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About a week ago, Eidos had announced their new creative director which rung a couple familiar bells. The name was none other than Simon Spurr, who back in 2012 was among one of the driving forces in American fashion. Spurr help top design jobs in the past at Calvin Klien and Ralph Lauren. Simon Spurr has been a recipient of a CFDA nomination for best menswear designer for his eponymous brand. His brand was a hit in both critical favorite and enjoyed retail success. But two days after getting the industry stamp of approval, Spurr walked away from his label after a major dispute with his business partner. After this fallout, Spurr took jobs at Savile Row house Kent & Curwen, and then Gieves & Hawkes, but somehow nothing seemed to be like a long-term job. Last year he started a footwear brand called March NYC which was supposedly the official staple of his return to fashion but has yet to make any magic of his golden days.
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Spurr has officially taken the brand over from the hands of Antonio Ciongoli, who was taking the brand into a perennial insider-favorite for over five years. With all the fuss about Spurr officially coming back into the limelight, GQ style decided to get an exclusive interview with Simon Spurr. Below are a couple of the best quotes from the given interview.
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“What made you get back into the fashion world?”
Spurr answered with, “I mean obviously fashion’s going through an interesting time if you’re looking at it from a more sartorial perspective—we’re in a sportswear and streetwear moment. So I’ve definitely taken inspiration from those other projects I was talking about, and obviously working on my own line of boots got me back into it. And I still love what I do, I still have a passion for fashion, and I have a lot of people around me saying, you have to get back into it, don’t do it for yourself do it for us. [laughs] So there was a ton of support around me getting back, and I just took so long because I was trying to find the right fit. Now, for one of the rare occasions in my career, with the people from Isaia I’m working with true craftsmanship and precision. I built my own brand’s reputation for quality and execution. So, to have the freedom that Isaia has offered me has been a great opportunity.”
“Where do you plan on taking Eidos?”
“I had a pretty clear brief from [Isaia CEO] Gianluca [Isaia] to keep the brand independent, but elevate it a little bit so that the Eidos customer can move up to Isaia when they have that disposable income. So I think the collection itself will have a little more color in it, it’ll still be very wearable, but the way it’ll be styled will be a little more European. And then my reference points will hopefully bring a cultural aspect to it. In the time off I’m heavily influenced by artists like Carmen Herrera and Sol Lewitt, and the kind of methodology and the mathematics behind their approach to creating their work. I want to underscore the intellectuality of the brand and increase that out-of-the-box thinking.”
“What does being a New York designer mean to you?”
“I probably only know how to be a New York designer. Next year is my 20-year anniversary in New York. But New York is a multicultural epicenter of the world, it’s a very democratic kind of environment—I don’t mean politically—where you have to be very aware of everyone that’s here, consumer demands and needs and taste levels, and it’s international and very culturally saturated. For me it’s one of the best places to be. I think American menswear in the past has gotten a bit of a bad rap, it’s been so commercial, but now Thom Browne’s been on the scene for a good number of years, you’ve got Raf Simons at Calvin Klein, and I think people are starting to embrace smaller brands as well as consumers look away from overly-distributed brands. They’re looking for smaller, more independent brands, which is one of the things that attracted me to Eidos. So I guess New York for me is about having an international point of view. I don’t know if a Parisian designer would say the same thing. And one big difference I’d say as a European in America is you can still get things done here. You can still meet a stranger in a bar and they’ll open up their rolodex and help you out and make connections within 30 minutes of talking to them. That doesn’t happen in Europe. Sorry to coin a phrase, but it is still the land of opportunity. Could I have achieved what I achieved at Simon Spurr had I done that in London? Probably not.”
