Wir haben die beiden Gründer von ONTOUR vor mehr als 2 Jahren auf der Bread&Butter kennengelernt und waren schon bei ihrer ersten „offiziellen“ Kollektion total begeistert. Hier findet ihr nun ein kleines (bzw. vielleicht doch etwas grösseres :-) Interview, was wir mit Ihnen gemacht haben. Viel Spass beim Lesen.
Where are you from?Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Who is standing behind ONTOUR?Etienne Dekkers and Remco van der Velden (owners and designers).
Wouter Munnichs (Sales and back office). And of course loads of support from friends, family and our network around us.
How did you get the idea to name your label ONTOUR?Every season something else goes go 'Ontour'; A striking theme that influences all designs for a collection, some examples are „Royal jelly Ontour“ „Hide Ontour“ „S.O.S. Ontour“ and this season „Cosmic Crack Ontour“...
We want to tell a (visual) story based on one theme that surprises people and catches your attention immediately.
You can see the link between all items directly, but at the same time they all are different. We want to create a whole Ontour world / experience each season throughout all our products, our photography, website, expo’s we organise, books we publish and parties we give for example.
When did you start your label?In the beginning of 2005.
How did you get the idea to create your own clothing brand?Etienne and I became friends at the Design Academy Eindhoven where we studied 3D product design. We shared the same interest in (street) art, magazines, tshirts, fashion, graphics and so on. We followed what was happening in other cities like London, Tokyo, New York and started creating our own images and ideas. We always knew we wanted to do something for ourselves, allowing the freedom to develop the crazy ideas in our heads, a creative platform to work from and show the world how we think about stuff.
After graduating we talked about setting up our own label a lot, while drinking beers in bars. At a certain point we felt the time was just right and we decided to get this adventure going and we founded Ontour; Started selling fresh T's out of the boot of our car, hunting for the best shops in town.
After a succesfull trip in our home country, we hit the road to some exciting cities abroad…and now we are here! Things can go fast when you work hard and believe in it.
You always work with very strong collection themes. Where do you get your inspiration from?We come up with a theme just by the things we see or hear, most of the time when you're not really looking for something.
It starts with an almost 'stupid' idea, things you would normally throw off the table...but at the same time these are often the strongest. And hey...we decided to start our own company so we could do these things without consessions, so why not?
For example the 'BigMouth Ontour' collection started with a weird old wind-up toy from the 80's called chattering teeth, that I did I found in a shop while I was in Barcelona for holidays.
Thinking about our Autumn / Winter 06 collection, this quirky object kept popping up in our heads and we decided to build a whole story and all our designs round this simple idea and created 'BigMouth Ontour'.
Last summer we brought 'S.O.S. Ontour': a pandemic combination of Bermuda Triangles, Morse codes, S.O.S. Wurms, Tornados, Explosions and UFO Burgers...
We create several directions but it's always clear which one to take. You feel immediately which one has potential.
Humour is a very important element; it should make people laugh or look twice. We like strange combinations to create a new image or twist something around, like brains with an eyepatch or a jellyfish with pudding. Besides it's ofcourse quite important it should look good visually.
There is only one rule: it should be fresh and surprising every season again we think.
Tell us a bit more about the collaboration with the artist Cosmic Crack” for the current collection.This is the first time we invited an artist to work with us. He’s a good friend from us and very talented. We’ve been huge fans of his work for years and now we sat down and joined forces. This resulted in a complete collection for coming winter. Some info about Cosmic Crack:
Cosmic Crack (aka CrackRock) currently an Eindhoven native, is a botanical artist with a fresh approach to the well known cosmic genre. From his early work to his later work with Betamaxxx (of which he is the co-founder) Cosmic Crack has carried his fascination with the unique and unusual into a wide range of multi-media artwork, including various installations,as well as design of concepts that are unsurpassed for their innovation and theoretical intergallactical flair.
