My relationship with GQ Magazine was one of hostility when we began. It was just before the GFC and I was some pip-squeak parvenu who thought he had a self-entitled right to be featured in their magazine over and above the big European and American brands because I was making in Australia and because I was focusing on quality. In life I have learned that self-entitlement is a dangerous thing and can lead to great unhappiness. GQ often did nothing to support us and continued to remind me in emails that nobody could buy their content and if they didn't want to write content about us that was their God-given right ....
So in the end I spent a great deal of time writing my own blog content and generating my own following and hoped that one day they might see that I meant what I said. It was probably a good thing since it caused me to stay the course with keeping production small and local and trying our best to build our database one bow at a time.
When eventually GQ saw that I wasn't mucking around they eventually included us in their magazine and this year, as it was last year, it was a privilege to see our bow ties on their Men Of The Year, not to mention this superlative shot of Richard Roxburgh which was styled by Brad Homes at GQ, who I think has a big future.
And when we posted this particular image to our wall it was met with a comment from Brad who wrote 'best bow ties in the business'. We're still a niche marketed product, we're still making our bow ties in Australia, we still have no prospects of becoming the next Ralph Lauren - but hey, that's nice to know we got one product line right. Let us hope we crack the unisex market now with our silk eye shades!
Thank you Brad for the compliment and GQ for taking your time to appreciate what we do. It helped keep us on the straight and narrow.
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