Stone New York

Dana: We met each other through mutual friends, we used to hang out a lot. At that time I was interning in a company where you had to dress in a business casual style. There were not many options to how to dress and there were not too many brands that made that kind of clothing for men which you could wear to work and afterwards to a gallery. So, we started sketching and went through out different ideas, trying to expand our vision. That’s how our brand started.

Dakota: We kind of target a man who is international, likes traveling and most likely works in a creative professional field. He has a cosmopolitan life, loves to stand out, but still remains appropriate for the multiple situations where he finds himself in.

Dana: We are huge fans of Phoebe Philo and what she does at Celine. Consuelo Castiglioni and her work at Marni and the Olsen twins with The Row are other examples.
Dakota: We see The Row and Celine as the female counter part of what we do. For menswear there are a lot of designers which we respect such as Raf Simons, we love his work . We also talk about architecture often and find the architect Zaha Hadid and her work really cool. She’s reinterpreting buildings, showing from different perspective points how beautiful they can be. Architecture inspires both of us a lot, we walk around the city endlessly just looking at all the details in the buildings.

Dakota: Music is another big source of inspiration. We love art and like to be surrounded by it. We’ve made some of the paintings in our apartment. There is an indirect inspiration that links everything together. When we are painting, it’s only painting, when we are designing, it’s only about design elements, but each one feeds each other I would say.
Dana: We always get very inspired by animals and birds, their natural coloring and patterns. I think, we watch National Geographic more than anything (laughs).

Dana: There is a station on Pandora called The Echocentrics. It’s like the music from 60s and 70s, kind of funky, something you would like to listen to when you are working.
Dakota: For me when I’m alone I enjoy listening to Yoko Ono. Her music is very contradictory and completely unexpected. Like some of the songs might be even jarring you, but they are beautiful at the same time. I like her boldness to say what she wanted and bring in what she was standing for. Her work received a lot of criticism, but she stood by and continued what she was doing. So, just the theory behind Yoko Ono is motivating and inspiring me and the music itself is just beautiful.

Dakota: Exactly. That’s a perfect background to work with!

Dana: We are looking forward to becoming a full lifestyle brand, present collections twice a year, evolve an accessory and skin care lines. Since we have a long-term growth plan in mind, we are taking each step very intentionally with the integrity we want our brand to maintain. After you make one product perfect you can move to another one that will stand through the integrity that was created by the previous product. That is I think how we view the growth of our brand.

Dakota: We used the idea of casual sophistication a lot. I think this collection defines that, because the color palette is very understated, some of the items are just easy T-shirts which you can wear in your daily life. The way it was constructed highlights the minimalism of the idea behind that.

Dakota: We wouldn’t consider our current pieces are gender-neutral, but we have certain women in mind who would look amazing in it. We first want to establish what we’ve done as menswear and then expand the limits, making it approachable to anybody who’s interested in it.

Dakota: It’s definitely on the horizon. We are not trying to be androgynous and the base inspiration comes from traditional menswear, but that does not necessarily exclude women from wearing it. Tilda Swinton is one of the women who would look amazing in anything we do. Well, she would look amazing in anything anyone does (laughs). So, it’s definitely available for the right woman who wants to wear it. We are not going to start putting on some feminine elements in our clothes, they will always have a masculine touch to it.
Dana: Our core is traditional menswear, so, womenswear is not something we have experience in. I think we better understand what men want. Womenswear is a different language which we are not ready for yet.

Dana: Luxury has always existed, but we don’t consider our brand to be luxurious. Primarily, our goal is good quality in our garments and customer satisfaction. Luxury brands tend to focus on the next big, keeping things fresh. The world is changing, so modern luxury has to change with it.

Dakota: Luxury still exists. I think it’s all about how is one defining it. We know the demand has gone down a bit. Our previous collection was pure luxury (laughs). It had cashmere, python and didn’t get the response we thought it would, because people today care more about fast fashion than quality fashion, but that doesn’t mean that luxury doesn’t exist. It does exist, just that it’s in a smaller sphere. By rejecting the existence of luxury, you are kind of saying H&M has won.

Dakota: I feel like we are living in a very transitory moment and it’s amazing. We’ve still to see how this idea of old money luxury might fade out, the little pockets of that might still exist somewhere, but modern luxury is Tribeca, it is DSM, because it’s being marketed to our generation.

Dana: Designing the fall/winter collection and presenting it in February as well as promoting our spring items. We’ve shot one film and we are looking into more photo and video collaborations.
Dakota: The clothing speaks on it’s own, but there is so much more of the aesthetic that can be expressed through the video. We’ve recently found few videographers who want to collaborate with us. So, in the next six months we’ll hopefully be filming and releasing two or three films. That’s one of the things we enjoy the most doing within the whole Stone process. We love design, but we also love all the image-making you can incorporate to it.

Dana & Dakota: So are we!!