Les Deux

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Welcome back to another episode of the Menswear Style Podcast. I'm your host, Pete Brooker. Today on the show, I am talking to the creative director of Leduc, Matthew Jensen Fifth. Leduve, they are a premium commercial menswear brand, born in Scandinavia and inspired by Community F. They were founded in 2011 by two gentlemen from completely different backgrounds, which is the base for their signature style, uniting timeless essentials with nostalgic streetwear and preppy classics.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

It was a lot of fun talking to Mateus. It's the first time that I had spoken to him. And here now to talk about Ledoux in his own words is the creative director, Matthias Jensen.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Sure, but uh at the moment I am sitting in Copenhagen where the brand started almost, I want to say 13, 14 years ago. It's been quite a journey. And um, we are a yeah, as I said, a Danish company. We were started by two friends from very different backgrounds. That's where the name comes from. Andreas is a Danish guy from like a rich, uh, privileged upbringing in north of Copenhagen, and then Yoshil Virgil, his good friend, was a refugee from Congo with French roots, moving to Copenhagen, living in one of the more rough neighborhoods in Copenhagen, and they met and they just um it just clicked, and their friendship created a brand, and that brand um became the essence of the two, which is like a very dualistic approach to things, like different backgrounds, different people, different beliefs, different uh skin colors. Everything was very different with these two, but they had one uh goal in common, and that was to create and to see what they could do with their lives. So they created Le Deux, which means the two, which is a reference to the two friends, two backgrounds, the dualistic. And from there on, it just started to move. I joined in 13 to though 12. I started in 2012, so I've been part of this for a long time, and um we've just had a great time since then.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

Great. Well, listen, I've we were just talking offline about how it can be a bit of a slug fest with retail. Um, and you guys seem to have navigated your way through that that kind of tricky minefield. I mean, the website is fantastic. Um I've got it open on a bigger screen that you can't see, obviously, for anyone listening. But I've the the website itself, I I don't know what to scoot ahead, but can you just tell us about how much work goes into the website? You have animated videos of the clothes, little short reels as well. It's it's really easy to kind of just find yourself around as in navigate around and and like fall down a few rabbit holes with the clothes and the products, but perhaps you can speak about how much work goes into the website itself.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

Well, first of all, thank you so much for that question because it just leads to um to me talking about a lot of other people than myself because it is really a team effort creating everything that we do in this company. We have a marketing department where we have internal photo guys, video guys, graphic designers, and everything that works like tireless and are so talented in everything they do. And then we have an e-commerce department too, with a few guys sitting there too, just working their asses off. And lately we got a super cool woman in that is in charge of the whole visual merchandising of the website, which is quite new for us. Uh, earlier was just like us sitting around the table and discussing okay, is this nice? Is this nice? Okay, let's put it on and see what go like what works. But it really is a mix of a lot of different things. We try as much as possible to draw people into universes and and find and create small spaces where people can relate. That's one of like the most important things for us to do is to create something that's relatable. So, with every single shoot that we do, especially for the bigger campaigns, we want to create a setting where you feel welcome and you feel part of it. That's why the latest collection called The Neighborhood is what you're looking at on the big screen at the moment. And for us, um New York has become a neighborhood over the past few years because we just travel there so much, and it's um, and for us, it's our second home. And then we just we try to figure out okay, how can we make our consumer and people visiting our website feel as included in that as possible? And we do that by writing a lot of small stories, short stories, inviting people into our world, giving them tips and tricks around the city, but still like putting our model in cool settings and styling the outfits in the way that we think is the best possible way, uh, at all. Um, so thank you so much for that. But everything is primarily done internally, which I think is uh is quite crazy. I think we have a pretty high level of um of uh visual imagery.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Yeah, I think the imagery is incredible to look at. I mean, you could almost just want to order the the photo book of everything that you've done out there in New York. And people that have been listening to the show for a long time will know that I used to work in retail. And just a quick story we would have we would do all of the photographs in-house of all of the products and then upload them to the website, but we would have the models doing the photos and then the mannequins, and then it would just be so labor-intensive that we would actually photoshop out the models and the mannequins so that you just had the products. Um it was kind of uh it had no personality, it was just what was going on at the time. We were just following trends that we were seeing with other online retailers. Do you have to I guess my question is do you have to keep an eye on what's going on with uh your your competitive sorry, your um contemporaries, and see like what these guys doing? Oh, I like what they're doing. Let's see if we can cherry pick a couple of things from other people and make sure that the personality on the website is what people are experiencing when they come into the store. Do you have to think about that?

