EXCLUSIVE: Chris Gibbs Channeled Virgil Abloh With Union LA x J.Crew
Union Los Angeles is a trailblazing boutique indicative of basically every era of street culture. J.Crew is a mass-market retailer that specializes in staples designed for a global audience. Out of nowhere, Union LA and J.Crew have collaborated on a capsule collection. Chocolate, meet peanut butter
Well, maybe it's not that left-field. Union LA and J.Crew coming together was once inconceivable, yes, but, with NOAH founder Brendon Babenzien breathing much-needed life into J.Crew's menswear division for a couple years now, there's never been a more perfect union.
Babenzien, like Union LA boss Chris Gibbs, is a lifer in the industry some call streetwear. Both men have been in the biz since the early days, their fates intertwined around a brand you've probably heard of before.
Gibbs worked at Union's original New York location back when it was an IYKYK institution overseen by James Jebbia, founder of Supreme (among other folks). He later moved out west with co-founder Eddie Cruz (who went on to Undefeated), eventually heading up Union's sole American location in LA.
Meanwhile, Babenzien worked for Supreme for nearly two decades, professionally growing up with the world's biggest streetwear brand.
Gibbs and Babenzien met through 'Preme in the mod-'90s and they've never not kept in touch. J.Crew x Union wasn't something they'd initially planned but, once the seed was planted, it began to make more and more sense.
"I think there is a 'silk road' of trust between the two brands that made this a really dope project because on a granular level, Brendon and I know and trust and respect each other’s sensibilities, even though they are quite different," Gibbs told Highsnobiety.
Safe to say, Union LA x J.Crew is authentic as collaborations get.
You so often see corporate stuffed-shirts and semi-relevant cultural figures smashing their heads together until they shake out some same-y co-branded merch.
But in this case, you've got two longtime friends seeking the common (and uncommon) ground in their taste. J.Crew x Union is cohesive but also demarcated by distinctions that Gibbs and Babenzien honed over years of developing good taste.
"We leaned into one of the most classic brands there is and then gave it the Union twist," Gibbs said. "The late great Virgil Abloh (rest in peace) once said change it by, like, three percent. We changed it by about ten percent. So this works really well, almost too well."
The Union LA x J.Crew line comprises just over a dozen pieces of fluid staples, melding the rugged versatility of Union's in-house clothing line — itself the physical manifestation of Gibbs' own wardrobe — with J.Crew's sorta-prep, sorta-workwear inclinations.
"I always say the best collaborations allow each brand to offer a certain part of itself to the collab," Gibbs said. "Kind of like having a kid: each partner lends the kid something different and the kid comes out with certain characteristics of each parent but the kid is also something very different. You never know exactly what is going to come out till it's done. I feel like that’s what happened here."
And thus, for J.Crew x Union, Gibbs and Babenzien dreamed up sashiko-stitched pajama shirts, checkerboard mohair sweaters, herringbone chore coats, and tees and sweats softened by rounds of garment-dying and washes.
These are versatile, lifelong clothes that could live at Union as easily as they could J.Crew, so they will: the collection drops September 29 via J.Crew's website, its Bowery flagship, Union's web store, and stores.
"We each gave something of ourselves to create something new, and we didn’t totally know what was going to come out until we were done," Gibbs said. "I am super happy with where we landed."
