Scott Sternberg Calls On Spike Jonze and Jason Schwartzman to Spread the Word About His New Brand Entireworld
Scott Sternberg understood influencer culture years before it was a thing. An essential part of the appeal of his born-in-the-mid-2000s brand Band of Outsiders was the cool Hollywood crew that he attracted. Kirsten Dunst and Chloë Sevigny turned up at BOO shows, and he brought Greta Gerwig to the CFDA Awards back when she was an ingenue, years before she became an Academy Award–nominated director. If you happened by his store on Wooster Street, which sold his prepster staples alongside cookies from Momofuku Milk Bar, you might see one of those low-key fabulous women there doing some shopping. Michelle Williams, Sarah Silverman, and Marisa Tomei all appeared in his Polaroid campaigns, the square format of which would’ve made them ideal for Instagram. But this was all more or less before Instagram.
His new project, Entireworld, is built for the late 2010s. A collection of well considered basics—T-shirts, sweaters of cable-knit cotton or fine-gauge cashmere, button-downs, and organic cotton underpinnings—it’s sold direct-to-consumer from a deceptively lo-fi e-commerce site at affordable prices. There are no fashion shows. There’s no flagship store on the most desirable street in Soho. (After Band of Outsiders exited, Céline, Moschino, and Gucci moved in; real estate is another area where Sternberg was ahead of his time.) The consensus view is that it’s much harder to launch an independent brand these days than it was in the aughts; the big guys are just so damn dominant. And indeed, with his new endeavor, Sternberg owns all the inventory, which informs his overall pragmatic approach.
But, of course, there are still influencers. Spike Jonze, Jason Schwartzman, Katherine Waterston, and Amandla Stenberg, among others, are all supporting Entireworld via an Instagram rollout launching today. Big names, to be sure, but of the four, only Amandla has her own account. Sternberg likes the irony in that. He’s less interested in follower counts than he is in his own fandom; he trusts that his own good taste will help build Entireworld, just as it did at Band. In the video clips, which Sternberg shot himself on a video camera he dug out of storage, Jonze plays the piano in an empty auditorium and Schwartzman chats on the phone while lifting weights. The clothes aren’t the stars of this campaign, the stars are. In a world of paid #endorsements, we can only hope that Sternberg will continue to influence the industry—and to keep making cute, simple T-shirts.
