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www.ctrlclothing.com

Coming straight outta Helskini, Finland, CTRL began its journey as a skateboarding company back in 1994, but in the last five years it has moved smoothly into the fashion world. The roots are still in skateboarding and street culture, but now the main focus is clothing, for both men and women.

‘The biggest motivation for the gentle switch to the fashion world came from the fact that by owning a fashion label you get the most attention from the best looking girls, basically.’

And now they also get to decide what their friends should wear. All this leads to a lot of networking and travelling around the world; lots of tradeshows and secret drunken gatherings. CTRL is now sold in 33 countries around the world. But this is just the start! I hung out with Freeman, the designer/art director and asked him how his work has evolved.

‘Graphic design-wise my work has gotten more mellow. It started as a vivid, colourful and disturbed mega blast and slowly got easier and easier. I’m trying to put more effort behind the design, meaning that in the beginning I was satisfied with something that just looked cool to me; now it has to mean something as well, conceptual thinking is key, I guess. And in general my way of working has changed a lot more into being a clothing designer more than a graphic designer — my way of working of combining those two, though, but compared to early days it was mostly just working with deckgraphics or T-shirt graphics, but now I have whole clothing lines to think about, cut, sew and everything.’

I was curious to know how Freeman saw fashion/streetwear influencing the urban landscape.

‘Living in Helsinki, I can only say that the rise of fashion/streetwear brands has done a lot of good to the urban landscape, meaning that in general people dress better than before. It wasn’t such a big thing, you see in Helsinki dressing up isn’t obvious, especially if compared to our neighbouring country capital Stockholm, where dressing up and being aware of the latest trends has always been a huge thing. But on the other hand there the trend consciousness is on such a level that it almost looks like people are wearing uniforms, everybody looks the same. And I guess this is happening in many cities around the world. But in general it’s not really the streetwear brands that dictate the way fashion is going, but the skaters and everything that is around skateboarding, and therefore skate brands are always on top of the pyramid.’