Fifthrequisite Jeans & Denim was interviewed by Jackie Racer of Denimtherapy.
1. Let's start from the beginning. How did you know you wanted to be a designer? (OR: What inspired you to get this brand off the ground?)
Fifthrequisite was firstly born, when we were university students in Sydney, Australia. We had felt in love with the denim as we worn the jeans everyday life. We had a thought to make our first denim collection, which it was only one model at that time. Luckily, one of us was born in a garment industry family, so that make us to build it not too difficult.
For our first collection, we only produced in a small amount to our friends and peoples around us and the feedback was great and this led us to continue building our brand.
2. Are there other denim brands you consider your immediate competition? How do you differentiate yourself from the hundreds of popular denim brands afloat right now?
In premium jeans market, each of popular denim brands has their own uniqueness, and style. The customers in this market buy several jeans brands as collectibles. So, we think there is not much competition in the market. We look at other denim brands as our friends rather than rivals.
How differentiate? We can separate strengths of each premium jeans brands into 3 groups which are strength of materials, design, and finishing. To differentiate, we just combine all of these 3 strengths suitably and perfectly to make Fifthrequisite jeans to become fifth desire of human.
3. Do you have any pre-designing rituals? (OR: Does your team have any pre-designing rituals?)
Yes, we did a lot of experiments before we launched each model; e.g. ripping, soaking, washing, wearing, burning and etc.
4. Describe the person who represents your ideal target customer---the customer you have in mind when you're planning a collection.
Ideally, all denim lovers who are really into denim passion care about quality of denim and styles are our target customer. Every single collection we have to consider our target before going to design and produce. Many researches occurred, trend and style are very important for us to be Fifthrequsite.
5. Can you give us hint about what's next for following or upcoming season?
For the upcoming season, we are progressing on the more relaxing style.
6. What would be your dream collaboration? Any plans of that in the future?
Our dream collaborator could be anyone, but what we are really looking for is to run a campaign with someone or any party that could help people stop the war. It is just a disaster how people died, lost their family, scarcity and many more.
7. What are the most popular washes/fits in the line? What are your favorites, and how would you style them?
The most popular model is our classic model "Romeo Midnight Selvage". This model uses fantastic 13.5oz red selvage denim from Japan, which give great fading abrasion and came with Romeo cut the slim straight a perfect cut for everyone.
8. Do you have any favorite/least favorite denim trends right now?
Honestly, we like all denim trends such as regular classic, skinny, loose&narrow, slim and colored.
9. Street style and style blogs are huge in the industry right now as a source of inspiration, influencing the high end labels rather than vice versa. How much does street style influence your designing?
Yes, street style gives us a lot of influence, it is always amazing how people mix and match their clothes with different brands and personalize themselves. So we set the style up to be a part of street style and let the street style be a part of us too.
10. How many pairs of denim do You own?
As we were denim collectors before we ran this denim business. We approximately had over 150 for each of us, which was quite a lot but we just never had enough of it. Now we have own over a thousand pairs of denim just to collect.
