“What art does — maybe what it does most completely — is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed.” Greil Marcus — Tuesday November 17th — —

The idea is to die young as late as possible. — Ashley Montagu — Tuesday November 17th — —

I love listening. It is one of the only spaces where you can be still and moved at the same time. — Nayyirah Waheed — Tuesday November 17th — —

Sebastiaan Pieter Spring/Summer 2016

We recently discovered the promising work of Dutch London College of Fashion graduate Sebastiaan Pieter. The designer, who set up his eponymous label after completing a BA in Bespoke Tailoring, has been creating collections for the last four seasons, being hailed as one of the exciting new names in menswear based in London. Combining sportswear elements with traditional high quality suiting, Pieter was picked up by the NEWGEN initiative, which granted him a sponsorship for his Spring/Summer 2016 collection and resulted in his biggest collection til date. Inspired by an Ellen von Unwerth editorial for The Face featuring several girls getting inked and pierced -from the time when Pieter first discovered the power of fashion(imagery) as a teenager- he subtly wove ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and contemporary tattoo and piercing culture into his (at times) gender-defying designs for the elegant fashion-forward man. We love this.

In an off licence I found The Face magazine which had Ozzy Osbourne on the cover, flicked through it and didn’t really understand what I was looking at at that time. But that particular shoot was in that magazine and I realize now that that was about a lot more to me than a fashion shoot. Those images are printed into my mind. I know the colors and poses exactly.

Sebastiaan Pieter grew up in Hilversum, right in the middle of the Netherlands, where he discovered his love for fashion at the early age of 14. Realizing that the brightest in that realm enjoyed their education at Central Saint Martins, he first came to London to do a short course there when he was 17 after which he returned two year later to start his foundation there.

While doing a Bachelors in Bespoke Tailoring at the London College of Fashion, Pieter interned at Monocle, alongside the picture editor, as well as Fantastic Man, where he worked intermittently across a four-year period. He also worked at Raf Simons, in public relations, and finally did his education-concluding internship at Jil Sander.

The designer presented his first collection for Autumn/Winter 2014 and has been working on his elegant, at times gender bending signature since then. His collections have been picked up by a growing  number of select stockists in Asia, Europe and the USA, with hopefully more names following in the future.

Pieter in a conversation with HungerTV on how he became the designer he is today:

All of my internships really helped me make the decision and say, ‘Ok, I think I can do this. I didn’t just have experience as a designer. I knew how different people across the industry looked at a fashion brand. If you’ve worked at a magazine, you quite quickly come to realize why something is featured in a magazine. And seeing the buying experience and seeing how buyers respond to a collection was also really useful.

Video (and stills) directed by Devin Blair.

For more information on Sebastiaan Pieter see here