Hey, nice shirt.” I had just strolled into a store on Berwick Street, in London’s Soho, when a friendly sales assistant smiled and told me this. What caught her eye? It was a grey t-shirt with bondage straps on the hem and shoulder blades. I teamed it, instinctively, with five-year-old Paper Denim & Cloth stripy engineer jeans, beat-up Junya Watanabe Chuck Taylors and beads from Venezuela.
The same thing happened at work, weeks later. A colleague asked if the casual Friday t-shirt I was sporting — white, with concealed kangaroo pockets and a flap near the neckband — was either “Comme, Dries or Margiela.” In both instances, I was more than happy to reveal that I was wearing Oxygen, a Filipino retailer with a decidedly international approach to high-street dressing.
Established in 1996, the mall standby is the edgiest in Golden ABC’s stable — the company also owns Penshoppe, Memo, ForMe and Regatta, its latest acquisition. But it wasn’t always this way. The Oxygen I recall hasn’t always been this fashion-forward; for the longest time, its retail repertoire seemed to rely too heavily on graphics. Now, fortunately, things are looking much, much better.
One afternoon, I meet up with Jeff Bascon, Oxygen’s recently installed brand director. He admits that treading this style-driven path involved a degree of risk. “The biggest challenge was changing the image,” he shares. “We want to appeal to people with a strong sense of personal style, so the first step was to research — find out what they do, how they decide what to buy, how they decide what to wear.”
From there, he and his band of designers and merchandising managers focused on communicating this reenergized Oxygen to a new audience. The move wasn’t as simple as changing the ads. “We weren’t sure how people would react to this transformation so the revamp had to be gradual. Our advertisements, however, had to change in one go.”
Unlike other local labels, Oxygen has wisely chosen models, not celebrities, to convey their message. Luka Badnjar, featured prominently in their 2010 Holiday campaign, happened to open and close the Prada Spring/Summer 2011 show. The student from Paris, a newcomer in the modeling world, can also be seen in this month’s Dazed & Confused as well as the Topman site, in looks from the LTD range. “We want a more global appeal for Oxygen, but we’re not limited to foreign models,” Jeff points out. “We want models who have that Oxygen look and personality, models who stand out. It doesn’t matter if they’re local or foreign.”
Of course, the stuff they sell now is the main draw. “We design for people who think differently, so we also have to think outside the box. Everyone in the team understands that so it’s easy for us to spot trends, filter them, and translate them to pieces that will suit our market.”
As a recent Oxygen convert, I’ve only begun to realize how rewarding a trip to their store is. On my last visit, I was pleasantly surprised to chance upon items that echoed some of my cherished wardrobe staples: a paneled shirt that looked a lot like the one I have by SO by Alexander Van Slobbe and another that could be the long-lost cousin of a collarless Alessandro Dell’Acqua. Oxygen’s palette is subdued and the lines are much cleaner, like minimal, avant-garde clothes by Damir Doma but at ridiculously low price points.
I didn’t take this déjà vu to be a sign that they merely copy or re-innovate: I took it as an indicator that stuff by Oxygen can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with stuff by the world’s most innovative designers, be they British, Belgian, French or Japanese. Again, as proof, someone stopped me in Spitalfields Market one Saturday, asking to take my picture. I was in Red Wing work boots, pirate-inspired jeans from Vivienne Westwood’s World’s End line and yes, a striped Oxygen t-shirt I bought — on sale — for less than P250.
As Jeff adds, “We’re in tune with global trends, so we’re a good alternative to foreign brands.” It’s this mixture of weirdness and wearability, plus an absence of obnoxious logos, that makes Oxygen a great go-to for clever, untraceable, affordable street wear. I guess compliments from both friends and total strangers are to be expected.
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More info: www.oxygentm.com, www.facebook.com/oxygenclothing