Care Label #4: Emporium
With Charlie and Robbie
When we plane, train and automobile ourselves around the globe, each corner has it’s own unique feel. It is a geographic or cultural DNA of sorts. The art, architecture, food and people are distinct to the place you may find yourself in.
Something else that is unique to where we flock to are the homegrown brands that hail from that place. In a fashion context, when you think New York you think Supreme. When you think London you think McQueen.
So what about Dublin?
Unlike other cities, Dublin isn’t spoiled with a number of homegrown brands that encapsulate the city. Emporium however, want to do just that. Be it working with friends and family in our tight knit community, or making products that resonate with its residents, Robbie and Charlie want Emporium to mean something to the city and its people.
For Care Label #4, myself and the lads met in a very loud city centre pub. We talked about the Emporium origin story, the brands Archive and the lost Blue and White Oxford Shirt.
*Right from the Start*
Care Label : So fellas, how’d you both meet?
Charlie: “Robbie was working in Brown Thomas at the time. I used to look at shoes in BT and ended up pestering him so much until I got a job and that's pretty much how we became friends.”
Care Label: And what was it about growing up in Dublin that made you interested in streetwear and the eventually starting Emporium?
Robbie: “I think we both came into it independent of each other. My interest kind of came from playing basketball. For a point in time, I was always showing up to practice and games in the worst shoes, the worst possible shoes. When I got my first job, I spent almost all my money on shoes. Then it moved to what I wore off the court. So it slowly developed from my interest in sports and basketball.”
Care Label: So basketball and sport was your gateway?
Robbie: “Yeah, sneakers eventually brought me into fashion. I’d see vintage basketball gear and what teams used to wear warming up the 80s and 90s. I loved that side of it. It was that kind of relaxed collegiate look that drew me in and was initially what we wanted to reference with Emporium.”
Charlie: “I don't really have an origin story of where my interest came from. But my Mom is a seamstress.
Care Label: Ok cool, so with your mom being a seamstress, did you see a lot of that growing up? Did you get an appreciation for product and process from her?
Charlie: “Yeah she'd always worked in the fashion industry as a seamstress. I think I took appreciation for the little things where she was touching clothes, changing things.”
Robbie: “By the way, Charlie’s Mom knows brands. She used to talk about Kapital. I didn’t know about Kapital. So I discovered Kapital through Charlie’s Mom.”
Care Label: That’s extremely cool. So your mom's pretty fly?
Charlie: “Yeah she’s Fly. Word on the streets is that she’s pretty fly.”
*The Emporium DNA*
Care Label: So the two of you clearly love to design, make and sell clothes. But what is it about product and ‘fashion’ that you connect with? What’s the source of your interest?
Robbie: “Something important to me is brand story and narrative. I like having everything cohesive and making sense in order to create a world and a community around it. Quality is a big part of that as well. If you're producing something that's not very good quality, you're not going to have community around your brand. People aren't going to buy t-shirts, that are terrible quality and then be like, ‘I love those guys’.
Charlie: “As well, we design for us. We don’t design for others. If myself or Robbie aren’t going to wear it, we’re not going to make it.”
*Don’t take the elevator, but grab your clobber*
Care Label: And what about some of your favourite pieces yourselves. Is there one piece or something that you could never walk away from. House is burning down, what are you grabbing?
Charlie: “I’m going to say my Needles shirt.”
Care Label: Oh the Seven Shirt?
Charlie: “Yes and it’s because”,
(A) : It’s seven shirts. It's not one shirt, It's seven.
(B) : It’s that appreciation for that one of one (seven shirts). They're hard to find too. One that fits right.
Care Label: Also to find the right 7 colours is tough.
Charlie: “That’s it, I’ve got a good seven. I’ve got a dream team.”
Care Label: But, you also wear loads of caps. Any caps you could never part with?
Charlie: “Oh yeah, I have loads. There’s a few from Arnold Park Studios, shoutout Andy. If there was one, I’m saying my Rip-Off Ralph Lauren one.”
Care Label: And yourself Robbie?
Robbie: “Probably a Woolrich shirt that I got in Kyoto for 30 quid in a vintage shop. It’s just the greatest wool flannel shirt. I just know I’m never going to find another one like that.”
*Where to find the Emporium Archive* 🛏️ 🛏️
Care Label: And what about the Emporium stuff. Do you have any Emporium original samples?
Robbie: Yeah we have an Archive.
Care Label: No way, so you’ve kept everything?
Robbie: Yeah, we probably have one of everything back to when we started.
Charlie: Wait Robbie, we have most things. Robbie was never about doing an archive. I'd normally say;
Charlie: ‘Hey Robbie, do we have many left of this piece’
Robbie: ‘We've one t-shirt left, why?’
Charlie: ‘Take it off the site. We need it for the Archive’.
Charlie: “But yeah we have most things if not everything. It’s all in an suction packed bag under my childhood bed.”
Care Label: So what’s the plan for the archive?
Robbie: I envision a very cool scenario in the future where we have a store and we have all of the archive framed in the store.
*Twisting Robbie’s Arm = Sold Out Tee-Shirt*
Care Label: So moving closer to Emporium now, what sparked you to do it?
Robbie: “Initially it was an event. So the origin story was to host an event that would contribute to the streetwear scene in Ireland. Because at that point in time, there was a bunch of small brands. But if they all had their own pop-up, they might only get 20 people there. So if we keep it under one roof to try and get as many people there as we could, it would benefit the community as a whole. Then Charlie eventually twisted my arm into doing a t-shirt and the story goes something like”,
Charlie: ‘Robbie, I think we should do a T-shirt for the Emporium thing’
Robbie: ‘No’
Robbie: “But he eventually kept trying to convince me. And then I was like okay, fine, let’s do it. When we did the first tee, we sold out. Then we did another tee, sold out in that. And after a few more sold out bits, we kind of said, ‘Oh we kind of have a brand here’. It kind of evolved from that point. But when we did our first cut and sew stuff, we only had around 400 followers.