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Yeah, definitely. Um, definitely. Of course, I think there's always a there's always a common aesthetic within our field with what we're doing right now, being inspired by like New York uh streetwear, but also like early Ralph Lauren, like the preppy side of things. I think it's very, very difficult to not be influenced by a like a whole aesthetic that's going on at the moment with like some of the major and like most important brands within our field. They have a look, and that look is it's actually funny because a lot of people think that like some of the people that does this look at the moment, very aesthetic, like very warm and rich, they think they came up with it. But if you look in like history books, and if you know your history about brands, this is just like a revisited look from the 90s and a revisited look from the 70s. Like, there's a reason why architecture and homes and everything has warm wood and and like brown couches and like um vintage rugs, and like it's it's just an aesthetic, and I think that's that aesthetic really it really fits well with our design and our look. And then you said something that also interests me a little bit because like choosing models or choosing the people for the shoot. Usually I I I send out to maybe 10 different uh model agencies. I say, okay, I need a guy, he needs to be this height, he needs to be uh 186, 187, he needs to be able to um be athletic, he needs to be able to play basketball or skateboard, and he needs to be comfortable in front of the camera, and so on and so on, and then they send something back. So for us, it's really about like who fits the clothing in the best possible way. Um, but like for instance, we we get a lot of comments about like primarily using black models, which for me it's it's not a choice, it's a coincidence, and it's so weird that you have to take that into consideration. Like, okay, how many times have I used a Caucasian? How many times have I used an Asian? How many like the math behind it becomes super weird to me because there's no math behind it at all. For me, it's just you it's just models and and people that we that we present in our collection. So so there is really nothing calculated about that part of things. The only calculated thing is that we need models that fits the clothing. And if you if you get one that's too tall or too small, it just looks completely wrong. So for me, it's all about finding the right person to stage the product in the best possible way.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

Yeah, yeah, it is interesting the kind of boxes that you need to tick, even though you don't feel like it's a box that needs to be ticked in a way. You just kind of want to make sure that we're playing safe and we're not stepping into kind of the Albuquerque and Fitch of the late 90s. You don't want any documentaries made about you in the next 10, 20 years.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Um, unless it's really positive.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Yeah, yeah. Unless we have complete editorial control over it. I understand. Yes, but um though I wanted to, well, you talked about the the the community there and the people that kind of come into your world. Could you explain the community focus for the brand? Maybe just drill down a little bit more on that, please.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Yeah, I think it's um I think it's become such a universal word for a lot of people, and everything is community, community, community, community coffee, community run, community workshop, everything is community, but for us, it it actually started with like a focus on a team. We always talk to ourselves about being like the locker room brand because we were like a few guys who started this together, and we went to like uh fire to make this possible, and we actually felt like we were our office were the was the locker room, and then every time we went out, we were playing, it was a match, and we were just there for each other working hour and hour and hour, and we were the small guys, we had no budgets, and we were still like very, very quickly being compared to quite big brands, especially in Denmark, where they had maybe 50 to 60 people working at that place, a lot of designers, a lot of marketing, a lot of money, and we were five guys sitting in a like a small uh 12 square meter office trying to look big.

Community Support and Collaborative Collection

SPEAKER_00 11:17

So we very quickly found out how um important it was for us to have people around us that could help us. So we started to actually engage our community to become successful. So we found like photographers that were friends and they worked for us, and we found friends that could help out in the warehouse, help package, and everything we did, we needed a favor from friends. So for us, we wouldn't even be a brand, we wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for a community of people that supported our dream. And growing as a brand, we never really forgot where we came from. So now the community sense of everything for us now is let us be that friend that can help out when you need it. So we're really involved in a lot of different projects where we come in and help the people that don't necessarily have the same opportunities or possibilities that we have. So that's like community to us is helping out even when people are not asking for it, and and really being uh like a hand for uh for everybody that can can use it once in a while. And sometimes it's not a hand that they need its money, and we're just as happy to lend or give money for to people that that needs that too. Um, definitely, because we wouldn't have been here, we wouldn't have been here today, and that's 100% certain if it wasn't for the people around us that this that did help us, um, even though they they got nothing out of it.

