Assembly Label

Two good ol boys Damien Horan and Dan Oliver, one with an artistic bent (Damien), the other from clothing design (Dan), have thrown every last shekel and their lives into their brand Assembly-Label. You want a real short description? Classic and inclusive. The pair are influenced by such diverse labels as APC, N.hoollywood and Maison Kitsune. It shows in this year’s trunks which reflect clean Parisian lines (APC), a slim silhouette (N.hoolywood) and cutie-pie detail (Maison Kitsune). Stab: Ideas. Where’d these trunks spring from? Damien: The main idea behind the shorts was simple. A comfortable, functional short with a contemporary look and feel, literally. We drew on the Assembly-Label’s roots which lie deep within Modernist design thinking, where form follows function. Our main design motivation is that the short appeals to a wide audience, fits well and can be worn on any occasion. These design ideals are paired back with a simplistic, understated, hand-drawn leaf print. We aim to make product which is easy on the eye and therefore becomes a staple piece in every man’s wardrobe. How many hands did they go to and where were they made? The initial design concepts were work-shopped between myself and Dan here in our design studio after ridiculous amounts of caffeine consumption. The early stages of a short design include selecting fabrics and then working with a pattern-maker on the silhouette and specifications. We then begin creating artwork of which we will transcend into a yardage. A spec-sheet is created and sent to our supplier in China. From this stage it goes through endless factory hands and various processes before arriving in our studio in the form of a short. When the short arrives we test it on our fit model and if all is approved, we pass it onto our fast-living marketing man Josh ku for intensive wear testing. He lives a varied life, trapped between heaving barrels, metro cafes and inner-city dive bars. The ideal environment for product testing. Talk me through all the tech details that may not be visible to the untrained eye! Nothing too technical here, just a simple, comfortable, easy-wearing design. Our short has an elastic waist because we believe they are the most comfortable and easy to wear, though this area is very subjective and is mostly dependant on what the product is being used for. We design with diversity in mind and feel our short is adaptable to most occasions. There are side-entry pockets and a coin pocket for the metropolitan types or the early coffee run. The short also comes with a custom drawstring wash-bag of which the product can be folded and placed in for travel to and from the beach.