Union L.A. and J.Crew Are Here to Bust You Out of Your Style Rut
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Brendon Babenzien and Chris Gibbs have been at this for a while. Now the creative director of J.Crew men’s and the owner of Union Los Angeles, respectively, the two started out in the fashion world in the same orbit. In the mid ‘90s, Babenzien joined the team at venerable—and highly influential—skate brand Supreme. Right around the same time, Gibbs came onto the crew at Union. Downtown New York hotspots that quickly morphed into institutions, both managed by streetwear legend James Jebbia. Inevitably, some hanging out occurred.
“I kind of homed in on Brendon, probably because he looked like he knew a lot of shit,” Gibbs says of those early days. Babenzien and his (very) small team often worked late nights at Supreme. “So I would just go over there after work every day and just bug them for info,” Gibbs continues. “Try and help pack boxes or go grab pizza or whatever it was, and kind of just learn and soak up whatever I could.”
“It might've seemed like we knew what we were doing, but it was probably more the blind leading the blind at that point,” Babenzien, who also runs the label Noah with his wife Estelle Bailey-Babenzien, adds. Regardless, the pair became close friends. Fast forward a couple of decades, and the opportunity to work together in their current roles seemed almost like a foregone conclusion. “It was a pretty natural process,” Babenzien says. “We just kind of knew each other and that was it.”
The result of that team-up is the new Union L.A. x J.Crew collaboration, which hits J.Crew’s site and stores today. Boxier and a little more laid-back than the fit you may expect from the brand, the collection runs the gamut from heavyweight tees and sweatshirts to a checkerboard, alpaca-blend sweater, a color-blocked rugby shirt, and even a shashiko-stitched, pajama-esque set. But the real stars of the show, according to Gibbs, are the chore coat, painter pants, and cap made from a herringbone twill that’s been on his mind for a long time.
“I was in Japan about a year ago, vintage shopping,” he says. “And I thought I came upon the holy grail of a denim piece: this vintage patina herringbone twill denim.” When he got back to Los Angeles, he showed the team at Union the incredible find. “And they're like, ‘You idiot, there is no such thing as herringbone twill denim. This is just herringbone twill, but it just so happens to be patinated and worn out, and it looks like denim.’”
Despite the minor letdown, Gibbs was keen to use a similar fabric in one of his own creations. But the manufacturers he worked with couldn’t recreate it. Enter J.Crew. “If I showed the original denim and I showed what they made,” Gibbs says, “you couldn't tell the difference. It was really great.”
“So, we were able to make something that we otherwise couldn't make,” he explains. “When I do collaborations, I often try and do things like that, whether it's making it because we don't have the same kind of production capabilities as a bigger brand or whether it's reaching a different customer.”
When you get down to it, both Gibbs and Babenzien say, that’s the nature of a good collaboration—breaking away from the norm and creating something that shifts perception in terms of both execution and expression. And letting go of limitations isn’t limited to the product itself. The goal, ultimately, is to make something that gives the customer the same feeling when it comes to their own approach to style. Union L.A. x J.Crew may feel familiar on the surface, but it’s also meant to give the wearer the opportunity to change things up and explore how, exactly, they way to present themselves to the world, free of any preconceptions or expectations.
“Quite frankly, for me in this position at J. Crew, what we're trying to get across to the general public basically is: The boundaries that I think we create, they're kind of false, right?” Babenzien says. “In and amongst the world of fashion or style or whatever, people really create these ideas of who they are or what they can wear or what a brand represents and all these different things. But I think if you hang a little bit with people behind the scenes, if you hang with Chris, what you really learn about Chris is there are no boundaries.”
“That's one of the messages I'm trying to send here at J. Crew,” he continues, “and I thought Chris would be a perfect partner to help illustrate that point that you can go outside of these lanes that people are trying to create for you.”
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