Haus of Hybrid: Spotlight: Lifetime Collective

It was a few months ago now, but I had the opportunity to check out the Fall/Winter 2012 offerings from Lifetime Collective.

The line was founded in 2002 by Trevor Fleming & Reid Stewart and started out with a street/skate focus. Over the past 10 years, Trevor and Reid have evolved the line to become more boutique focused, which forced them to divide the line into two separate entities: Lifetime Collective (the boutique focused line) and Uniform Standard (the street/skate focused line). Recently, Lifetime Collective also added in a women's collection, designed by Judith Feller of lily+jae.

I had the chance to chat to Trevor and Reid about Lifetime Collective and Uniform Standard and how they had the change their business model to adapt to their growing and maturing creativity.

Do the two collections reflect your own personal aesthetics or style? (Trevor designs Lifetime Collective while Reid designs Uniform Standard)

TF: It allows us to go in our own directions as designers. We really wanted to keep servicing our core roots of where we came from, so that snow/skate background; the more action sports/boutique cross over skate shop. Our collection started to go into a more boutique direction, with the price point going up and the quality of the fabrics going up, but a lot of our original accounts couldn’t quite reach that price point and get that successful sell through. So instead of staying in one direction, we decided to release Uniform Standard, which is geared more towards that price point to compete with those brands that are in those shops, like Volcom and Rvca. So Reid designs that collection and I’ve continued on with the Lifetime collection.

RS: A lot of those shops couldn’t maybe relate to some of it too - a whole collection as one going to all those types of stores, where this, I think, will make sense to people when they see that the price is a little higher, it’ll be fine.

TF: It was working for us back in the day when we were more of that fashion/urban skate brand, but as we really wanted to get into more boutiques, we really needed to up our game a little bit, and we realized that we couldn’t service everyone with one collection.

What is Uniform Standard? How does it differ from Lifetime Collective?

RS: We toned down some details, but we still really focus a lot of the fabrics we’re using and try to bring things to a better price point to what our stockists need them to be for a better sell through. So, we do a lighter jacket, the attention to detail is there-

And the continuity of the pockets.

RS: Exactly. Completely its own collection with its own details and fabrics. This collection is meant for our roots, where we were in the beginning.

I think it’s important for you guys to maintain that audience and demographic.

RS: I think the next collection, because this one was done pretty quick, will be more progressive in terms of pushing the boundaries of basics. It’s fun to do. There’s a lot of colour blocking using silhouettes that have worked for us in Lifetime Collective in the past, and running with it. We tried to go above and beyond with the collection. This type of jacket would usually have a mesh lining, but we used some of our shirting fabric because we want to tie it all together, and try to do as much as we can while staying at a specific price. A word we try to use for this line is 'timelessness', it doesn’t go out of style.

Some of my favourite pieces:

Menswear