It was hard to miss the Our Legacy x Stüssy collaboration announcement. In a world where we’re understandably preoccupied, there was an outpouring of excitement rarely seen in menswear. The reasons why were obvious, with two beloved labels in very different circles combining to create something interesting. It was a collab that was both wholly unexpected and wholly welcomed /
Our Legacy co-founder Jockum Hailin has plenty of history with Stüssy, going back to his pre-teen days. “I started skateboarding when I was around eleven or twelve and there was this local sports store that had a really cool guy that worked there. He built his own skate shop inside the sporting goods store” Hailin says. This store-in-store housed decks, stereo skateboards, independent trucks and a bunch of items Hailin had previously only seen in magazines. Amongst that mix was a small section of Stüssy tees and caps, which Hailin used to save up to purchase.
This being the pre-internet age, information about Stüssy wasn’t easy to come by for someone growing up in a smaller town in Sweden. “You kind of made up your own world [filing the gaps] with what you thought about different brands,” says Hailin. The information was more piecemeal -- a magazine advert here, somebody wearing a tee on Yo! MTV Raps there. At the time Hailin didn’t connect the brand to its California surf roots, something that’d come to light for him during his hardcore band days in the late ‘90s. It could be said that this collab was a sign of Hailin’s interests coming full circle.
But this circle did have a genesis, originally sprouting out of a series of emails between the two brands. Usually these emails don’t lead anywhere, but this time was different. “I invited them to come and see us in Paris,” he says, meeting global brand director Fraser Avey, CEO David Sinatra, and Tremaine Emory aka Denim Tears at Our Legacy’s annual Summer Soiree. “They came as a crew and we just hung out and felt there was a connection. So we started being a little bit more active in our emailing and then they invited me to come and see them in California.”
“I had the idea that if we found some leftover fabrics and did something fun with it, it could be a nice foundation to this” Jockum Hailin
And it was here that the specific thought that drove the collection arrived. “I had the idea that if we found some leftover fabrics and did something fun with it, it could be a nice foundation to this [collab].” So the designer visited Stüssy warehouses in southern California, where “we found all these beautiful fabrics that have been laying there since '92 and '93/'94.” While the idea for the collaboration arrived when Hailin visited the California brand’s warehouses, it was always going to be a Our Legacy work shop collaboration.
The work shop creates a fun and open platform to do collaborations with,” says Hailin noting that he enjoys working with boundaries in order to create. “I like working within some limits and if that is searching for old things to either recycle, upcycle or do something fun with, that's very much on-concept.” It also helped that the work shop component of Our Legacy had worked on collaborations before in smaller quantities, reworking items like the Converse All-Star.
But if you’re scratching your head and wondering the last time Our Legacy did a full-on collaboration, you’d have to go back to the Vans Vault collab of 2017, when the brand reworked several classic models while nodding to the Cali’ surf scene. There are a few reasons why the Swedish brand has mostly steered clear of collabs. “There’s so much stuff getting put out into the world -- every week there's a new collaboration and they rarely make sense,” he says. And for Hailin, it points to the bigger issue of collabs that “feel like [a brand said] ‘I need to create a new sneaker to sell some more sneakers.’”
“Our Legacy as a brand versus Stüssy as a brand, we have our own worlds” Jockum Hailin
It’s this aversion to collaborations for the sake of it that makes this one stand out. It’s clear that there’s a personal connection to the Cali imprint as well as a synergy between the two labels. “Our Legacy as a brand versus Stüssy as a brand, we have our own worlds. And I feel like we're pushing the boundaries to what we're up to.” Stüssy is a brand that’s found its footing after undergoing some growing pains, pulling the reins in, focusing on design and, in Hailin’s words, “putting nice stuff out there.”
Between the Stüssy collab and the previous Vans one, it’s easy to assume that there’s a certain accessible throughline in who Our Legacy do collab with, but Hailin would be open to work on any end of the spectrum. “It would be nice to play with the idea of working with something that is very high end.” he says. “But this feels natural to me -- being able to combine Our Legacy shapes with the Stüssy DNA is very fun.”
“It's something that I personally love and want to wear. When that happens, it feels right. It feels true and honest.” Jockum Hailin
The key behind this collaboration -- and possibly all collabs that are well received -- lies in what Jockum says next. “It's something that I personally love and want to wear. When that happens, it feels right. It feels true and honest.”
The second half of the Our Legacy x Stüssy collaboration releases on Friday August 28, dropping in-store at DSMLA, DSML and Stüssy.com.