You see them all of the time nowadays. Each one delivered and executed in a different way. When looking at the delivery I can't help but think to myself what happened behind the scenes to get to that final launch; and I think that is what makes a successful collaborative project.
Over the last three months I have had the pleasure of getting to know Eric from FITTED Underground, a do-it-all creative who makes custom jeans. Like most people I have come across since starting this journey we had the back and forth about what we both do, how we overcome certain obstacles and touched on what goes into delivering a final piece to a customer. From day one, there was a mutual understanding and respect between us. I think that is important when thinking about collaborating on something.
After staying in contact, he approached me and we had a conversation about doing something together that customers in both the denim and leather communities would enjoy. The process started in July and immediately ran into a few hiccups along the way. We both knew we wanted to create something that would withstand the test of time and age well. Structure and durability were two things that Eric kept mentioning. I had messed around with putting denim inside of wallets as a liner, but looked at it more from an aesthetic point of view, where he took a stance based on understanding how denim actually works and ages. That's his specialty. We quickly learned that simply gluing a piece of leather inside of a wallet will definitely look cool, but is sure pull away and fray with daily use. Needless to say the next few conversations were the turning point for us. Back to the drawing board and phone calls discussing what we could do to ensure that the wallet was going to last.
Eventually we figured out exactly what we needed to do, and created the first prototype which Eric has been using for the last two months. Real-time feedback from someone is invaluable and that is what we found out. We liked the thread but wanted to tweak the design a little bit, so what better way to test prototype number two than by creating one that I would carry daily. It's been about six weeks into it for me and this design was the winner, yet still not the final product.
Open dialogue, valuable feedback, and genuine creativity is what creates a strong collaboration and we are excited to start showing you all what we came up with.
Be on the look out for more to come with this!
-TR