SPEAKER_02 12:51

Yeah, that's I think that's just kind of an important message in life, isn't it? To to pay back where you can and when you can. So just briefly off topic, I was speaking to this with my my partner yesterday. She came over from Russia and uh and got educated in America and she went to a university over there, and it was a state sponsor, so you know she didn't pay for any of her education, it was it was all done through the state. And now that she's in a position to kind of give a little bit back, she uh she's enrolled with the university that comes to the UK and kind of goes on tour trying to enroll people into the Austin University, and she's like, Well, what can I do? Where can I chip in? You know, I'm a success story. Can I give lectures? Can I give speeches, or you know, is there a place where we can raise money and stuff like that? But it's that knowing in the first place that I think is important that you've kind of become the person or the brand that you are because of others as well around you and propping you up when you needed it, right? So yeah, that's yeah, definitely. That's interesting. Well, I also wanted to talk about um some of the collaborations and the latest releases, the neighborhood release as well. Could you just go into a little bit more of that? What's the thinking behind it? Um, how long did it take to get together? And if people can't see it, obviously they're not on the website yet, but afterwards they can go from this interview and click online and have a look at it. What can they expect to see when they go through the collection?

SPEAKER_00 14:15

Um style for style, is that what you're talking about? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Well, uh, the aesthetics, um, the design influence, you know, what were their building blocks for this campaign?

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Sure. Well, um, we all for me it always starts with a persona. Like we we found we find somebody that we want to dress, and that persona needs to like fit in with us as a brand. And and as I recall, we we talked a lot a lot about uh Robin Williams, the comedian and actor, for this, because we wanted to create a collection that's of course is like sophisticated and uh mature and can stand alone, but is also quite like tongue-in-cheek and and fun and playful. So we chose him, and then what we wanted to create for his wardrobe was okay, let's let's put him in the scenario of playing a role where he is maybe uh a banker working in Wall Street, and he is going to a game in Madison Square Garden. Like, how does he do that and how do we dress him for that day? So the collection itself really consists of a lot of a lot of like juxtapositions in the clothing uh in general, but we always do that. So it's everything from like uh like a few tailored suits to like casual tailoring, too, into something a bit more sporty and agile for when he jumps on his bike to like travel through the city. We also have like pieces in there that's a bit more casually dressed up, um like oversized pieces. Uh, we're working a lot with like the the quality and the craftsmanship, and we want we want the collection to be like something special, but still something that's pretty much for everybody. I don't know if that makes any sense. Um, and then of course, like being the brand that we are, as I said in the beginning, like dualism is very important to us. So creating uh tailored items also makes it important to us to have the complete opposite. So we have a lot of like like um like uh denims and um twills and something a bit more workwear inspired, and then we have like sportswear pieces in there, we have basketball jerseys and like track suits, and so it it it really is like a huge mix of products, and where I think the magic happens with what we do is when we put it together, like when the staging of the products begin. I think that's where like the excitement starts. Because for me, like pretty hard. This is I don't mean it this way, but menswear quite is quite basic, it's quite simple, it consists of very few pieces. And for me, it's it's it's not always necessarily about every single product, it's about how you use the products and how you put them together. It's like uh when you're cooking beef is one thing, but it's how you actually what you mix the beef with creates a new dish, a new exciting dish, and you can get so many different flavors out of that. And for me, it's it's the same with a jacket or a pair of pants, it's really about how you start staging that product. Um so for us, like the story behind and everything is very important for me to create some sort of narrative where we can all meet around and be like, okay, we agree that this is cool, this is fun. We want to keep building on the relationship that we have to New York City, we call it our neighborhood. Why not call the collection neighborhood? Because that's what it pretty much is. And it also allows people to start thinking about okay, what is my neighborhood and where do I come from? And it really has created a lot of exciting and interesting conversations um with people that sees the collection and comes in. And it's for some reason there's something about New York that I feel like it's everybody's neighborhood. Like once you've been to New York, it's your neighborhood. Every time I talk to people, like, oh yeah, but if you're going, be sure to go to uh Leon's bagels, or okay, you have to try Parm, they do the meatballs, or okay, you have to be sure. So everybody sort of like treats New York like their second neighborhood. Um, so that was sort of like the inspiration behind the storytelling of the collection. The collection itself, of course, consists of maybe like 60% of the classic core product of us that is very much stylistic. Um like Scandinavian meets urban, uh great quality, simple cuts, um, very, very basic colors, and then we have maybe 30% where we start to push a little bit, start to play around with fabrics and jacquards and wools and more exciting stuff, and then we have 10 where we just go mental and have fun, and yeah, I think that's just super important. So that's how we sort of create the collection. I don't know if it makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 19:43

