At the helm of his brand Mjölk in his New York Studio, Lars Stoten (pictured)

The local menswear industry was literally suffocating at the afterthought of a heavy denim obsession. A time when literally it was rat race whereby the then Australian denim jeans brand Tsubi (now Kusbi) was infernally ubiquitous. With its pair of square cross motifs imprinted on the left leg stovepipe inseam, it became a pure post-modern urban fragrance. It’s difficult to distinguish if Australian menswear would embryonically blossom from its t-shirt and street-surf mélange uniform to something more tailored, sophisticated and more enduring. It is then fortuitous that on our bay shores Danish designer Lars Stoten arrived unshackled from Scandinavian provincial life, where the days see the sunset too soon, a world oppressed in overt white and beige, design homogeneity and a diet of freshwater fish.

When Stoten arrived in Melbourne, Australia,hr discovered a country sun-drenched in everlasting luminance and the undulating intensity of the cultural microcosms of ethnicities and customs that existed. Stoten shared a love for making men’s clothes and immediately decided to establish his own working studio in the heart of Melbourne. With the addition of the design talent of John Clarke (a graduate of Central Saint Martins College in London), each had a rigorous pedigree of education with Stoten having studied at Danmarks Designskole (The Danish Design School) . If it wasn’t enough that Melbourne’s venerable knitting factories that were abundant from a time ago, now rarified and machinery and local production expertise decimated, the Mjölk brand started its mercurial existence in the form of sublime tailoring and collegiate outerwear pieces, infused with an indie-rock and roll undertone due to the unwavering English bands including Bloc Party and Franz Ferdinand that dominated airwaves.

The Mjölk brand intended to disrupt and create a seminal movement. Stoten was adamant to change the discourse of Australian men’s fashion and inject something entirely foreign. To their eyes, what had been missing was a softness that had always been distilled in European fashion. Their first attempts were invariably bold and brazen. Showing at Australian Fashion Week in 2006, the ‘class assembly’ featured pointed cobbled leather oxfords, a range of razor-sharp tailoring (slender lapels, round buttoned and singular breasted), pink shades of spear collar buttoned shirts and ankle cropped wool trousers attempting to amalgamate Australians’ infamous nonchalant and irreverent attitudes with Scandinavian design. The brand createurs continued with 2007 and 2008 of interjecting red plaid trench coats, corduroys and Geelong knitwear for an expanded women’s range and voluminous chunky shawl rib knitwear the following season. Both Stoten and Clarke continued to hone a tailoring aesthetic towards a 2009 collection that endured a hiking expedition theme with leather rucksacks, light check and gingham cottons and short linen unstructured suiting.

But the brand betrayed him. No longer did the ethos of what Mjölk was trying to develop deduce a respective way of introducing Australian menswear that was wary of originality and utility. It tried to superimpose its identity at the expense of creating good and holistic menswear. Mjölk rejuvenated itself under Stoten’s monocle, for which he first transported his brand from Melbourne to New York City. Retaining the Melbourne office, New York became his zen and nurturing environ. Stoten rediscovered what he had experienced earlier before: academic training at Danmarks Designskole but also garment-making at the esteemed Bunka fashion school in Japan and patternmaking under costume designer Shimauchi Kazuya. Stoten’s prodigious ouerve cleansed the Mjölk identity and a comprehensive men’s prêt-a-porter was produced. Entitled, ‘Camera for Eyes and Horses for Hearts’ and presented to a Parisian audience in 2009, Stoten demonstrated how astute his design abilities were: Heringbone wools in structured tailored jackets and cuffed wool trousers, epaulet coats, waffled jersey sweaters and jacquard knitting on kimono inspired coats and shawl collared ribbed sweaters. He imagined a young American boy secretly enlisting in the First World War in his father’s clothes but maintained the vast prairie of America conjured the mélange of wool and chambray fabrics he had incorporated. The collection’s title ostensibly alluded to the montages of British artist Linder Sterling and Patti Smith’s album Horses, however the earthy mineral watercolours by American painter Andrew Wyeth informed a holistic and sound embark for Mjölk.

Taking initial measurements with Stoten’s les enfant

If Scott F. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby could quintessentially illustrate Stoten’s permanent move to New York, it would resoundingly be the discordant and gritty industries that trellised on its metropolis society. Stoten found an audience that could really embrace Mjölk’s ethos of meek and menswear constructed with savoir-faire and the finesse and architecture that could support him in terms of manufacturing. Moreover, the once nomadic designer found an abode to his two les enfants.

