CHURCH’s first clothing collection: from Italy to the USSR to Canberra
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The greenest mill in the world of denim and merino wool repurposed from the USSR don’t sound like they have a lot in common. But if you look a little closer, the connection begins right here in Canberra.
After years of selling street-style clothing that traverses the line between casual, cool and corporate, CHURCH Public Service has announced their very own collection – an idea that was originally written into the business plan of its very first alleyway café.
Manufactured entirely in Australia using luxury dead stock fabrics and natural fibres, the limited run of Collection One will only have 30 pieces of each item, designed to outlast trends and to be worn, not replaced.
For CHURCH Public Service founders Brock Dunn, Laurence Hughes, and Nicholas Mico, launching Collection One has been a two-year labour of love that has taken them from working with the oldest family-run denim mill in Italy to using merino wool originally meant for Soviet military uniforms. The resulting collection is a reimagining of the modern wardrobe – born from slow production and innovative, genderless design.
“It would have been easier five years ago to go down the route of just making t-shirts and hoodies. And while that’s cool if someone wants to do that, as we’ve gotten older and we’ve learned more about the industry, it wouldn’t have felt right for us,” says Brock.
“The last couple of years, I think a lot of us have all started to feel really strongly about the idea of how mass consumption is affecting all of us, how brands are operating and how bigger companies rebrand themselves after copping slack for basically being fast fashion.”
Setting themselves the brief to create the attire people want to wear every day and for every occasion, Collection One is simply described by Brock as “lived-in formal”.
Take the collection’s matching pleated pant and dinner jacket, for example. Made from Merino wool that was produced on a New South Wales farm, it was sold to the USSR to be milled into a deep obsidian herringbone, originally destined for Soviet military uniforms. But when the regime collapsed, and the bill couldn’t be paid, the finished wool was sent back to the farm, where it was wrapped, stored, and forgotten for decades before it was sold to a dead-stock supplier.
Eventually it fell into the hands of the CHURCH trio who saw the potential for what it could become.
“The fabric itself set a tone for the entire collection,” says Brock. “Here’s this truly vintage fabric that’s lived for 60 years and been perfectly preserved. How can we design a product out of that that gives it another 60 years of life?”
“We wanted all the clothes to feel really lived in and be things that can build character over time.”
Designing good basics was also an important part of the process of designing Collection One. Wanting to not just design a pair of jeans but the pair of jeans – the pair that offers utility, longevity, and style – CHURCH’s journey took them to Italy’s Candiani Denim.
Founded in 1938 in Robecchetto con Induno, Candiani Denim is best known for supplying premium, sustainable denim fabric to some of the world’s most prestigious fashion and denim brands.
“We wanted organic cotton, so we went to Candiani, the oldest family-run denim mill in Italy… They’ve had generations to push the industry forward, and they just produce incredibly good, durable denim out of organic cotton,” Brock explains.
Having supplied the likes of Levi’s, Lee, Diesel, Hugo Boss, and Stella McCartney, the CHURCH trio hopes the denim pieces created from the partnership will be ones people reach for time and time again.
Brock also notes that there’s an “insane amount” of surplus fabric from brands like Maison Margiela, Louis Vuitton, and Hermès in Italy. They plan to travel to the Mediterranean country to source the dead-stock designer fabrics for future collections, giving the surplus a new life rather than letting it sit in warehouses or go to waste.
“In our eyes, that’s fabric that’s been so intentionally developed to be of a high quality. And if there’s going to be fabrics that exist to that level of quality that aren’t getting used, that’s something that we really want to try to tap into,” he says.
“For us it’s enough to know where it’s come from and the intention behind the quality of the fabric. And then another is using natural Indigenous dyes in some of our clothing…one thing we’re going to try to do in a future collection is make things out of a raw, undyed fabric, and then dye them ourselves using the native flora from Canberra.”
And with plans to launch a new collection in June next year, Collection One is just the beginning.
CHURCH Public Service Collection One will be available to buy in-store and at church.xyz from 6 pm on Thursday 17 September.
Photography: @burrows.cbr
