Diffusing GR10K’s Enigmatical Complexity
In the modern fashionscape, it is not enough to just produce quality product. Customers desire stories, narratives, and depth behind their purchases. This has never been truer then in the functional fashion universe. Amongst the sea of different brands out there all competing in this space, what truly stands out is the ones that can captivate and engage their audience through a greater means than just multifaceted pockets, waterproof material, or well-fitting hoods.
One brand in particular that does this exceptionally well, whilst also seamlessly staying enigmatic, is the workwear brand GR10K [@gr10k]. Both contemporary and traditional, the creative collective stemming from Italy pride themselves on future-facing rebelliousness and marry this with years of heritage and experience. What is seen on the surface of GR10K is a balance of anti-establishment culture, but this is blurred with complex textile engineering - something that could not be achieved without years of experience in the industry. This is honoured through their mother brand, GRASSI, a workwear brand established in 1925 that has been providing functional garments to workers worldwide for just under 100 years.
Launched in 2019, the story that GR10K tell through their visual language is one that is both open-ended and meticulously funnelled into a single and concise thought process. Provoking and impactful, considered and articulate, their approach to fashion is one on a larger scale that surpasses their garments. Rather than a fashion conglomerate, they act as an experimental platform for future breakthroughs, and smoothen these jagged conceptual edges with grounded workwear that resonate with both the fashion-conscious consumer and the authentic workers.
The garments themselves are everything you would expect from a functional fashion brand, with pants, shell jackets, accessories, and staples all present, but where GR10K truly make their mark is the use of textiles and processes. Toying with the principles of the extreme, fashion flirts with functionality in its utmost form: pants can be seen crafted with materials used for firefighters, jackets prototyped and realised for military usage, and knitwear using yarn derived from dismantling bulletproof vests and fireproof kits.
With this design philosophy, it’s not hard to understand why GR10K has disrupted the industry and become a staple amongst fashion-forward consumers. Continuing to go from strength to strength, the Italian brand lends us a new voice in the functional universe and destroys and rebuilds ideologies leaving us in a state of confusion and clarity at the same time. Much like graffiti on a wall reminiscent of their iconic logo, they are rewriting their years of heritage but rather than completely changing narratives, they instead reimagine it in a new language.
In order to dive deep into their universe, further dissect their inspirations and design philosophies, and discover what drives this enigmatic collective, we managed to talk to the team to provide a glimpse into the vast mind of GR10K.
Hello, and thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us. First of all, could you please introduce yourself to our audience?
GR10K is a spin-off of a military and workwear uniform and garments factory. Taking expertise, technology and aesthetic references, we work as a fashion proxy and channel to gather and exploit fields of fabric application and workwear. GR10K formally launched in January 2019.
What does GR10K stand for?
As a name, GR10K originally came from the contraction of the name of the uniform factory it originated from, Grassi, and the code of the most replicated style within the company, 10000. As an idea, GR10K plays with forces outside of the general focus of the fashion industry.
Many of your interviews, including this one, is not done by a singular person but rather a collective behind the brand. Is there a reason why you do things this way?
GR10K does not have a fixed identity. Playing with the grounds of corporate and industrial creativity and their de-programming of creative subjectivity, GR10K is organised and structured as an anti-identitary collaborative group.
The brand has a sense of mystery behind it, creating an enticing atmosphere. What is the reasoning behind being so ambiguous? As well as mysterious, in many ways it feels distant – Rather than a clothing brand, it feels like more of an experimental platform. Has this developed organically, or was this always the vision from the start?
The brand’s mystery could be attributed to its main focus which is on fabric research and development. GR10K never intended to be ambiguous, it simply focuses on experimentation as its primary workstream. The collections present research in a fashion context that often favours emphatic identity behaviours which is why it might seem like we are more mysterious. While this does create an engaging aesthetic attitude in its own accord, it was never provisioned in the beginning.
Your dialect with the industry is intriguing, often sounding very anti-establishment. We have picked a phrase on your site and would love for you to shed some light on it…
‘Counterfeit bi-products consumed by the nascent youth will collapse and order will be restored within a radical interregnum.’ – What are you referring to here?
GR10K creates protective garments for invisible stress conditions. Processes change constantly in order to adapt to users behaviour and predict future creative needs. Everything collapses and becomes restored, including products and social groups freely integrated into seemingly untenable consumption cycles.
For those who don't know, despite being a fairly young brand you actually have almost 100 years of experience behind you in workwear, spanning generations. How does this knowledge get distilled into a more contemporary fashion-based brand like GR10K?
Our mother company mainly generated memories that combined industrialization with fabrics and performance standards, so the core of our memories lie in the understanding of clothing as a de-facto product and process, safety classes, and the many compartments of a globalized world that requires a multitude of specialised test and learn practices in order to perform.
Materials and textiles are extremely important to your products. What is the process of picking which materials will be used for which piece?
There is an engaging aesthetic attitude that comes out of the purpose of the fabric itself. Colors, patterns, structures and consistencies are born out of necessity rather than design. With the possibility of drawing out of an actual stock of materials left over from workwear and military supplies, GR10K imbues garments with the performance narrative that they were originally created for.
Your garments are crafted for a purpose, and with incredible durability using textiles usually found for extreme conditions like fires - What’s type of testing do your products undergo in order to pass this high level of quality?
We apply tolerance as a means to becoming systemic. Each season we augment the tolerance, the degree by which some fabrics get re-used or abandoned, some performative fits get tested by integrating them in many different typology of clothes, and we mainly expand and use each season as an internal platform to grow our fabric and projective intelligence.
You have recently collaborated with sports giants, Salomon. How did the GR10K identity get fused into this shoe? What differs in the design process when working with footwear rather than garments?
Before, we sliced the high silhouette of one of their existing models, which may seem abrasive but for us felt like a necessary deconstruction of grunge shoes in the context of social practices from current and recent memory.
More recently, we demoted the technicality of another one of their existing models, aiming to decontextualize its usage to a more specific urban asphalt environment and shedding layers of unnecessary complexity.
If you could collaborate with any other brand in the near future, we’d love to hear who? This could be a fashion collaboration or something entirely outside of your industry?
We have just collaborated with ESKA [@eskagloves], an Austrian workwear glove specialist who we wanted to work with for a long time. That will become available later this year.
And speaking of which, are there any certain young designers that you are taking interest in right now?
Turenere [@turenere], an Italian leather designer.
Trends come and go, but this functional fashion era seems to only be getting stronger and stronger. Why do you think this particular trend has stayed around for so long, and looks to be here for good?
We might reference functional fashion and workwear in our collections but we often render those pieces functionless by changing fundamental details that might be extrinsic to their original purpose. We think functional fashion and its denominations are more relatable as cultural sequiturs and therefore more trend resilient as opposed to fast-changing luxury ideologies.
And where does a brand like GR10K fit into the future of this fashion universe? What does the future look like for GR10K?
GR10K’s future is particularly exciting right now. It is undergoing significant changes which will unlock a gamut of possibilities within how we engage with the outside world. Our goal is to continue experimenting through acute collection narratives and expand upon the traditional definitions applied to our craft.
Thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us!
Text and Interview by Joe Goodwin
