ASOS Black Launch and LFW Exclusive

The new menswear line, ASOS Black launches this Friday 17^th September and to celebrate they have created a video with the CAD award-winning director, Paul Gore, known for his work with Massive Attack, Moloko and recent campaigns for Diesel and Paco Rabanne.

In addition, the online store offers the chance to purchase from London’s most prominent menswear designers straight off their SS11 runway during LFW. Featuring the likes of Katie Eary, Carolyn Massey, Tim Soar, James Long and Unconditional, the new initiative by ASOS is an exciting project to present the new ranges by the most inspiring new designers of today, available at the online store. The S/S11 presentation of the collections will allow fans to purchase the items straight off the runway. About their new collections, the designers explain their inspirations, with Katie Eary - "My inspiration derives from a book called Velvet Machine - A 'how to' book - to feed and Preen your dog to be a fighter (a velvet machine). Savage beasts and the comparison to Punk anarchists." and James Long - "A potent symbol of psychedelic rebels that evokes a state of drifting. Standing alone on a deserted stretch of highway somewhere in Idaho, Seattle, Lake Placid or anywhere - it’s an attitude not a place."

Dazed speak to ASOS' Head of Menswear, James Barron about how the project came about and how they chose the designers involved.

Dazed Digital: How did the idea come up for this project?
James Barron: We have been working with London Fashion week designers for four seasons now. It’s going extremely well. We wanted to offer our customers something new and exclusive and at the same time, work with some great London talent to create opportunities for them as well.
 
DD: What was the designer's initial reaction?
James Barron: Everyone involved were really pleased at the idea. They understand our customer is eager to have exclusive product and will be excited by the fact they can purchase product from the S/S11 collections six months before they’re available in stores.  
 
DD:  Is it possible to pull off in reality?
James Barron: It definitely is. We have bought in on select product from each designer and this is already sitting in the warehouse. We will have photographers uploading imagery to sit alongside the product to illustrate the concept and myself and the buying team will be present during the shows/presentations offering comment for our site. We expect it to be a commercial project for all involved.

DD: How did you choose the designers?
James Barron: Some of the guys have been with us for a couple of years and others have just started out. It was also a case of making sure that each designer offered us something different while also looking good together
 
DD: Asos has a lot of edgy menswear designers from London - do you specifically look for them?
James Barron: Yes, we feel it’s really important to support the London based designers. It’s good for us and them; we are a London based company who can give them a global platform to show their collections and in return, we get to work with some of the most talented designers around.
 
DD: Any other Asos projects we should know about?
James Barron: We’re currently working with HP on a video project called ASOS Tee-V which is one of the largest content driven projects we‘ve launched in ten years; it’s predominately a focus on womenswear, however it will feature three London menswear brands in the video edit going live on Wednesday 22nd. Also, mid-October we’re launching our 3rd Best of British project with British product exclusive to ASOS.

DD: What designer should we look out for extra carefully for this season?
James Barron: We’re all really excited about Katie Eary at the moment. She seems to encapsulate everything that’s good about London design, with a nod to our history while still being really progressive. Keep an eye out for her at LFW on the 22nd, you won’t have ever seen any like this before!

ASOS Black

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