Finding the New Fleece
With Arnar Már Jónsson

Arnar Már Jónsson: I’m in Reykjavík city center, in my studio.
Luke Stevens: I’m in London, in my bedroom.

AMJ: It’s become quite key to our process. I often use the relative quiet in Iceland to work on the early stage things when they need to be conceptual. If we were both in the same studio stressing about production I don’t think we would be able to do that so effectively.
LS: And meanwhile I might be with our manufacturers, better understanding processes or developing techniques. In terms of design, the roles we take on are often very fluid and can change each season.
AMJ: What we do hinges on deep research and problem solving at a conceptual and technical level and the question of what needs to be made today. We don’t make something if there’s not a reason for it. That’s what design is. It’s about solving a problem with a solution.

AMJ: For AW21 we’ve done fleece in a specific type of virgin wool. We love fleece, but it’s also annoying. You sweat too much in it and it’s also often too thin, or too thick. We couldn’t justify using it until we’d solved these issues, so we found this really amazing fabric that has a resemblance to fleece but it’s virgin wool. The way it’s piled means it breathes. It keeps the cold out and the heat in. It can be an outer garment or an undergarment, and it has natural water resistant qualities. We’ve spent years looking for a fabric like that and we finally found it. For me, that was a really good design solution.

AMJ: We used that to dye jackets. We wanted to make jackets that were highly functional and technical but with a very natural, organic production process. We could have just used natural dye extract and a regular waterproofing process but we don’t want to make things that are only functional or technical. It took about 380 hours for the dye production. Plus, hand-waxing is another 100 hours. Hand-picking, hand-dyeing, hand-waxing. The time it takes to make these things. It connects us in a very real and physical way to what we do.
LS: That’s intrinsic to our approach. To be very hands-on.

LS: Definitely. All of the design theory that we draw on, it’s all to do with product or industrial design. Architecture and the relationship between things. It’s something fundamental that’s often overlooked in fashion design.
AMJ: I don’t know if I can even say that I’m a fashion designer. That’s not to dismiss fashion at all, don’t get me wrong. It’s sometimes more about the idea and the aesthetic than it is about the solution. In that sense, it’s good that we can say that we are fashion designers, but in general we think a lot more like industrial or product designers. We exist in an in-between place.

AMJ: I think it’s just responding to the complexity of being a human. How can you make things that have multiple functions? How can you design things for the outdoors that also work in the city? We like versatility. I’m also a bit contrarian so I naturally resist being categorised as too much one thing or another.

AMJ: We’d like to take it further than clothing design and establish other ways of working. At one point, we could design a house, a chair, a car.

AMJ: The whole definition of a pop-up is that it’s bound to die after its three-week sales window. How do we feel about that? How do we approach it? How do we try to create some meaning and longevity from this system rather than using it purely as an opportunity for marketing and sales? Sometimes these questions are better explored through other mediums than solely through clothing.
LS: It’s quite difficult to put all these ideas into a jacket! It was really great to treat the clothes and the furniture they were hanging on as a continuum. For us they were both equally valid parts of the output of the label and the questions we were trying to answer.
AMJ: That’s what keeps us excited about going forward. If I felt that I’d only be designing jackets and trousers for the rest of my life, I would start to have a panic attack.