mfpen founder and Creative Director Sigurd Bank comes to terms with his adolescent bullies in his new Schott collaboration.
Getting over childhood trauma is never easy. Some medical professionals will recommend therapy and others self-care practices. But for mfpen’s Sigurd Bank, he’s self-medicated. The prescription? A new collaboration with Schott on a bomber jacket to get over the bullies he had to worry about when he was younger.
“[There was] this stereotype in my city where the No Fear guys with Schott jackets liked to beat up guys like me with long hair that skateboarded – it was the suburban outfit for the bad guys in the mid-90s,” said Bank.
Copenhagen-based mfpen has quickly risen to the upper echelon of menswear, highly revered by your favourite fashion insiders for its impeccably relaxed and slightly punk-infused approach to tailoring, providing the perfect offering for any ‘casual Friday’ enthusiasts with a rock band background.
The jacket in question is the iconic CWU Bomber Jacket from Schott, a silhouette that’s truly stood the test of time. It’s a simple, versatile outerwear piece that’s been a staple ever since it came out in the ’90s and it’s been worn by every type of fierce dude there is. “It originally comes from the military, you have skinheads wearing them and bouncers from nightclubs wearing them – it’s a tough garment,” says Bank.
For the Scandi label’s founder, it was about flipping the script and, as he puts it, “recontextualisation and taking ownership of these garments.” But to fully come to terms with those bullies, things had to be done the mfpen way. That means reworking and elevating rather than completely transforming these pieces. Bank says it best, asking himself: “If I like the original garment, why would I do something completely different when that’s the one I want?”
With that in mind, his first plan of action was changing the zipper, saying, “we put a RiRi two-way zipper and, for me, a jacket like that needs a two-way zipper. It’s so cropped in the hem and it elevates the jacket but also makes it more functional.”
He also made sure to add some nods to tailoring – one of the brand’s main pillars – with their emblematic suiting label on the sleeve along with a hook-and-bar closure on the collar. “It’s a fun way to have a detail that actually comes from trousers and put it somewhere else on the garment. At the same time, it’s also very functional for covering your neck,” states Bank.
Elevating and putting his touches on the jacket is only half of it. The other half is the campaign which blends the innate ruggedness of the bomber jacket with the grace of ballet dancers. “I wanted to do something that was softer as a contrast to these Schott jackets which, in my opinion, have always been something quite tough. We thought, ‘Let’s put it into a different context with something like ballet which has a much more soft and nuanced elegance.’” The result is a dreamy, ethereal video that perfectly depicts the delicacy of the sport, with the contrasting CWU jacket accentuating the physical strength needed to be a skilled dancer.
Bank even enlisted August Rosenbaum, a notable Danish pianist and close friend of his, to do the soundtrack for the video. “A fun fact: the piano is recorded in Ennio Morricone’s studio in Rome. Everything came together in a fun way,” said Bank.
When you’re busy designing as many clothes and collections as Bank and his team, it becomes hard to distinguish between the good and the bad but, sometimes, some reflection within is all you need, as he says, “Everyone in the office wanted a jacket for themselves. I think a lot of times, we in the office are the customers and if we like it and so do the team, there’s probably a lot of other people who will like it as well.”
And it’s true. Even with such small, subtle tweaks to the jacket, it still has mfpen’s refined fingerprints all over it and, most important of all, he did exactly what he set out to do: recontextualise. For Sigurd Bank, the Schott CWU bomber is no longer a jacket associated with those suburban bullies he feared in his teens but himself, wearing it in his favourite way: “Jeans, boots and a T-shirt.”
The mfpen x Schott capsule is available now, in-store and online at mfpen and Dover Street Market.
Images and video @mfpen
