It feels like an eon ago that a small brand by the name of Loki popped up on coolography’s radar. With wonderfully rebellious designs (and a now iconic weather pattern tee) Loki quickly became a respected name in the UK streetwear scene. Fast forward a few years, a handful of collections and a renaming of the brand to Second Son, coolography caught up with the London based label to discuss mischievous shirts, urban poachers, and the London streetwear scene…

Loki was the Norse god of trickery and mischief. Is any of that ideal still reflected in Second Son, or have you, and your brand, matured in a way?

A bit of both really. We still have that British sense of humour and need to take the piss, but as we move into more ‘mature’ pieces of clothing it’s harder to show that in our work. With the shirts we’ve made some details that you could possibly call mischievous, such as the turquoise elbow patches we’ve used on the Le Mesmer shirt, but generally they’re more mature than the t-shirts we started with. That said, I don’t want the brand to evolve into a shirt and outerwear company – we’re not going to stop making our t-shirts because that’s what have been popular and allowed us to do what we’re doing now. Plus it’s easy to express our more juvenile side in t-shirts. Also keep an eye out for our new stickers (which we don’t recommend that you use to customise bus and tube adverts). They’re pretty juvenile too.

You’ve mentioned that this season you were drawing from an ‘urban poacher’ aesthetic. Where else do you draw your inspirations from?

Ah, the urban poacher. We had an argument with someone the other day about who coined the phrase but I’m pretty certain it was James from Addict. The idea is that a lot of traditional country clothing, especially hunting gear, actually looks pretty good in the city, and, more importantly, it’s very functional. I’m a pretty clumsy person so I’m always breaking things, staining clothes and bashing stuff up… so the urban poacher looks suits me. If you’re wearing an old fishing jacket and heavy selvedge you can fall over, stain them, try to rip them and it just adds to the look. I guess it’s the antithesis to the old Damon Dash ethos of licking your trainer soles every morning to prove they’re unworn… and having clothes that stand up to the test of time and can be worn forever is nice because you become attached to things in the way you used to with your lucky pants. So, with the cut and sew pieces we’re making now such as the jeans and the hunting and ticking shirts, we’re using pretty much the best materials we can find – 13.5 oz selvedge, good traditional shirting and real suede… which means the prices are probably a bit higher than we’d like, but the quality is visible I hope and they’re pieces that will outlive a cheaper product.

Everyone and their designer friend seem to be starting up clothing labels. What makes Second Son different?

That’s a difficult one. Difficult to answer without sounding arsey. Hmm… I don’t know… we’ve always aimed to make things we like – there’s never been another agenda like “what do we think is going to be cool next season?” or “shouldn’t we be getting into shutter shades?” I think we’ve always been proud of being British in a market that’s predominantly U.S. driven. Aside from that probably not much… we make T-shirts and we like music and beer and girls, just like every other label I guess. Well, maybe not House of Holland but most others…

Considering the short lifespan of many a t-shirt “brand” in the streetwear market, Second Son are comparatively ancient. What advice would you give any budding designer on starting their own clothing line?

Ah, thanks, I’d say you have to look at it as a long-term game. There’s not a lot of money in wholesaling tees and sweats so don’t expect to get rich quickly. You really have to love doing it because all your profit gets sucked back into marketing, product development and everyday running costs. It helps if you know people in the industry and are connected – that way you can get lots of advice on which shops won’t pay, which factories will let you down etc. Which is why what Jude’s started with The Reset is so productive because it’s started a dialogue amongst brands and his ethos of strength in numbers is definitely true. Actually I think the best advice I could give would be to go do six months work experience at an established brand like Carhartt or Folk and just suck up as much information as possible. Work on the shop floor to understand what people want, work in the accounts department to understand a bit more about costs etc… try to do the whole shebang.

We covered you briefly on our visit to the Reset street market. How do you feel about the streetwear scene, in London specifically?

I think a lot of people are down on the London scene. In the old Bond days London was 70% of our business and now it’s probably less than 15% which really saddens me because there’s nothing better than being out and about and seeing people wearing the brand, but I think things will pick up again. We’ve lost Stussy and now Gloria’s so it’s definitely getting harder for people to buy their favourite brands. Whether that’ll effect us I don’t know – I remember 15 years ago wanting to buy a Holmes t-shirt and you’d have to travel for two hours to get it because Slam was probably the only shop in the country selling them. Maybe in a way that made the experience a little sweeter… you know our core customers probably wouldn’t buy Second Son if it was available on every street corner. That said, it’s sad for the customer having fewer stores but the internet makes up for that, and we’re certainly noticing more orders through our site. And some shops in London are killing it now – Dylan at Supra… and Mash on Oxford Street now has a pretty tidy selection of US and UK brands and Natterjacks continue to do well. So it’s a double edged sword – on the one hand hard times like these are part of a healthy evolutionary cycle, in hard times the weak suffer and the strong survive which is good for everyone in the long term. But that just doesn’t work with the Stussy scenario. The strongest streetwear label in the world closing a flagship store is just crazy. And that comes down to high street rents being out of control. Both Bond and the Stussy store were successful businesses but eventually they were ground down by landlords continually upping the rent. The result is we’ll get a homogenised centre of town where the shops in Portobello will be exactly the same as those in Soho and Islington… but we’ll have all moved to Berlin by then so who cares….

What’s in store for Second Son in the future? Where would you see yourselves in 1, 5 or even 10 years time?

I’d like to just keep building the line slowly, adding a few more products each season (caps, belts, some knitwear) while still producing strong t-shirt designs. We’d also like to do some collaborations but that’s a tricky one – it’s got to feel like it makes sense or there’s a story to it. After that it’s hard to say, I guess I know where I’d like to be in 10 years time but I’ve always thought planning that far ahead is inviting trouble.

And lastly, according to Second Son, what’s cool right now?

Ha ha, another difficult one… it’s always much easier to see what’s uncool right? Which would be the whole Kanye obsession with overdressing and accessorising everything… and the whole Shoreditch ‘I’m in a band’ feyness is becoming fucking tired. When we had our pop up shop on Brick Lane it was just relentless. You’d open the shop, grab a coffee and be sat on the step outside and these kids would come past at 11am on a Tuesday and you just knew they’d spent an hour getting ready, back combing their hair to look like they’d just rolled out of bed, putting some rips into a brand new t-shirt and putting on some eye liner to make themselves look tired. And for what? To walk up and down Brick Lane on a Tuesday morning. Bizarre. I kind of hate hating on people but I just don’t understand how they can spend that much time on their appearance and why they always look so unhappy. If I’d spent an hour in front of the mirror I’d want to be pretty fucking stoked with the results.

What’s cool right now? Same as ever, people who aren’t really bothered by any of it all, who just follow / do what they like, with some honesty. What do I like at the moment? Traditional British materials and colours but with a modern touch, the whole hunting steez (at this point I should mention that we don’t approve of hunting we just like some of the clothes…). I like a lot of what Folk are doing and I’m liking the move into traditional US workwear, such as some of the Red Wing range and the Carhartt workshirts in hickory… but then I’m getting old so what the fuck do I know…

Check out the full collection here, and at your friendly neighbourhood stockists.

Second Son