Bite of the Big Apple
Bite of the Big Apple
Skull & Bones is a newcomer to the Australian underwear market and it needs your undivided attention. Stanley Burton is the first retailer to bring the brand with such an amazing palette of designs Down Under. With the lack of great underwear designs from local underwear designers in Australia recently, this is essential and a great addition to your drawers. Designed in New York, the most well known city in the world with such class, resilience, style and hard work - and it is evident in the underwear.
Without a doubt that a lot of people would have seen the brand Skull & Bones circulating around social media for quite some time. Skull & Bones has established a strong identity from strength to strength but when you look at their logo, you know it is serious about designs and business. Skull & Bones creates underwear with bold designs and colours, detailed prints and strong statements along with iconic visuals that involves storytelling and allows the wearer to carry on their journey.
(above) "I love the offerings from @skullandbonesnyc. Great style and fit. Those animal prints are 🔥🔥" @ClaytonPaterson Stay tuned for our upcoming collaboration with Clayton, just follow our Stanley Burton Instagram.
The brand also designs other apparels such as unison suits (onesies) which are to die for, it includes one of the Vintage Toys prints which we carry for the brief and trunk.. (super cute..) They also design tank tops (singlets) and the latest harnesses and totes so you can carry everything on the go, because we seem to carry more and more these days.. Phones, masks, wireless headphones, chargers for every hand held device. It was only a decade ago that we complained about women taking too much on their day out. With such a diverse range of fashion accessory products, one of the reasons why we are drawn to Skull & Bones, at Stanley Burton we source brands that carry strong statements and create products with a human touch, practicality and reality - it’s important.
Skull & Bones - brand for human
Fashion isn’t solely about fashion anymore. If you are not thinking beyond the cloth, then there is something seriously wrong with your creation. A brand needs to carry threads of soul other than the ones stitched onto the garments in order to make the world a better place. The thread of storytelling takes a life of its own complete with phases, characters, morals and personalities which can be seen across Skull & Bones canvas such as Coney Island Comic Strip underwear. Everyone loves a good comic strip especially if you have been to Coney Island or any of the amusement parks around the world, we do have a few in Australia these stories can be told universally. By walking along the boardwalk that you find in this Coney Island underwear.. there's a sense of nostalgia, we have few of those stretches in Australia like St Kilda Esplanade, it's like walking down a memory lane towards peace and harmony. People with life experiences have stories to tell and you can only learn so much about your self if you take a bite from your past to build into your future otherwise you have an empty soul.
(above) Influencer @stunnerken in Skull & Bones Coney Island in Comic Strip brief
Coney Island has a colourful past, it is a place for freedom and democracy while empowering diversity regardless of class, gender and race. It is a significant place in American modernism history with popular culture often referenced in a range of literature such as movies (The Great Gatsby), arts, songs (Love Never Dies, Taylor Swift) and music video clips (Beyonce, Lana Del Rey, Aerosmith). Perform a quick search in Spotify, you can find a number of playlist inspired by Coney Island. Do you see the Aussies designing underwear with Luna Park’s iconic big mouth? Oh wait, Ken Done has already done it in his signature style that aims for the tourism audience but obviously in underwear - however his style is a little bit too blue and old fashioned, I am not sure if it would appeal for the men in style demographic, because anything with an Aussie icon on underwear seem to belong to the souvenir shops. .. ekkk.
Clothes are worn by humans, from the hands of the designer passed onto the factory and factory workers, the ones who operate the machineries then to the people who packaged the underwear before ending up on the consumers’ bodies - it’s all related. These bonds can be felt with the Love Bones and Love Bites styles. So many hands and souls, it needs to offer mutual respect for giving life. It’s only when people understand the amount of work that is put into creating a brand, a range of products and even the pair of underwear that you are wearing this very minute, then you begin to appreciate life a little and have a respect for the people who made it happen.
INCLUSION
Morality is one train of thoughts that initiates my entire artistic journey as a contemporary artist and fashion photographer for the past 2 decades; photos don’t just happen. Fashion is the same, it needs to be ethical and carries purposes. Skull and Bones proactively supports various causes with the brand which also aligns with what we support at Stanley Burton particularly with “Equality”. You can check out more of Skull and Bones’ core values here. Rarely a gay owned underwear label in Australia that openly displays then proactively act upon their cause, you may have all heard of tokenism it is something that Australian companies are famously known for. Just because you hire gay people in a business it doesn’t mean you are an ally because conventionally the straight white suits are still pulling the strings. This is where we come in as Australia’s first underwear retailer who embraces other entities who proactively act upon their beliefs and in motion.
Skull & Bones resides on another continent but ultimately we are all supporting the bonding between humankind although we do it differently in Australia as our lifestyles, living standards and people behaviour are vastly different. Our challenges in Australia and one which we are advocating behind is empowering diversity and inclusion as expressed in Skull & Bones’ Inclusion range of underwear, inspired by British artist (Sam Cox) Mister Doodles, an artist who is compared to another New York artist Keith Haring. The Aussies should also know about Keith Haring and everything that he has done, there was a huge show at NGV last year on his retrospective body of work. Did you know that Haring came to Melbourne in the 80s and did a full mural on the water window. It was rather controversial, because some Australians criticised his work to resemble that of Aboriginal painting. However he argued that he paints the same type of work all over the world. We need to understand that his work is universal, it speaks many languages and bonding and inclusion is the core of it. There is a lack of inclusion in business, arts, media and culture and not surprisingly it is the Australian way, just recently we had a census and sexuality was not a question on the form. As the world is moving forward, Australia seems to backpaddling,.. someone needs to step in .. that is one of the core reasons Stanley Burton was established - we feel that everyone should be seen and heard. More on this in my upcoming column.
- S
