Layers of luxury
Justin Bieber draws worldwide attention to this homegrown streetwear label
This is a story about what happens to your startup streetwear label when Justin Bieber wears your stuff on Instagram. It is also a story about a fashion label that is homegrown and homespun — the merino wool is actually spun in Scarborough and milled, cut and sewn by hand in Mississauga.
Faded x One Meth is a collaboration between designer Jonathan Shimoni, 31, and Amin Todai, 39, who is by day the founder and chief creative officer of One Method, a lively King West ad agency.
The clothing is very Bieber. And Bieber drives sales — each Instagram of Stratford’s own in the gear sees fan orders flood in from Rome to Moscow, from Denmark to Brooklyn, via Switzerland.
The look is minimal and neutral but luxe: hoodies and baggy sweatpants worn in very long (almost to the knee) layers that skim the body.
It is a men’s line, but women dig it too. And it is about multiples: “I’m wearing four shirts right now,” Todai says, as he gets out of his heart-stoppingly cool, custom-detailed Bentley. The two lines — Faded and OneMeth — were launched separately but the men are now partners in both.
Faded Lifestyle is the more expensive, mostly merino line ($275 for a sweater hoodie) and OneMeth offers the cotton basics (tanks from $45, beanies for $55). As Todai says, this is the synergy created by joining “local, like-minded brands.”
Shimoni is design lead for both lines.
Shimoni was born into the shmatte trade. “I grew up among the bolts of fabric, playing on the floor in the notions department,” he says. His family has owned King Textiles — formerly on Richmond St., now a 10,000-square-foot fabric emporium, the largest in the city, at Queen St. W. and Spadina Ave. — for a quarter-century.
“When I was in high school, my father retired and I stepped up.”
King supplies students from local fashion design schools, local designers who need smaller amounts than European mill minimums, interior designers such as Sarah Richardson and Tommy Smythe, and the costume and wardrobe people of film, TV and theatre. “I learned the technical details about what fabrications work and in what contexts from working on the sales floor.”
Faded Lifestyle, launched in 2011, reflects Shimoni’s passion for cotton but especially for fine-gauge merino wool.
“It is naturally antibacterial and moisture-wicking,” he says. It is an intimate relationship between Shimoni and his wool: He customizes the yarn spinning to his specifications, leaning over long lines of shuttling bobbins to observe torque and ply; and he spends hours writing the programs to shift pattern from gradient dots to waffle knit to rib to furled edging on the circular knitting machines.
Shimoni is a familiar face around all the local factories he works with, nerding out on the details with glee (he is also guarded about revealing the factory names — his bread and butter). “There are very few local places left,” he says, about smallscale production.
Shimoni’s passion has helped turn Todai into a fashion nerd too. “I flip every piece of designer clothing I buy inside out to examine the finishing,” he says. The two compare footwear with grave respect: Common Projects boots for Shimoni; Rick Owens sneakers for Todai.
Seasons are so out in this new world of online streetwear: If the line sells out every time Bieber is shot in something new, so be it. “It is the Yeezy model,” Shimoni says. “Do less, let it sell out. If it is something really big, like the baggy sweats, we re-up the order every six weeks.” Behind the design
The yarn: There are still a few, small factories in the suburbs of our town that custom-produce yarn for small-scale production runs.
The Faded x OneMeth wool arrives in Scarborough already coloured but in raw form as giant batted parcels. The early stages look like pouring giant globs of brightly coloured batter. The increasingly fine strands are then combed and then spun onto multiple bobbins in progressively tighter twists to create custom ply configurations.
The goal here is maximum strength with minimum sagging and pilling. Shimoni watches the costs closely: Small-run projects such as this (only about 60 of each item, spread across four sizes) are costed by weight of the yarn per each item.
The mill: Faded x OneMeth knits are produced on a circular knitting machine.
These old beasts at the Mississauga strip-mall factory look as if they have been around forever; indeed, there are few people left who can repair this old-school technology. This factory makes OPP uniforms, as well as Drake’s OVO gear.
The small crew is like a family, and Shimoni keeps his patterns hanging behind the cutting table. In this space, though, grand transformations are made: yarn comes in and finished products ship out.
The look: The basic silhouette of Faded x OneMeth consists of multiple layers of tanks and T-shirts and hoodies, all with extra long tails. The length has been increasing, Shimoni says, so that right now shirts are as long as dresses, worn to just above the knee.
This coincides with knit sweatpants that also hang down almost to the knee. The luxe side of hip hop is in the details though: amid neutral colours, the attention falls to interesting textures, and a fixation on design details. Paired, of course, with killer cult sneakers.
The celebrity endorsement factor: How did Faded x OneMeth tap Bieber, Drake and The Weeknd, among other 6ix gods, to market their wares exclusively via social media? Shimoni has a crew of international entertainment industry pals dating back to the shooting of the movie Hairspray in Toronto.
“Bieber is the biggest pop star in the world right now,” Todai says. In brief, the process involves getting goods into the hands of Bieber’s assistant.
“He lays things out on the bed for Justin,” Shimoni says.
“It is up for Justin to choose. But if he does, there are blogs devoted to analyzing everything he wears and where to get it. And we see the results immediately.”
The creative lab concept: Todai is something of a prodigy in Toronto’s ad world.
The agency he formed from his living room 15 years ago (now combined forces with Bensimon Byrne and Narrative PR) is truly funky: vintage hip hop on the turntables, graffiti tag murals, an indoor park and a company craft-beer bar, clients including the CFL and Nestlé.
The La Carnita chain of Mexican restaurants, as well as other eateries (Home of the Brave, Sweet Jesus soft serve ice cream), came out of the same “lab” as the clothing line for extended creative projects.