On Georgia Trip, Loden Dager Designers Find Models, Steinbeck's Ghost

The fashionistas behind men’s wear collective Loden Dager are this week’s guest bloggers on T Magazine’s Web site. Today, the New York-based designers—Melissa Vail, Matthew Sandager, Oliver Helden, Paul Marlow and Alex Galan—wrote in during their road trip to Georgia, where they’re hoping to find some good ol’ inspiration.

The idea for the trip, they explain, was born when their pals in a band called The Great Lakes—an indie rock group now based in Brooklyn—invited them down for New Year’s. The designers soon realized that Athens, Ga. might be the perfect place to see physical manifestations of the inspirational concepts Loden Dager’s been exploring lately—specifically “images from the American 1940’s—W.P.A. artists, and texts like The Grapes of Wrath.” Flexing a little literary muscle, they write: “The sleepy college town abandoned by all but the locals also seemed like the perfect backdrop against which to do a shoot our spring collection.”

From there, the fearsome fivesome detail their exploits, charioted southward in an S.U.V. rented in New York. From Cabela’s sporting goods store in Philly, they made their way across the Mason-Dixon line, where “two compact rainbows resembling flying saucers greeted us.” Trippy times two!

Aside from waxing poetic on the sights and sounds of the American South, the design team has also been casting a few models here and there. They write: “[I]t’s interesting how nobody says no when you offer to make someone a fashion model, even if it’s just for the day.”

In two weeks, Loden Dager, which launched in late 2006, will be previewing their Fall 2008 collection in Paris. That show falls shortly before they must prepare a full presentation for New York Fashion Week in February, when their Spring 2008 line will be hitting stores. This coming May, Loden Dager’s capsule collection for Uniqlo debuts.