Angelo Van Mol’s penchant for pike was honed on the waterways of Maasmechelan, Belgium, during boyhood. Today he continues to fish—he recommends Lake Windermere—and is like me a fan of the excellent “Carl and Alex fishing” YouTube channel. Hence, angling provided the initial angle for this gently pleasing Band of Outsiders collection.
Van Mol took the “Outsider”-ness of the brand he helms pretty literally, positioning two dreamy VW Samba camper vans as presentation backdrop to a collection that was ruggedized from its wide-brimmed chin-strapped fishing hats down to its Kickers collab Lennon boots rusticated via khaki colorway and an integrated drawstring lacing system. This gear, though, was designed to lure the kind of guy who wears Patagonia in Paris, not Patagonia. Therefore the Mackinaw jackets came leather-lined, with an integrated popper-attached hood, and in a densely woven but extremely lustrous wool check. Ripstop pants featured elastic cinches at the ankle—totally outdoorsman—but were finely tailored and cut in a needle striped cotton. Van Mol worked with an illustrator who rustled up some appealingly cutesy-pagan line drawings of Bigfoot and various other monsters, one of which (tellingly) seemed to be wearing a mushroom: these were used on nice-looking stadium jackets and boy-scout neckerchiefs.
The intersection of organic, beardy, check-shirted, Portland hipsterism and synthetic, semi-skatey (thinking about Butter Goods), urban ornamental functional-wear (ok, streetwear, but better) is a compelling position on the Venn diagram of contemporary mass masculine aesthetics. With this collection Van Mol cast his brand slap-bang into it.