Yeah, that's interesting. And so, I mean, look, a couple of things to unpack there, Matthias. This is why I would be terrible in the design process when we come into the boardroom, right? You'll be there and you'll give that wonderful pitch, that kind of great vision of Robin Williams, you know, and I'll be hearing about how the brand works on dualism. And I'll be like, let me take it from here, and then I'll just go away and I'll come back with images of Mrs. Doubtfire on the mood boards, right? I go, I know I I just think this is gonna work perfectly. We'll have some very old Victorian dresses, but when he's uh you know, the out-of-work voiceover actor, and then when he's going to the baseball game, then we can put him in this. That's why I would not be invited or any use in this stage.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

But actually, I actually saw that that long ago that uh menswear brands were beginning to do dresses, skirts. Um, yeah, what do I know?

SPEAKER_02 20:39

Yeah, yeah. Well, they uh the Gucci was doing that with Beckham on the catwalks in 2005, they've been going years, yeah. No, it's look, you've also got to keep an eye on what other people are doing just because you think, well, I don't really want to be doing that, but I can take, you know, I think again, we're talking about cherry picking, right? Against I think the whole thing about the design process and you being a creative director, I'm sure all know this. That there's not a lot out there that doesn't already exist. Um, I think the saying is nothing exists but that in a vacuum. And if you want to create something new, then you've got to display something that's already there. But your job, I guess, is to find something interesting enough where it fits in the narrative of Ledou, and you know, people can get it instantly with looking at it and not feel like, oh, this feels like an alien thing to the brand, you know.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

It definitely. And I think one of the things that we actually try to do the most is to always look current, but still consist of like pieces that would have been relevant and five years ago, but pieces that are still extremely relevant five years from now. That's really like what we're trying to do. So, of course, we take in trend forecasting and we look a lot at all like at other brands because I think fashion is very like waves sometimes. you just have to write them and other times just let them go and so we really as you say like we cherry pick trends and we cherry pick tendencies and we really try to figure out okay how do we how do we stay in the vacuum that we're in and we love the way that we look we love the brand that we are today and people love us for how we look too how do we how do we only turn the knob a little bit but just enough to keep staying exciting keep staying energetic but still keep people um still give the like the the the comfort that people also need from the brand they love.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Yeah the familiarity yeah definitely so so we really we we really try to balance balance that as in the best possible way that we can because I think right now fashion is just like driving 200 miles an hour and you can join everything and see if you can keep up or you can start to look at yourself and be like okay but I like how we look now could we be more fashionable probably could we do skirts like Gucci probably but is it right for us or is it more right for us to start uh putting in a little bit of like uh sportswear is it more right to play around with like silhouettes or find like nostalgic fabric but put it on like new silhouettes like how can we stay exciting without having to go out every single season and um and be different completely different I that's that's not for us that's not what we do in this market definitely not well perhaps that leads us on to where you are going to be maybe in the year you know next year 2025 rolling around in terms of bricks and mortar you mentioned I think offline that we're trying to get into New York or you're gonna be opening up something there could you could you tell us where you are currently around the world so people if they're in the city can roll in and see the shop and and what you have in store for the future sure definitely

International Expansion and Brand Growth

SPEAKER_02 24:27

at the moment we have our own offices in Copenhagen Denmark and then we have two offices in Germany we have in Munich and in Düsseldorf we have offices and um showrooms in Paris too and then we're always dreaming about expanding and we would love to have something in the US the US market is really growing massively for us at the moment they love our style which um which is amazing which that's just incredible um if you want to bias go visit that website uh that looks that looks good at the moment Peter thank you so much Peter for that and um or else we're actually uh quite accessible we are in every single Scandinavian market every country you can find us in um I think we look the best when we have a bigger selection so if you can find a shopping shop or even our own stores I think you'll get the best understanding of the brand and I think you'll be it'll be easier to be both dressed in clothing but also be introduced to the to the brand in the best possible way if you see a bit more and you have uh people working that knows a bit more about the brand and they will do that in like department stores because we have a team of guys that travel constantly um uh training the the personnel uh in like our story and how we do things and how to style us and how to put us together and how to showcase us and the whole story about like where we started and everything we do that every single week uh we have guys on the road um so you will be able to go pretty much anywhere and and and have and and have the possibility of of being introduced in the best possible way to the brand I think so um but yeah at the moment focus is big on the US market the UK market is also growing for us it's been steady for a few years and now that now we're trying to uh push a little bit harder in that market because you have a great fashion sense and a lot of streetwear comes out of the UK which I love and I think that it's something that we also can bring to the table.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

