Daily Paper
After recently launching their Spring/Summer 2018 men’s collection, Amsterdam based clothing label, Daily Paper revealed their SS18 campaign fittingly titled “Transcend borders”. Paying homage to a long forged relationship with South Africa spanning over the past 5 years, Daily Paper returned to Cape Town to capture the energy fuelling and illuminating the city and its talent today. With travel at the heart of the collection, co-founder Hussein Suleiman expresses the importance of movement to him, ‘as a young entrepreneur its key to always be culturally aware and build relationships with people around the world.’ Daily Paper, Suleiman believes, is thus a ‘global movement’ that ‘tells a story of heritage’ – their goal always being to ‘engage a diverse community’, their message always being ‘to be proud of where you are from, wherever that is.’
The collections mission of maintaining a fluid and authentic appreciation of South African design was exigently executed from the get-go. Daily Paper first sought influence from the Basotho; a tribe of individual clans in Lesotho, home to the largest ski resort in Africa – the mountainous range and cutting valleys reoccurring motifs throughout the collections T-shirts. The little known, but greatly practiced sport of skiing in South Africa birthed the idea of ‘transcending expectations’ for Daily Paper – essentially creating the blueprint for the puffer jacket and transparent two-pieces.
Re-visiting South Africa for Daily Paper entailed a loyalty to the people and their practices. From looking towards traditional sewing techniques of blankets, to beautifully and haphazardly street-casting their campaigns (from a waiter to Afropunk festival dwellers) – Daily Paper do indeed ‘work with local talent.’ Each process within the collections execution bore both stylistic fashion and documentary elements – the result being a genuine photographic depiction of South African life for the youth.
After street casting models in both Cape Town and Johannesburg for their Fall/Winter 2017 campaign “Children of the City”, they collaborated again with Nangamso Fonk, Litha Magawu, Nicolas van Graan, Brian Sathekge for “Transcend Borders”. The images of the men expel all notions of restriction enforced by society, the sunglassed men rather depict a futuristic freedom – of transcending borders both tangible and spiritual. Daily Paper presents an image of the man of colour who is comfortable and un-marginalized; the boundaries and the stereotypes no longer confining the body and soul.
Travel symbolizes freedom – an expression of agency and the potential of opportunity. Shown in the graphics alluding to Africa’s largest airports, passport stamps (Suleiman’s own favourite Chinou1 T-shirt featuring multiple printed airport stamps that he himself acquired whilst travelling), and an accessory range of passport bags, wallets, and backpack totes – there is no frontier that cannot be crossed.
Suleiman explains this freedom through Daily Paper’s logo, conserving individual heritage whilst being willingly receptive to the world.
‘I come from Somalia, a community of Nomads, so moving around is a part of who I am. As an immigrant I learned to adapt to different cultures other than my own, something that has been very natural to me. The logo of Daily Paper also represents this – it is a modern interpretation of the Maasai shield and is inspired by our origins in Africa. The logo represents multiple things: Protecting everything you love by all means necessary, the founders’ African heritage and the philosophy of being modern nomads where mobility is the most efficient strategy for a better life.’
“Transcend Borders” is the embodiment of Daily Paper’s ‘collective heritage’, of Suleiman’s Somalia and fellow co-founders Jefferson’s Ghana and Abderrahmane’s Morocco – it is a fusing of African cultures and an appreciation for the joyful ease of travel between them.
‘We all grew up in African households so we all had our own cultures. And when we started Daily Paper every story started from our motherland or neighbouring countries. Yet being from Amsterdam we really wanted to show our backgrounds and where we are from. We didn’t jump on the back of any trends, we created our own.’ – Hussein Suleiman.
Images courtesy of DAILY PAPER
words HELENE KLEIH
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