Southside By Sisyphe

"I’m a firm believer in taking local vibes and making them global.”

“I arrived in Madrid six years ago to make a statement in fashion, but I still feel like a rebel, like Sisyphe is the underdog, the guy you don’t want to talk to at the party,” says the label’s founder and creative director Pablo López Torres over email.

It’s an understandable position when you look at where fashion – or perhaps more specifically streetwear – is today. CIFF has not long finished in Copenhagen, while London, Berlin and Paris (given its recent Supreme opening), can collectively boast an abundance of credentials. In Italy, Pitti’s game has changed, meanwhile over in the States the scene’s backbone remains intact. But Spain? The country has yet to be properly initiated.

All of which, presumably, makes for a strong brand USP.

“There is not really a base to work with here,” agrees López Torres of his surroundings, “a lot of brands have appeared and disappeared because people don’t have patience or the skills to develop a concept, or they don’t have good references. This is not a sprint, it’s a marathon: I’ve seen people rise and fall as I try my best to search for good cotton, or the perfect packaging for the clothes. To be honest though, I don’t really see Sisyphe as a streetwear brand, just ready to wear for real people; it’s not a T-shirt company. The only streetwear brand I fuck with in Spain is Latigo, real kids like me connecting with the new emerging trap and hip hop scene – they’re shaking things up.”

An ex-fashion student who grew frustrated with the arrangement of teaching – “they limit you on the creative side” – after picking up the necessary practical skills, López Torres says he developed his voice away from college, beginning as a stylist ahead of setting up the label.

“I feel Sisyphe is like an alter ego of what I am doing in fashion,” he explains of the moniker. “It was born as a personal project, but now I work with a lot of opinions – photographers, marketing, etc – though it’s still my voice in terms of design. Sisyphe was the first rebel in Greek mythology, and (the French philosopher) Albert Camus uses his example to represent the modern rebellion against the status quo and what society expects of us. That’s how I work best, as an outsider.”

‘Bless The Youth’ reads the abbreviated version of the Sisyphe manifesto; ‘New rules. New silhouette. New uniform. Bless the Rebel. Bless The Youth. Bless The Future’ goes the full article. “When I started I didn’t see a ready to wear market in Spain,” explains the designer. “There is a Fashion Week, and on the other side is the giant monster, Inditex, fast fashion at his best, but there was no real clothing with good taste and more importantly, made in Spain and Portugal. So I decided to make a manifesto that represents all this shit.”

“I don’t want to be another guy trying my best,” he adds, “I really believe that you can change everything from the inside but you have to destroy the old to create the new. I’m not just going to smile if you invite me to your fashion show or your party, I really believe that things are going to change. Bless the new.”

He’s refreshingly realistic about the label’s standpoint too, alluding to current trends: “I’m not going to talk about LA or post-Soviet Russia because I’ve never been there.” Instead collections under Sisyphe reference the autobiographical, the latest of which, pictured above, goes by the moniker Southside. “With Southside I’m talking about where I came from to show how I am and why,” Pablo explains. “I am from El Palo, a working class barrio in Malaga. A fisherman’s area, more like a village – I try to use the light and colours I remember combined with the contemporary silhouettes I fuck with. I’m a firm believer in taking local vibes and making them global.”

Dropping the work of Acne Studios, Hedi Slimane and JW Anderson as key influences, the follow up to Southside will be a capsule collection titled Black Swan, but the main event right now is production. “We want to improve the times of production for the new accounts that want the brand in their shops,” López Torres notes. “We want to remain small, but it would be awesome to have the brand selling in Tokyo, Seoul, London…” 

www.iamsisyphe.com

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