Our way of doing streetwear is not necessarily baggy jeans and hoodies but it's um maybe a more sophisticated streetwear vibe that we like but I think that fits in perfectly to the UK market too.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

And then of course like the bigger markets in Europe it's also quite important to us Germany um once they get out of the slim pants I think they're ready to uh ready to enjoy themselves a bit more relax a bit yeah well listen Matthias we're gonna run out of time on the call here but I just want to take the take no just want to take the time to thank you for coming on taking time out of your day and for people that are gonna have just listened to this I recommend clicking through the links on the show notes we'll put them all over on menswearstar.co.uk but the website leddoo.com or leddo.co.uk as well we're here you can go and I I recommend just uh having a mooch around the website but also checking out the journal and having a look at some of the videos they're like short minute like three or four minute videos that really do you know some nice stories and portfolios for the catalogue and just gives it a bit more insight into the brand itself.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

The brand can be found on Instagram as well 100,000 followers Instagram ledue are you over on there do you do you take control of that or is that something that the uh the PR team take control of I that's actually the uh we have a social media manager in-house who like a uh a a super cool woman that takes care of that i uh i i'm so lucky to just be sort of the face of everything creative that comes out and everything visually that comes out but it's um but it's pretty much everybody else that does all the hard work I just try to make it uh consistent that's sort of like my job and and um and then they all run with the ball and it's um yeah we have some really really talented people in the company and I think that's also a huge part of our success is that um people strive here and people love to work here and becomes very quickly becomes a hobby and people will just give more of them of their heart and more of themselves if they work on a hobby and not just a job that they just don't want to go to so I think that's you like also a huge part of our success is that people just love being part of whatever it is that we're doing at the moment.

SPEAKER_02 29:23

Great well it all looks good to me Matthias thanks again for for your time and all the best for the future give us a shout when you come to London and we'll go have a look at some street wear together see what we can do. Definitely that sounds like fun thank you so much Peter thank you for having me thank you mate take care of yourself great thank you Matthias well uh I was just wrapping up because we're just running low on the minutes here but yeah the video great man the videos look really good on the website here this is like a this is something that you should we should be showing to brands like on the up you know that what they could do what they could do to showcase some of the the capsules and the wardrobes and just get people involved yeah big enough thank you so that's that's really nice of you to say thank you so much it is something that we work extremely hard on because it's not um yeah it's uh it it's uh when we go to New York like on a trip to shoot that it it it ends up like it looks great but it takes maybe four days and it's like up at six and to bed at 11 and we're steaming the clothing in hotel rooms and it's um yeah yeah it's it it's not it's not as luxurious like luxurious as you as you would think it is really just uh yeah you sleep very well on the plane right home but yeah but it's paying off so but um but I'm very very happy to hear that and thank you so much for having me I hope that we got to talk about what you wanted my issue is that once I start talking I just start rambling and I just get go out of uh I just start saying things so I hope that you got a few of the answers you were hoping for and got to know us a little bit better.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

If not we can always do uh a uh a check-in in half a year from now if you want to but it's completely up to you but like things like things are really moving fast for us at the moment and it's it's super exciting.

SPEAKER_02 31:23

Well we're you're welcome to come back anytime Matis it was always it's always gonna be a pleasure speaking to you especially if you do some videography in in the UK as well maybe we can do a campaign together around that you just didn't uh have I missed that I was just on the no no but it's not online now we did it for the autumn autumn 25 collection we shot it in spaulding we found a place called the uh it's called Cressy Hall it's like uh it's a house from 1664 and I'm sure it's haunted and uh and we only had cold water on the top floor so showering in the morning wasn't that fun and we shot everything in that house and around that house because we wanted to create sort of uh the look of a vintage Ralph Loring campaign so we shot it with four four models too and yeah that turned out quite fun too very different than like guy on the street in New York this is to like four people in a house in the UK and but it still still feels like us I think brilliant well listen I'll keep an eye out for when that comes out I'll sign up to the newsletters and keep an eye on you. But yeah when you're ready to launch that give me a shout and we'll we'll definitely do thank together.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

We're gonna run out of time but Matthew thanks again mate if you've been listening to the menswearstyle podcast be sure to head over to menswairstyle.co.uk for more menswear content and email info at mensweatstarle.co.uk if you'd like to be a future guest on the show. And finally please help support the show by leaving a review on iTunes or wherever you're listening to this podcast. Until next time