FASHION
UNDERNEATH THE BUSINESS OF CDLP UNDERWEAR
OCTOBER 29, 2020
WORDS
by KRISTOPHER FRASER
PHOTOGRAPHY
by TATIJANA SHOAN
BRAND RELATIONS DIRECTOR
JIMMY NEDA
STARRING
RAPHAEL VIDAS
for Q MODEL MANAGEMENT
and GENERAL TOMISLAV
Finding a good pair of men’s underwear shouldn’t be that challenging. However, there a lot of men’s underwear brands out there, many of which do their production in the same place, so, often what you’re getting is essentially the same pair of underwear with a different label sewn in. Andreas Palm and Christian Larson saw this as a problem. They believed men deserved something more unique from their underwear.
While it might seem frivolous, a good pair of underwear can completely change how a man feels and how they walk through life. The duo worked together to create the Swedish based underwear label CDLP, which has quickly become renowned for its simplistic styles, fit, and comfort. With each of them bringing their different skills to help the brand grow, CDLP has become one of the fastest emerging underwear brands on the market.
Larson’s creative eye and Palm’s business eye created a perfect storm for a brand that could succeed in the underwear market. Larson has edited for artists and brands including Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Dior, Cartier, Mercedes-Benz, L’Oréal Paris, and Kylie Minogue. Palm has extensive entrepreneurial experience having founded and built branding agency Ciceron Group to a 15-million-euro business. The two took their time to help us get underneath the business of their underwear business.
CDLP T-shirt in white, and Y-brief in black
CDLP T-shirt in white, and Y-brief in black
AS IF: For starters, tell me what inspired the brand, what was the “aha” moment?
Christian Larson: The "aha" moment was that nobody seemed to have cared about men’s underwear for years from a product perspective. I came from filmmaking as a director in advertising mainly with fashion and lifestyle brands. I was traveling a lot doing shoots everywhere in the world. When you travel those few items in your luggage start to matter to you more. I realized that my underwear was just kind of like a weak link in my outfits. After giving it some thought, I felt that men don’t really get the opportunity to choose underwear to make them feel something. The way men have traditionally looked at underwear has been very much as a necessity and not really as an essential garment.
Yes, underwear isn’t seen as a fashion piece.
CL: Yes, exactly. Looking at the products, everything was very stream-lined from all these big brands, and no one had really put much care into it. As a man, I haven’t really been able to shop for underwear that makes me feel a certain way, or feel great about myself, or feel sexy, or feel confident in my own skin. There was room for improvement. It really hits me when I’m shooting campaign for a lingerie brand and I think that really got me to that “aha moment." Like why don’t men shop for underwear in the way women do? Why don’t they care about it in the way women do? That’s where it started.
Why do you think menswear needed another underwear brand? Even though men don’t care about underwear the way women do, there’s still a lot of underwear brands out there.
CL: Absolutely, but that was the thing that. If you compare it to the women’s underwear market, there’s a lot of underwear brands there, but they all offer something different. There’s color, size, shape, the comfort or sexiness factor, there’s a lot of options there. For men — they all looked the same, and they were basically made in the same way from the same fabric. There weren’t any real options. Even though there’s a lot of brands they’re all doing the same thing. If you start to scratch the surface there, it appeared to us that everything was made in the same factories. We found this really strange statics that 80 percent of men’s underwear at that time when we started was made in the same city outside of China.
