Alve: Mao is pretty lazy.
Mao: Alve is a workaholic.

We both have a practical approach to fashion, which might be a reflection on our backgrounds. Alve looks more into the whole structure while Mao concentrates on each detail carefully. These are not only when considering the brand and concept, but also when we reflect on how we work on the collections and garments.

“Stupid elegance” for us means a humorous take on embracing one’s imperfection. Sirloin is about personal clothing, whimsical and bare; loaded with subtle, delicate details. We do think fashion, at the moment, is way too nervous and self-destructive, and we want to bring a more carefree attitude towards clothes. It’s fashion, it’s fun!
Our core product is underwear, our vision is to redesign the wardrobe literally from the inside out – owning underwear that matches with your favourite designer outfit. Like, what would you wear underneath your toughest denim or ski uniform? What is the perfect underwear to match with your lazy sweatshirt? Sassy dress? Tuxedo? T-shirt?

During our final year, we were both really obsessed with corners so we spent a lot of time looking for great corners. Maybe that’s why we decided to be in Shanghai and not in Paris – it’s a little nice corner of the fashion world.

Not really, we both have always been very obsessed with underwear. We consider good underwear as the ultimate luxury. For a fashion customer, there are plenty of options to find outerwear that reflects your personality, but for underwear, it’s much harder. Traditionally, underwear always gets degraded as a commercial product. In fact, there’s no fashion brand taking underwear really seriously. For us, underwear, socks and T-shirts really are the absolute core of the label. 

Alve: We get that question quite a lot, but actually we don't see Sirloin as a genderless brand at all. We do use quite a lot of menswear references, but to be honest, we’re not so concerned about gender. Mao: I never see the gender in garments or even in general, personally. I have always been wearing men’s underwear, whether that be on its own or as outerwear, which gave my mom a little trouble to recognise which were mine and my brother’s clothes.

I think we have a quite broad fan-base. Everything from sassy Los Angeles girls that enjoy our undies to super geeky Japanese people that are the most interested in our subtle, twisted detail, as opposed to how pop it looks. Sirloin is more about an attitude rather than a style, which we think makes it more appealing to quite a wide base.

Of course, it makes things a bit more complicated sometimes, but it also opens up to different ways of researching. We do take a lot of inspiration from what we see around on the street. One of our house gods, Douglas Coupland, talks about how he’s missing his ‘pre-internet brain’; we do think it is something interesting when the answers for everything are not always at your fingertips.

It’s always tricky for us to deal with underwear and nudity in images, since it’s an overexposed topic. However, we’re interested in how Rita works with the body and nudity in a completely non-exposed way. It’s not about it being naked (or sexy), as it’s about how pure or maybe personal it is. She often uses very staged, constrained poses, but somehow manages to make them very natural.

(Laughs) The mask is created out of a mosaic of our most iconic supermodels and icons, reflecting on mass-consumerism and copy culture. But yeah, those old Corine Day pictures of Kate were definitely on our mind. I don't really think westernisation is a problem; it’s completely normal that when different cultures mix they pick up from each other and that’s super healthy.
We are much more worried about the fact that people these days are becoming so protective of their own culture. I think ‘Western culture’ wouldn’t be hurt by a bit of ‘Asianifaction’. And it’s completely okay for a Chinese girl to be Kate for a day! We also think the idea about west and east, the identification with one’s own country, etc. is becoming extremely old for fashion (and dangerous).

We massively failed so far on that point, as it is hard to be romantic when working together!

Replacing images of meat with fashion when you image search our name. For better or worse!