Stoten’s studio setting lies between Chinatown and the Lower East Side where creative hermits thrive and intersect, surrounded by urban decay and the sprawl of high rise block dwellings. The description given of his atelier is: ‘tough with decrepit beauty’ where reaching the 5th floor requires constant maintenance of a 100 year-old elevator. Within the studio’s visually silent walls lay beside it a myriad of aids and tools comprising of pens, needles, cutting scissors, yarns, sewing machines and chalk pencils to sketch upon. Stoten’s modus operandi is to start with carte blanche. Lined walls of visual imagery and design prototypes are immediately scrapped at the end of each season. The studio team is invigorated by new propositions and ideas to stimulate possible new silhouettes and ensembles. Subsequently, the Spring 2009 collection embraced New York’s interior domestic life of clustered rooms of book troves and dispersed clothing – palatable striped soft cotton shirting, goat leather buckled sandles and soft-washed chino trousers.

Cloth cutting, tailoring adjustments and pinned sketches and fabric samples for collection

Intrinsically, Mjölk has crucially not been able to achieve what it has accomplished so far without the pedigree of the best workshops in New York’s venerable Garment District, Switzerland and Italy. The well-heeled goat-leather oxford shoes that Stoten has designed with seasonal variations come only through two Italian cobblers named Frank and Josepi. Of a combined 100 years of shoemaking experience, their steadfast and hard-worn hands uses only heritage shoe techniques with wood lasts and metal devices to cast, cut, perforate and affix the individual leather pieces of the shoe. Each pair is handmade and only upon ordering a pair of mid-ankled boots (Boleyn), oxford (Daelin) or leather sandles (Taro Sasuke) does the construction start. Frank and Josepi craft them using very supple Swiss calfskin leather and buffalo hide for the interior lining and stacked sole ensuring long-lasting and unparalleled quality in construction and finish. Emily Lee of Stoten’s team remarks, “Despite one hundred years of experience between them, the two Italian craftsmen could no longer compete with the Eastern market. The two men had been making police boots and bespoke shoes for decades, taking intimate pride in every piece. We knew immediately that these were artisans we’d been after, dedicated craftsmen who would put as much thought and care into the construction of the shoes as we had put into their design. Straight away, we signed off on their studio lease, pulled them out of retirement, and moved them back into their shop to work exclusively for us.”

And whilst Stoten has personally invested into ensuring impeccable design through his garments, he doesn’t also forget the sourcing of Geelong wools for which he still sources from Australia. The National Wool Museum in the state of Victoria, Australia documents its city of Geelong ‘the wool centre of the world’ when it was at the epicenter of wool production. The Stoten studio says, “We have moved the majority of our production to New York. However, the quality of finish on Australian hand-knits is truly unparalleled, and we will continue to source yarn and produce knits in Australia.”

More recently, Stoten and his studio team launched their first comprehensive website that integrates both e-commerce and the creative collaborations Stoten has been involved with. The Mjölk brand not only serves as his personal vehicle for his own seasonal collections but the fostered relationships with American artists including Joseph L. Griffiths, photographers Chandler Ford and Reyn Soffe and visual artist Jared Lindsay Clark. The latter has produced both sculptural and giclée prints of acrylic based drawings that represent Clark’s neurotic mixed media in portable form.

Ultimately taking centre stage is Mjölk’s own seasonal range of garments and expanded leather accessories developed by the studio. Spring 2011 explored the scenic route Stoten travels by the East River, observing the decay and contemporary richness of Manhattan and through this resulted in a palette of colours stained and oxidised throughout New York City’s industralisation. Boston fishermen protective raincoats with buffalo hide shoulder sleeves; superfine Japanese cotton for t-shirting, narrow collar Italian/British French-seamed cotton shirts defined a persuasive sense of eclecticism with meticulous goat kid leather finishes on stitching and lambswool elbow patching not the mention the brushed cotton fleece of oversized pullover sweaters. Hot pink lambswool knitted cardigans would not be first expected (for Autumn 2011) but the British skinhead subculture in the 1980’s subtly devised wool-tailoring pieces in brown charcoal, denim jackets and red/blue checked shirts with fleeced cotton trousers interweaved a youthful demographic augmenting African American and Jamaican ska/reggage music.

There is a continual process of renewal for Lars Stoten and his Mjölk label. No longer nomadic with a principal studio in New York City, the extraordinary lengths he has developed with local artisans including Brooklyn hand quilters using Amish techniques and the technicality of the city’s Garment District, it is no wonder that Stoten’s tailoring and garment-making ability is multi-disciplinary.

From June 23 to June 29 inclusive, a special promotion in collaboration with Mjölk can be viewed here.

Mjölk – www.mjolkhomme.com