We’ve wanted to take some great new photographs of our clothes for a while – photographs that give a really good sense of what they look and feel like when you see them up close.
Because our fabrics are unique (the way they are actually knitted together) they don’t always look like what you’re used to.
The differences are subtle though – for example, the 007 polos have a matt, textured fabric that looks more rugged than the smooth look you get from a standard pique polo shirt.
Apart from anything, we wanted people to know more about Sunspel and more about what they are buying.
So it was that on a glorious clear summer day we met up with three key people, who, fortunately, are all Sunspel fans: actor Leo Gregory, photographer Lorenzo Agius and stylist Tom Stubbs. Allow us to tell you a bit more about these guys.
As our clothes aren’t about looking pretty or drawing attention to themselves, we wanted photographs of a real person wearing them.
And Leo Gregory is certainly a real person. He’s an English actor with a raw edge and a whole string of credits to his name. He’s been in Eastenders and various British TV dramas like Cracker, as well as a bunch of highly regarded, low profile films such as Stoned, Green Street and Tristan + Isolde.
Lorenzo Agius is a quite different proposition.
He’s one of the few photographers A-list stars trust – he’s photographed people like Jack Nicholson and Madonna.
He also took those dramatic black and white images for the film Trainspotting. We were delighted he agreed to take some images for us.
And then we had Tom Stubbs there. He’s a stylist and a writer. He has a blog at Finch’s Quarterly Review where he wrote recently about this very photo shoot. He described himself as a ‘Sunspel disciple’, and said ‘the boy Gregory looked like star material in this top ranking menswear’.
So those were the guys we met up with on that sunny morning. The location, in the heart of the Home Counties, was hidden down a winding lane near Stoke Poges (or somewhere like that – we all got lost). In fact it’s more of a track than a lane.
Once you’re a long way down the winding lane you have to turn off onto a drive, where forbidding black gates bar the way. Inside, you head down the drive surrounded by trees, round a corner, and there it is.
A one-storey modernist jewel, all razor sharp straight lines and dazzling white walls and shimmering swimming pool reflections. It’s called Skywood.
Everyone arrived about the same time – even Dominic, looking relaxed and stylish on his bike, a Triumph Thruxton 900 which also stars in the photoshoot. This was some feat, given that he had endured a long, scary ride down the motorway where he’d been battered by the slipstream from coaches and lorries who didn’t give a damn about the classic status of his bike.
Then we got down to business. It seemed everyone enjoyed the location, the bike and the clothes. The only distraction was a giant Alsatian that came with the location (oddly similar to the dog that Russell Crowe unleashed hell with at the beginning of Gladiator). Not content to observe, he spent the day wandering up to people and biting their ankles.
We hope the images capture the mood. We hope that they make our clothes look as good as they feel and reflect how well they’re made. Please let us know what you think. View the Sunspel shoot.
Links:
www.finchsquarterly.com/fqr-style
www.lorenzo-agius.com
www.skywoodhouse.com
Sunspel James Bond Collection
Tags: Leo Gregory, Lorenzo Agius, Tom Stubbs