Care Label: Yeah I remember quite early on you did the pop-up in Indigo&Cloth where you did the diamond Levi’s?
Charlie: “Yeah those 550 Levi’s with the diamonds were so good! We used to be craftier. We were good at getting things done at the very start.”
Robbie: “We had to be.”
Care Label: And Emporium started off primarily as streetwear. So what was it about streetwear that drew you in?
Robbie: “Definitely the culture and the community. It’s something that is developing in Dublin, but previously absent. Every major European city has streetwear brands influenced by the culture of that city. There wasn't really something like that here yet. But doing the Oxford Shirt this year, we wanted to do something that wasn’t just straight up ‘streetwear’. Y’know, we’re getting older and if what we wear changes, the brand is going to reflect that also. So it’s about adding that depth to the brand as we add depth to ourselves.”
Care Label: Love that! And on the Emporium website, it says ‘inspired by the era that raised us’ What do you mean by that?
Robbie: “I mean a lot of the stuff is inspired by the vintage, collegiate look that we saw in the 90s and early 00s. Even the Oxford that we brought out this year, that’s literally like the clothing we’d see back then and that style is considered vintage now already.”
Care Label: On the vintage collegiate look, have you ever seen the book, ‘Take Ivy’ by Teruyoshi Hayashida? He went around all of the Ivy League schools in the 60s and took pictures of the students roaming around the campus. It had huge impact in Japan at the time and inspired an entire generation to dress like the preppy students on the East Coast.
Robbie: “That Americana look, so good!”
*Ying and Yang!*
Care Label: “I want to go a bit deeper on the brand and the both of you. I always think brands are reflections of the people who run them, so what does Emporium say about the 2 of you?”
Robbie: “I think it reflects our interest as well as the community aspect of the brand. That’s something that has always meant a lot to us. You can see how much brands mean to cities. I think that's something that inspires us as a brand as well, to mean something to Dublin.
Robbie: “As well, we’re both very different in our approach, and I think the blend of those differing angles is kind of how we’ve ended up where we are now. Charlie's super creative and comes up with a lot of ideas very quickly and can really take things places that I couldn’t. But at the same time, I’m super organised, in a way that Charlie doesn't thrive in.”
Care Label: Ying and Yang!
*The Lost Oxford Shirt*
Care Label: Going back to The Oxford Shirt, are you looking at some new colours?? The Oxford was great, I totally slept on that and missed it,
Charlie: “You blundered”
Robbie: “But we blundered also. We had no idea how well it was going to do.”
Care Label: I think it was well timed though. Because, as we were saying, I think people who entered fashion via streetwear, are looking to ‘gentleman’ their wardrobe with tailoring, shirting, pleated pants, things like that. So it was a product made by a streetwear entity, but in a versatile piece that can be dressed up or down.
Robbie: “And also, it worked that it was in White and the Emporium Green which was actually deadstock. Which is nuts because initially it was supposed to be white and blue, but the sample got lost.”
Charlie: “One day we will see somebody in that lost blue and white shirt in Dublin.
*Keep It Up*
Care Label: So you've been doing this 5 years now?
Charlie: Yeah, but properly since COVID.
Robbie: “Our first cut n sew delivery landed in July 2020. It was at that point when we started like doing this properly properly.”
Care Label: Yeah and I think a lot of people who start off doing their own thing think ‘oh, by year 1 we need X amount of sales or followers.’ But with you guys, you do another collection, another pop up, another release. So you keep chipping away at it and you are where you are now. I think that’s a really important message to highlight as it just takes time doesn’t it?
Robbie: “Yeah, I mean, it's a LOT of work.
Charlie: “I also see in a weird way that we're in our first year. Other people doing this, study this for years. We’ve both spent the last four years part time learning it from completely different backgrounds, so we feel we’re only starting.”
*Cutting and Sewing Community*
Care Label: Community has become such a buzz word of late, where every brand is trying to build it to be seen as more authentic or interesting. But the community around Emporium seems super strong and clearly people want to get involved, so how did you build that?
Robbie: “I mean, a lot of it is through relationships with different people and we’re lucky to call those guys friends. But also, you have to mean something to people. A lot of clothing brands just make clothes and they have no real origin story. That's a lot of the reason why people have been interested because we mean something to Dublin, to Ireland and to young people living here.
**Pause Game: The impact of this community is crystal clear. At the Emporium x Arnold Park Studios Pop Up recently, dozens of people were queueing up before it opened to meet the gang and get some Empo Archive. 100’s of people showed up for the weekend.
Community Created? ✅ 🤝
Care Label: That is unreal, I love that, because we live in this world of brand saturation, where many brands come and go. But why do you think Emporium keeps growing and growing?
Robbie: “Because we love it. We’ve felt really driven to do this. And it's hard when you order a whole drop of jackets and they’re not going to sell. Anytime something goes wrong it makes sense to stop. But it’s about keeping going and by doing that, we get better and better at doing this.”
Care Label: And what's the best thing about operating Emporium in Dublin?
Charlie: “Ah, it’s the close knit community. We get to work with a lot of people that we love and respect. I think it's one of the pros of being in a really small community. Everyone we work with are our friends.”
Care Label: I love it, thanks guys.
Thank you to the fellas!
Emporium recently dropped some more sweet shorts, tees and socks for SS23. Check out the latest from Emporium here
Whopper stuff as always 😤