Jaden Smith’s Harper Collective Isn’t Playing Around
Jaden Smith has been on a tear lately. Alongside his new EP, 2024: A Case Study of the Long Term Effects of Young Love, he has also dropped two new shoes with New Balance, and appeared as a VIP guest at a Louis Vuitton men’s show, all while running his own brands in the background. One of those brands is Harper Collective, and it’s a contender for the most fascinating. Harper Collective is a departure from the typical merch-first offerings that we’ve come to expect from A-list talent like Smith. Instead, it takes a much more considered approach on the world we live in, and how to turn a negative into a positive. It’s a travel brand steeped in sustainability.
I caught up with Smith and the brand’s co-founder, Sebastian Manes, the former buying and merchandising director at British department store Selfridges. The cool autumn night in Europe for Manes and I contrasted with the warm, blue-skied day in Los Angeles where Smith is based. Naturally, this got us talking about our separate environments, and it quickly became apparent that Smith and Manes weren’t just in it for the small talk. They place the environment at the heart of Harper Collective. “I think I'm just passionate about being alive, I love the feeling of living and being able to breathe. And I like other people being alive too. That's my basis of vibing with sustainability,” Smith says. Meanwhile, Manes has been leading sustainability and buying at Selfridges for almost “two decades.” Harper Collective creates a range of suitcases that repurpose the likes of fish nets and other plastic wastes. Back in 2019, Smith and Manes bought 11 tons of plastic. “When I was a kid, I always said one day I’d buy 11 tons of trash. It was really on my bucket list,” Smith jokes.
But Harper Collective’s process of converting trash to treasure is no joke. “We were somewhat naive. It’s not easy, but that’s because no one is doing it,” Manes says. “We started in 2019 and we finally launched in 2023. It wasn’t because of the pandemic, this process was extremely intricate.” Looking at the final products, there are no signs that the luggage came from trash, and that’s the whole point. Smith and Manes want to show that beautiful travel products can come from the most unlikely places. But why luggage? Why not fashion or homewares like many of Smith’s other A-list peers? “I definitely am big on buying proper luggage. I was always looking for the most innovative thing, not necessarily the most exclusive. I’d go to Japan and look at all these different approaches to luggage, collecting those that offered something unexpected,” Smith says. Of course, Smith has also been inspired by peers like Pharrell and Tyler, The Creator and their own takes on luggage. Pharrell heads up the most famous luggage brand of all time in Louis Vuitton, working with the likes of Tyler, The Creator who has had various love affairs with luggage throughout his IGOR and CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST eras. Both have taken a very playful approach to vintage luggage. Harper Collective takes the idea of vintage and gives it a future spin. “Although our products are completely new, they are made with older material. I wouldn't say that it's classically vintage, but I would say that it is something that's being up-cycled from old material, and then it has that same ethos to it,” Smith says.
This ethos of taking known concepts like vintage and transforming them into a future facing idea also plays into Harper Collective’s shopping experience. Created by tech geniuses The New Face, who have worked with the likes of PUCCI and MCM, Harper Collective’s shopping experience feels closer to that of an immersive video game than a scroll-and-stare shopping experience. “I love video games. I grew up playing
World of Warcraft. That’s why when The New Face showed us their work, I was blown away,” Smith says. The gaming landscape has become significant in the shopping landscape. Sixty percent of Highsnobiety readers have purchased digital products for their avatars according to our previously published research. Games like Roblox host worlds that blend content and commerce where players can shop for digital products while strutting down runways or skirting down race tracks. Harper Collective wanted to export this in-game shopping experience to their own domain. “We want to give people this feeling that they’re in a game, even if they are actually on a website. It shows how everything, from what we’re doing in the factory to what we’re doing in the shopping realm, goes further than your typical travel brand,” Smith adds. Meanwhile, this opens the brand up to displaying their products like an artist would in an exhibition as opposed to how a brand would in a store. “Our online presence brings us closer to the world of the artist. It offers the product up as art, not just something to buy,” Smith says.
So many young luxury brands often struggle to compete with the multi-floor flagship experience that the likes of Gucci or Hermès have in every major city. Approaching the store experience like a video game allows Harper Collective to build the flagship experience of their dreams without the eye-watering cost that comes with the physical space. Not only does this play to the innovative spirit of Harper Collective, it creates a blueprint for other young artists and designers looking to build the world around their brands. When Smith and Manes talk about being a brand for the next generation, the up-cycled luggage turning trash into treasure may be the first thing you see. But spend some time in their shop, and the next generation of creative talent might find inspiration in turning games into brand utopias.
Visit https://harpercollective.co.uk/ to find out more.
This article was written by James Davis, founder of Drawn Distant.
