I love Burton. There I said it. Although, those of you who regularly follow Mansnaps will already know this and will also know how great I think their S/S collection is.
Now that my declaration of love is out, you can appreciate just how pleased I was that the Head of Design for Burton, Jonathan Lovett agreed to answer all of my questions about their upcoming collection.
Where does Burton get its inspiration from? Is it all catwalk based?
Many things inspire my design team and myself, we look far and wide from the streets of Leeds and Birmingham, the hot spots of London such as Spitalfields and Broadway Market and get to travel out to research trendy cities such as New York and Tokyo. The men's catwalk collections are a good measure of coming trends, they also help inspire but they are not our main focus. The important thing is to use all this trend information and turn it into clothes our Burton guy wants to buy and wear.
After attending your Press Day for High Summer I was impressed by Burton's take on the Olympics. What's your favourite looks from the summer collection?
Definitely the Festival collection, I really like the sun bleached colours and textures that make up the look.
I think it's fair to say that Topman is Arcadia's young men's fashion brand, although recently Burton seems to be stepping up a gear in terms of fashionability... Is this a sign of the modern, mature mans interest in fashion increasing or just pressure to compete on the high St?
A bit of both to be honest, my opinion is that when I think of someone in their thirties or forties they have been through the modern style revolution, they were probably more in tune with style as a young adult so they simply continue to maintain an interest in their appearance later on. Menswear is really exciting right now, there is a lot of choice in terms of style so we expect our customer to demand that from the Burton brand.
How much input/ do you have over the prints, particularly with things like your Ibiza inspired vests and t-shirts?
Alongside the jersey designer and buyer we all work together to choose what prints are going into the ranges so we all loved the Ibiza print collection.
The response to the James Corden for Trekstock t-shirt has been really positive from Mansnaps readers, have you got any other collaborations lined up?
We will continue to work on new design collaborations under the Trekstock umbrella. We are looking at new ideas constantly, watch this space!
Mansnaps has been featuring Burton since the beginning of the blog, how important do you feel blogs are to the success of the brand?
Very, they are a new kind of exposure and I see them only becoming ever more relevant.
Are there exciting new labels, launches or changes we can expect from Burton this year?
I have been working on a project under our Heritage range, Montegue Burton for this coming AW 2012. I can't say too much yet but I worked with one of the worlds leading fashion schools to come up with the concept, so far the garments are looking really cool.
Finally, what's your favourite piece from your summer collection?
I really want to wear more colour this season, I am already wearing colour chino's and want to extend that into shirts and tee's for the summer. So if I had to choose one piece it would be a bright blue chino or chino short.
Here are some of Mansnaps favourite pieces from the S/S collection.
