Denim design guru chases raw star power Keenan Kampa in the G-Star campaign. WHAT do actors Vincent Gallo, Benicio Del Toro and the late Dennis Hopper - plus Norwegian chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen, British musician Sergio Pizzorno and US ballerina Keenan Kampa - all have in common? No, they're not the dream line-up of celebrity Big Brother. They've all put in time for denim brand G-Star. These may seem random choices to be spruiking a line of jeans and the rest, especially one with a modern, technical aesthetic, but in the mind of global brand director Shubhankar Ray they all embody the notion of "raw," a touchpoint and byline for the brand - be it raw talent or raw experience. "It's about being able to dramatise the word raw," says Ray. When Dennis is reciting Rudyard Kipling's If in front of 1000 people at New York Fashion Week, this is raw. Benicio doing Joy Division lyrics from an obscure song with a very extreme set of lyrics, this is raw. The following year we did a show curated by the United Nations. It becomes very unpredictable. It becomes about brand DNA and what makes up that DNA and the ability to be, one, compelling and, two, able to engage people. Ray is no newcomer to drawing in customers with a compelling brand proposition, as aligning with the UN in its millennium campaign to end poverty demonstrated. Prior to joining G-Star seven years ago, he helped to build brands including Caterpillar and Camper. But his "school" of branding and image building came via five years at Levi's. While his first and current roles are denim-related, the brands could not be more different. The denim business, generally, is nostalgia orientated, occupied by big American brands and generally those brands have come from the countryside. Their origin is very functional, for the farmer, cowboy, steel worker. They're not from the city. G-Star, conversely, has operated for 25 years, and was born in The Netherlands. But it looks beyond those boundaries for inspiration and identification. It's from the city, for the urban audience, and although the headquarters are in Amsterdam G-Star is international, not Dutch. Ray enjoys contradictions, whether in design or marketing, and he doesn't identify with working on a fashion brand. We look outside the normal influences of fashion. People can see that we're more influenced by industrial design. Our philosophy and design is function before form, which is the opposite of the fashion business. On that note, the label has collaborated with Australian industrial designer Marc Newson on capsule collections for the past 10 years; they collaborated with Leica on a limited-edition camera this year; also, the in-house design team is just as likely to try creating a rhino head or a canoe out of denim, as it is trying to better shape and form a pair of jeans. "The designers think we are either mad or have a very sophisticated way of testing the boundaries of a very basic material," says Ray. The most recent test for the design team was to create three jackets for a mechanised greyhound skeleton, later animated into a short and oddly compelling GIF. The design of G-Star products is more complicated than for many denim brands, according to Ray. It involves a three-dimensional approach: moulding the product via shrinking and stretching processes on the fabric panels and performing elements, such as "whiskers," via a complicated forming and baking process. "This has created a significant look for G-Star," says Ray. When I started, I thought G-Star was applying a more tailored approach to denim, and three-dimensional denim was a real point of difference, something that could be developed further. He cites the Elwood jeans as a signature item that has evolved during the past 10 years, a crossover of worker pants and motorcyclist pants, with built-in knee pads and 3D shaping around the leg. "We're offering a tailoring approach to a mass-market commodity, applying craftsmanship to mass manufacturing," says Ray. Again, those contradictions of which he is so fond. Great philosophers and great writers talk about contradictions being somehow linked to a level of intelligence. To carry around two opposing ideas in your head at the same time is a challenge to people. And I like this very much. In an attention economy, to get noticed you have got to do things differently. Ray's idea for the brand (available at a number of outlets in Australia, and at shop.g-star.com) is not so much about simply finding customers, but also attracting fans into a "love" relationship. The Mancunian explains that Manchester United fans are not about to be lured away to holler for other teams depending on who is on top of the ladder; similarly, he considers Apple the closest to what he is looking for in a brand-customer relationship. "That's our benchmark," says Ray of the tech company. That's a modern love brand. You have to treat the consumer not like a consumer, but like a fan. There's something in the fan relationship that links in with modern consumer culture. If you can develop a love relationship it has much more power. You have a level of seduction, related to desire. Put seduction and desire together and you get close to love. The most powerful modern brands in the world operate like this, beyond the functionality. Glynis Traill-Nash travelled to New York as a guest of G-Star.