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Vancouver is home to a thriving fashion industry made up of individuals committed to its growth and success. Get to know these personalities in The Inseam and discover what makes the Vancouver Fashion scene so awesome. |
Photo: courtesy Tijana Lilic
Although he has been spending some time on the East Coast, Filip Filipi reps the 604 hard. One of his recent collections from his line, Maison Filipi, is inspired by Pacific Northwest Native Art and pays homage to the Vancouver Grizzlies. You may also recognize his pieces from Joel Levy’s blog post on T.I.A. a few months back featuring a Blue Jays snapback. I chatted with Filip recently to learn more about his work.
Valerie Tiu: Tell us about your background.
Filip Filipi: I immigrated to Canada when I was seven years old because of the war in former Yugoslavia and since then I've done a bunch of random shit. I have these five-year segments in my life where I work obsessively on one thing and so far it's been drawing, basketball, music, humanitarian work and now, fashion.
Photo: courtesy Tijana Lilic
VT: When did you start designing?
FF: I've always been artistically inclined but I started designing about two years ago when I decided a camo bow tie was the only thing missing in my life. I searched all over the internet and didn't like what I saw so I was forced to create my own.
VT: How do you describe your aesthetic?
FF: To me uniqueness is beauty. I don't like anything mainstream. If someone else wore it that means I don't want it. There needs to be a certain level of quality one applies to their craft. For example, Charles Hamilton did his mixtape covers in Microsoft paint -- that was original but shitty at the same time. I'm not talking about that kind of unique.
VT: Can you talk about your fascination with Native art and how it inspired your collection?
FF: It all started in junior high when we had to pick a bunch of eleven-day elective courses. I chose Native Art because I thought it would be the easiest. I was absolutely right and I didn't do any work the whole time but I did find their art to be very cool and unique. Interesting fact - most of the Native Art you see anywhere is from Vancouver Island. Our tribes fished for a few months out of the year then smoked and dried the fish so they had food for the rest of the year while other tribes had to hunt all year around. This gave them a lot of free time to do fun shit like art.
Photo: courtesy Tristan Banning
VT: Can you discuss your design process and where you get your ideas from?
FF: For this collection I wanted this really rare alternate logo the Grizzlies used for only one season on a hat. Then I took it to F as in Frank (shout out to Drew, Adam and Jesse) and we matched a blank that best went with the teal on the logo. We went with this dope suede strap back and the rest is history. As for the Blue Jays cap, I originally wanted to flip a Raptor but your very own Joel Levy persuaded me into doing a Blue Jay.
VT: A percentage of your sales will support the Idle No More movement - why is this so important to you?
FF: The Idle No More movement is very important to me because I feel indigenous people all over this continent got f*cked. What happened to them was a systematic campaign to destroy their culture and the biggest genocide in human history. We don't have to look far for examples, you think Robert Pickton would be able to kill 200 women from West Van and keep doing it for that long? I came as an immigrant to this amazing country and I feel grateful to the indigenous population and feel they should get more support for what was done to them.
Photo: courtesy Sasa Damjanovski
VT: What's next for you? How do you envision the future of your line?
FF: I want to do a few more variants of the Grizzlies hat and introduce a line with a rare Raptors logo no one has used before. I'll also keep doing one off pieces with the Maison Filipi logo. I wanted to do some Baroque pieces but Virgil Abloh already did that with Pyrex and Caravaggio so I have to get back to the lab.
VT: What makes Vancouver so awesome?
FF: What makes the 604 awesome is the blatant pretentiousness. People on the East Coast ride celebrities too hard. In Vancouver you could have Miley Cyrus walk down Robson naked and people would try really hard to pretend they didn't notice.
Check out more from Filip Filipi here and shop the Maison Filipi collection online.