All designs / graphics are handmade (no direct computer images), using a combination of cutting, sketching, painting, glueing, spirographs and photography, resulting in a more raw and deep collection. Besides the overall 'cosmic crack' theme there are loads of small stories / crazy facts behind all designs. Some examples:
-The 'I Rock Foil' items, a bitmap image from pieces of aluminium foil. The hoodies and shirts are based on the fact that some people wear thin foil suits and hats in the belief that these act to shield the body against alien interference, electromagnetic fields, mind control and mind reading.
check: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin-foil_hat

- 'Axis of Evil' male and female tees/hoodies based on the Ryugyong Hotel, a towering, empty concrete shell intended for use as a hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea. The pyramid hotel's name comes from one of the historic names for Pyongyang; Ryugyong, or 'capital of willows'. If the building were ever completed it would be the world's tallest hotel, and the seventh largest building in the world. Today, however, it remains unfinished and uninhabited. The North Korean government has removed the Ryugyong from maps and stamps. Many sources describing the hotel consider it to be sinister, ominous and unsettling.
Check: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Hotel

- 'Blueprint' items based on the countless ballpoint drawings Crackrock makes on every piece of paper, arm, beermat he can find.
All items are produced on 100% organic cotton, another good step ahead for us. For a preview of the launch of this collection have a look at a video at
statemagazine.nlWhat do you think is the core (USP) of your different collections?We want to cross the borders between streetwear and fashion and mix strong graphics with striking garment designs. I think it’s hard to really label our brand, we just design stuff that we’d like to wear ourselves and…we also grow up. We will always bring our bold eye-catching graphics but besides also develop our line with more sophisticated, subtle pieces. But always with our recognizable ‘Ontour twist’, when you have a look at our collections you know what I mean….
Every season we expand our collection a bit with a more and more intens focus on the design, details and materials, to create an exclusive and quality products.
Can you name a favourite item of your current collection?One of my favourites is the ‘See Colours Hear Noise’ graphic with the cosmic hand and the cut and sew ‘Axis of Evil’ items. Besides our hoodiescarfs are excellent for the winter times!
Do you sometimes think that other brands copy ideas/styles from you?Well, we can’t put to much energy in this but sometimes it amazes us how ‘creatives’ dare to steal ideas…have a look at the picture attached…this is a photo wouter took last weekend in a big Dutch retail chain…their inhouse label copied our Bermuda Triangle from last season…a 1:1 copy!! Even the colours are the same…crazy!
How far are you influenced by fashion trends?Of course we see a lot of stuff at tradeshows, on the internet, shows, magazines and really like some of the brands out there. But at a certain point you need to stop looking and do your own thing. We never make a ‘trend collage’ or decide on colours because these will be ‘the next big thing’. We always design very intuitively and follow our hearts.
Which trends are you observing at the moment in the fashion market?Some really good stuff always comes from Japan and also some Scandinavian labels have a big influence. But we always have our eyes open not only focussing on the catwalk or on other streetwear brands; we collect a lot of art books, go to musea, watch architecture, walk around on the streets, or just close your eyes and dream to get inspired.
Which trend do you really hate?Not something in particular. It’s about creating your own style, the people who try to tell you now that a certain trend is sooooo over, will tell you in 2 years that exactly that item is the must have of your wardrobe! Fuck them, do whatever you feel like.
Your top-5 music albums of the month.On my top 5 I-tunes playlist at the moment:
- Santogold mixtape by Diplo
- MGMT
- The Whitest Boy Alive
- Kempi – Du Zoon
- Some old Morrissey stuff
Your top-5 films.……pffff tooo much man, I really like documentaries and music videos.
Thanks for the interview, Sven
Zu den Produkten zu ONTOUR
hierklicken. Mehr Infos zu ONTOUR findet man auch auf ihrem
Highsnobiety-Blog (http://highsnobiety.com/columns/ontour/) oder auf ihrer
Website(http://www.ontour.nl/)