americanClassic MASTER OF ART Icon Ms. Lauryn Hill collaborated with Woolrich on a limited-edition capsule collection.
Haute Heritage Heritage brand Woolrich’s signature checked wool shirts and top-notch outerwear have existed for more than 200 years—durable, timeless pieces to wear forever and pass down to future generations. Recently, the brand has modernized while honoring its roots, creating a new outerwear collection with an “American Soul”– themed campaign fronted by the legendary Ms. Lauryn Hill (who also performed at the brand’s NYFW bash). Woolrich’s creative director Andrea Canè explains all.
How has Woolrich changed in recent years? We decided to work on branding a different way. Until 2016, before we did a merger with an American company, we had licensing deals, and the brand was a little different. After we merged, we saw it was a very complicated portfolio: There was a European line, a Japanese line, and more than a couple of licenses in the U.S. We started to clean up everything, and we ended up with two lines. One is a contemporary line, and the other is a new outerwear line. For Fall ’19, we’ll also have an outerwear line in collaboration with our Japanese shareholder, Goldwin, which works with brands like The North Face. We want to be a global brand. To be a global brand, you cannot have different positioning around the world. You need to have one message that’s very clear. Then we started to think about how to express again that we are American because, in a sense, we are American: The company has been here for 200 years. FA S H I O N W E E K D A I LY. C O M
How’d you go about communicating that to the world? We decided to collaborate with Black Frame; I worked with [Black Frame founder] Brian Phillips 20 years ago, so I started to discuss how we could be seen again, how we could express the soul of America. So we invented American Soul to describe what we’re interested in developing for the future as a communication strategy. Brian said the easiest way to start is with the real soul: music. Why did Woolrich decide to join forces with Ms. Lauryn Hill? She represents a kind of modern authenticity very well; it’s the same message we have on our product side. We wanted to do something a little different from what we’ve done in the past. She’s an icon, and our brand is an iconic brand. And for people who see America from the outside, something that’s always been very important and American: the diversity of different
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BY ARIA DARCELLA
