《Sex Magazine》专访 Toby Feltwell

一提到街头时尚品牌，你可能未能立即想到 Toby Feltwell，但作为众多品牌的幕后功臣，其在该领域中所付出的努力以及成就更是功不可没。近日 Toby Feltwell 接受了《Sex Magazine》杂志的访问，开腔谈论到早期对滑板以及音乐的狂热，谈及了在 Mo’ Wax，A Bathing Ape，Billionaire Boys Club 以及 C.E 等品牌任职时的职业生涯，并分享了对 Nigo，Pharrell，Sk8thing 等主理人评价。更多的内容除了可以通过以下的部分内容更可到 Sex Magazine 查看完整的专访。

How did you end up working with Nigo?
Nigo had been asking me to go and work in Japan for a while—probably because he figured that Mo Wax was on its last legs. I wasn’t ever sure about living in Japan so I was reluctant to do it. Once I finished law school, knowing that I had to leave XL and go into this law thing eventually, I figured I would just do Japan for six months. I knew that Nigo would look after me and it was bound to be fun if nothing else.

Why did he want you to come to Japan?
He had just hit a plateau in his career. He’d accomplished more than anyone expected and he’d sort of run out of ambitions. He’d built an amazing house, the business was running fine but he was in a bit of a funk. He’s a very ambitious person and without having a direct, immediate goal, he lost the enthusiasm for a lot of things. I think my coming was kind of a good distraction for him.

What would you guys do?
We spent a lot of time together not really doing work—just buying lots of records and talking shit all day. Buying records was super important, though. We would go record shopping twice a week which meant every record shop, checking out everything that was new. That was the key process while I lived in Japan; record shopping, driving around, talking about stuff, trying to work out what to do next.

Did he have any vague goals?
He had an ambition to open a store in New York, but was being discouraged by a lot of people in the company. There was a general feeling in that they had come so far that they didn’t want to try something that they might not be able to pull off and fuck up. Since opening a tiny shop and deciding to print some t-shirts BAPE had become a success, step-by-step, bigger and bigger. When you get to a certain level it gets more conservative and people are more worried about taking risks.