Eytys’s New Book Is a Politicized Love Letter to the Diversity of New York City
Eytys’s New Book Is a Politicized Love Letter to the Diversity of New York City
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Eytys
New York City, like Oz, is a mythical place. The dream destination of misfits and wannabe moguls, it is, as one model puts it, “raw, gritty, and ruthless, yet so beautiful.” A refuge from the homogeneity of manicured suburbs, New York’s strength lies in its diversity and elasticity, which are celebrated in a new book, These Colors Don’t Run, from the Swedish brand Eytys.
Politics, more than fashion, inspired this “ode to New York,” a hybrid publication with DIY cut-and-paste aesthetics that collages photographer Robert Lindholm’s candid photographs with essays (about anarchy, boundary pushing, and solitude), and street-style fashion editorials featuring pieces from Eytys’s Spring collection snapped on models cast mostly through Instagram by Trevor Swain. This mix of message and marketing is common to all of the company’s book projects. The idea, explains creative director Max Schiller via email “is to use the attention span of our readers to discover something beyond our new jeans and shoes and put into context our ideas about our modern society.”
These are politicized times, and Schiller and brand co-founder Jonathan Hirschfeld feel obligated to use their platforms to take a stand against xenophobia and discrimination of all kinds. Rather than focus on the negative, however, Eytys are using their book to celebrate the melting-pot diversity that has made New York a creative capital of the world. “Boundary-pushing art and creativity is not very likely to emerge without the exciting tension of a heterogeneous, multicultural community,” Schiller opines. “It’s one of many reasons it would be a tragedy to stay isolated behind walls and borders.”
Like most people, Schiller can clearly remember his first trip to this “sanctuary city.” He was 13 and came to visit relatives; 10 years later he moved to the Big Apple, and it’s then that the city made a lasting imprint on him. Now based in Stockholm, Schiller can readily provide a list of his favorite NYC things, such as soup dumplings from 100 Mott Street, eating Vietnamese Banh Mi sandwiches on Grand, and visiting the Neue Gallery and the Noguchi Museum. “New York has a weird way of making you feel very connected yet as a total stranger,” he muses. The anonymity the city facilitates is a subject taken up in an essay called “Anarchist Chic”; it’s flip side, loneliness, is the topic of another. Lindholm’s photographs, taken in summertime, all over town—Crown Heights, Elmhurst, the Financial District, Harlem, the Lower East Side, Staten Island—convey joy and dynamism. The aim of the snapper, a one-time assistant to Mikael Jansson, was to show that New York “is representing almost every religion, sexuality, gender, and ethnicity in one massive melting pot and—it works!” Is it a perfect city? No—try riding the subway—but it is an exemplar of diversity and hope. As Lindholm discovered when he first arrived: “The buildings were bigger, apartments smaller, summers hotter, streets smellier, people nicer.” With These Colors Don’t Run, Eytys hope to show that in difference there is strength.
These Colors Don’t Run, will be available through Eytys and select retailers.
