the years we focused more and more on skatebrands. Not only on clothing but also on Hardware. So I would say within those ten years there is at least 2 new generations of kids coming up and picking up skateboarding. Some of them because it was cool, others because they had parents that used to skate and also because it got more and more into mainstream. I remember back in the days you could hardly see any skateboarding in media besides Thrasher, Transworld and Monster Skatemag. But then throughout the yaers and specially social media skateboarding reched new levels. So I would say that the amount of Skateboarders here in Berlin growing probably by at least 10 times high. Every Berlin neighbourhood got their own scene. I hardly know any skateboarder anymore… Haha. Of course I know many but not like back in the days when you knew everybody that skated in Berlin. It is also good to see so many young kids picking up a board. It just became normal so see kids walking around with a board through the streets and I mean not like carrying it like it is an accessory. Compared to like 10 years ago it is also interesting to see how many skateparks they built, of course some shitty ones too, but a lot of good ones too. Which of course helps younger kids to learn skating kinda fast. It is easier than skating street where you sometimes get kicked out etc… So in general skateboarding got big over here in berlin.
How has your approach to the store grown and evolved in terms of the labels you work with?
Julian: The basic idea that was there from the beginning still exists: Getting stuff you wouldn’t find anywhere in the world and mostly working with brands/people we know personally. Back in the beginning we brought over brands such as Fucking Awesome, Huf, aNYthing, etc. and ordered directly from the people that own these brands…This has changed over years as some brands have grown bigger and are now working with distros. But throughout all these years there were always new brands/faces we got in and people still dig it.
Please compare this to the Civilist clothing line? What are the biggest changes with the clothing line?
Julian: The clothing line has more or less the same approach as in the beginning. Quality comes first. Since day one, when we started with some Tees as store-merch we had our stuff done properly to our own specifications. To this day we are working with the same factories and people. The quality of our apparel is top priority and all of it is made in certified fair-trade factories. Through the years the collections have grown bigger and so has the number of our stockists. We are happy to work together with shops that we chose and are good friends with!
Can you talk about the design process for the clothing? Where you get inspiration from to how you work on the design.
Julian: The inspiration usually comes from everything we dig and like. We never followed any seasonal color palettes or anything like that. We start with moods and a few designs and then I start fucking around with colors, materials, etc. Mostly we try to get in 1-2 external artists for some designs. The upcoming season features Joe Roberts (LSD Worldpeace) and a design from our own staff member Lennie who has done some amazing collages. Once everything is put together we all sit down together and discuss the whole line. All in All we basically just do what we like and how we like it.
What are some of the biggest challenges you have had to overcome over the years?
Julian: The complex our shop is in has been a fucking construction site since 4 years now and it’s a pain in the ass. Pipe Breaks, Drilling Noises, Construction People walking through the shop daily, etc…. Other than that we are actually quite happy with how things worked out in the last years!
Finally what does the future hold for Civilist? What can we look forward to in the next year, the next ten years, the next 100 years? Besides loads of drinking and watching football.
Julian: Yes! More Drinking and Football hahaha. Trying to have more time to travel abroad and meet all of you guys. Some of our 10th Anniversary colabs have unfortunately been put on hold due to COVID, so there will be a few more cool things in the next year.