As part of their ongoing #LoveMyHood campaign, iconic menswear brand Bench have partnered with the equally iconic Hackney lads Rudimental, as their new brand ambassadors. We had a brief chat about the AW16 collection …and some other random things.

FAULT Magazine: What do you think you’ve learned about the fashion world whilst partnering with Bench?

Piers: I learned that sometimes I can fit into a 34, when I was always a 36…

Kesi: I learned about Piers’ love for shirts. I think he has now discovered a love for shirts.

Piers: Yes. I learned about my love for shirts too.

Locksmith: What I’ve learned… Is that fashion and music actually go hand in hand.

FAULT: How so?

Locksmith: Well if you think about it… In the past… I’ve been asked questions like this… and I’ve been able to answer [everyone laughs]

Amir: …they are both forms of expression. We are the masters of one form, so we thought we’d collaborate with the masters of the other.

DJ Locksmith: Seriously, fashion and music do go hand in hand… Bench came to us kind of with a spiel and we were very wary of that, because we’re not the face of our music. We let the music do the talking. When you get approached by a clothing company, you often think ‘they’re going to want us at the front’ …we still like doing our shopping without being noticed, but Bench came to us from another approach. They were kind of sold by our music and the reach of our music, so because of the way they sold it to us, or approached us, we were like, ‘you know what? Fashion and music do go hand in hand’ we were able to target their fans and they were able to target the fans that were similar to their fans and go forward.

Another thing I liked was they said that they didn’t just want to do a normal photoshoot with us wearing their big logo, they wanted to do something where they find out about Rudimental… a 24hr video shoot if you like, and we did that with them in Central Park, New York, where they got to come behind the scenes of a gig we were doing on Summer Stage. They got to see us getting ready and they found out about our individual characters, fashion sense and fashion styles. It was a really cool concept.

FAULT: How do you describe your individual style, because you’re quite diverse? – do you know that you are every colour emoji? That is so cool. You should use that somehow…

Piers: Nobody is yellow though.

Kesi: I am a bit…

DJ Locksmith: That is true… We should do a DJ act, in front of loads of people and just wear emoji hats, because it represents – That’s a sick idea! – And call it EMOJI. If you guys don’t do it, I’ll get some other guys to do it. That’s sick!

FAULT: Back to your individual styles…

DJ Locksmith: Me and Kesi and more T-shirt and shirt guys, Amir is more the smart/swagger guy, then Piers whose into his shirts… Which we all found out along the way. These are all things we never really paid attention to. We just knew what we liked and we cracked on with it.

Amir: It’s beautiful that they caught us in our reality. That’s basically how that whole photoshoot happened. They followed us with their cameras and got a lot of nice, natural shots with us.

FAULT: In a world where A$AP Rocky and Rihanna are fronting Dior, which is great too, this collaboration feels very organic and home grown…

Amir: I always thought of Bench as Brit pop, I always thought of it as proper British culture, so yes, it was a great match.

FAULT: Given what you said earlier about privacy and being sceptical at first, after this experience do you see yourselves ever fronting a high fashion campaign?

DJ Locksmith: Damn! If the money is right, girl, I’m down!  [laughs]

Kesi: If it somehow worked with Rudimental and what Rudimental are about as a movement, why not? It all depends on the ethos. We can’t change ourselves to fit something else.

FAULT: The AW16 was unveiled on Snapchat, which is quite a cool and current idea…

DJ Locksmith: See! Snapchat. We’re down.

FAULT: Do you manage your own social media or does it belong to your management?

[In Unison]: It’s ours!

Amir: Some of us are better at it than others.

Piers: I did a Snapchat once.

FAULT: Well done. What was that one Snapchat?

Piers: It was me half naked…

You can read more about the Rudimental X Bench campaign here, and can follow the boys on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

 

Words Trina John-Charles