XXBC designers Alex Lee and Will Thompson are bringing their downtown-cool mentality into an uptown world with their second collection. With the boys’ own personal wardrobes—you’ve seen them on style blogs or working the sales floor at OC—displaying an affinity for oversized jerseys and ensembles that are a walking #TBT to ’94, the twosome are a pair that can’t be missed—just like XXBC.
With their defined personal style, it makes sense that their knack for unique dressing permeates throughout each exclusive-to-OC XXBC collection (check out the first, here). The fellas took inspiration from construction workwear and made it a little less industrial and a lot more plush. The designers also manage to infuse classic garments with their unique style: the crewneck sweatshirt gets a comfy, updated twist with contrast stripes of a fleece-like fabric in pastel, cotton-candy colors; boot laces are taken off of shoes and are instead used as drawstrings on sweatpants; each pair adorned with an extra loop—perfect for carrying around that hammer you couldn't fit in your bag.
OC recently linked up with Alex and Will to talk about the new collection, J. Biebs sporting their label, and what it means to be cool and different.
CHLOE DEWBERRY: What made you guys use this particular fleece-like fabric? It’s not a typical fabric that you see in high-end collections.
ALEX LEE: We've realized that we shoot a lot of our ideas down after considering whether it's been done before. If it hasn't, we are much more likely to do it. And plus, that fleece is so soft and cozy.
WILL THOMPSON: The fabrics and colors all stemmed from a picture of a baby blue and white checkered garage door that Alex took when we were shooting our last lookbook video. We decided that we wanted to focus on the fabrication a little bit more this season, but we still wanted to incorporate the same grey jersey that we used the season before.
I love the boot laces that are used as drawstrings on the sweatpants! How did that idea come about?
WT: We wanted to focus on this regular guy who is naturally cool—like a construction worker.
AL: I think we were trying to think of ways to take the construction worker theme one step further; we wanted those workwear elements to permeate throughout the collection. Looking at the drawstrings, we thought it would be a really cool touch to make the pieces that much more special. It gave the collection a necessary synergy.
There were
With their defined personal style, it makes sense that their knack for unique dressing permeates throughout each exclusive-to-OC XXBC collection (check out the first, here). The fellas took inspiration from construction workwear and made it a little less industrial and a lot more plush. The designers also manage to infuse classic garments with their unique style: the crewneck sweatshirt gets a comfy, updated twist with contrast stripes of a fleece-like fabric in pastel, cotton-candy colors; boot laces are taken off of shoes and are instead used as drawstrings on sweatpants; each pair adorned with an extra loop—perfect for carrying around that hammer you couldn't fit in your bag.
OC recently linked up with Alex and Will to talk about the new collection, J. Biebs sporting their label, and what it means to be cool and different.
CHLOE DEWBERRY: What made you guys use this particular fleece-like fabric? It’s not a typical fabric that you see in high-end collections.
ALEX LEE: We've realized that we shoot a lot of our ideas down after considering whether it's been done before. If it hasn't, we are much more likely to do it. And plus, that fleece is so soft and cozy.
WILL THOMPSON: The fabrics and colors all stemmed from a picture of a baby blue and white checkered garage door that Alex took when we were shooting our last lookbook video. We decided that we wanted to focus on the fabrication a little bit more this season, but we still wanted to incorporate the same grey jersey that we used the season before.
I love the boot laces that are used as drawstrings on the sweatpants! How did that idea come about?
WT: We wanted to focus on this regular guy who is naturally cool—like a construction worker.
AL: I think we were trying to think of ways to take the construction worker theme one step further; we wanted those workwear elements to permeate throughout the collection. Looking at the drawstrings, we thought it would be a really cool touch to make the pieces that much more special. It gave the collection a necessary synergy.
There were